St. Joseph School teachers welcome and encourage communication with families regarding all aspects of a student's development.

In math, the students are learning how to find a fraction of a group, convert mixed measures into smaller units, write a number in expanded notation and from expanded notation to standard form, read and write whole numbers in expanded notation, solve multiple-step word problems, and find the average of a set of numbers, multiply by two-digit numbers, and name numbers through hundred billions.

In religion the students will be learning about baptism and confirmation.In reading, the students read a fantasy called "The Paper Dragon" and will make a scoll like the main character in the story did by drawing a scene from history. In the next story, students will be learning about steps in a process and will apply this skill when they read a biographical story called "Grandma Essie's Covered Wagon".

In fifth grade science, the srudents are learning about the traits of living things. They are learning how some traits are inherited while others are aquired, what DNA is and how it is replicated, and how some disorders are created from the mutation of genes. They will also learn how traits are passed on to offspring and how some traits help species survive.

In fourth grade science, students will obsrve the response of a plant to a stimulus and how organism detect and respond to stimuli. They will also observe how animals learn and distiguish learned and inherited behaviors.

In language arts the students are learning about nouns as part of their grammar lesson. They are learning how to combine two choppy sentences into one by using both possessive nouns and appositives. They are also learning how to use more exact nouns in their writing. They just recently wrote a cause-and -effect paper on what causes a team to perform better.