Elementary School (Grades 1 – 5)
The list below is just a small sampling of the unique subjects covered in each elementary grade. A more detailed outline will be available as soon as possible*.
Independent Investigation Method (IIM) Research Projects:
Students in each grade participate in research projects (IIM) which involve intense research, writing, and visual demonstratives on a specific topic. Students are taught how to research their project and record their findings, organize facts and information leading to the development of a research paper, and create a visual demonstrative to further enhance the understanding for their topic. Students gain knowledge and education in English, Journalism, and Library skills, as well as an understanding about the world around them. Specific topics in past years include:
- Grade 1: Penguins
- Grade 2: Seasons
- Grade 3: Organisms and Their Habitats
- Grade 4: Authors
- Grade 5: National Parks
Other parts of the curriculum include:
Grade 1:
- Integrated phonics program
- Reading/Language – a multi-sensory, multi-integrated approach to
reading incorporating phonics, whole language, literature, and basal
readers. This area of the curriculum encompasses reading,spelling,
grammar, writing,and handwriting. - Science/ Social Studies – A thematic approach that follows and is
coordinated with the stories in the basal reader including communities,
habitats, animal life and lifecycles, holiday celebrations. - Math – Number concepts, graphing, addition and subtraction to 15, time,
money, measurement, introduction to fractions and geometry. - Religion – Family, self-concept, manners, community, parish and
church,prayers, and the Bible.
Grade 2:
- Center-based curriculum
- Autobiographies
- Readers’ Anthology Theatre Plays
- Creative writing
- Religion – Sacraments, the Rosary, Mass, Holy Days, Advent, Christmas, Lent, Easter, and Bible stories.
- Reading – comprehension, oral reading, context clues, sequencing, main idea, alphabetical order, vocabulary, drawing conclusion, following directions, words with multiple meanings, inference, classification, predicting outcomes, cause and effect, Reading Theater, and literature based units.
- Phonics and Spelling – long and short vowels sounds, compound words, syllables, contractions, suffixes, prefixes, spelling changes, phonograms, spelling words, and dictation.
- English – sentence structure, subject and predicate, parts of speech, writing a letter, plural, punctuation, and capitalization, and writing assignments using the writing process.
- Math – numbers and graphing, addition and subtraction: pattern and concepts, addition and subtraction: facts and strategies, addition and subtraction with regrouping, place value and patterns to 100, money, telling time, numbers to 1000, measurement, geometry, fractions, and multiplication.
- Science – plants, animals, fossils, weather, seasons, solar system, matter, sound, heat, light, force, magnets, electricity, earth, and health unit.
- Social Studies – maps, geography, our past history, seasonal holidays, patriotic holidays, patriotic symbols, communities, our government, and economics.
- Other- enrichment activities, centers, and classroom library
Grade 3
- States and capitals
- Cursive writing
- Genre of the month
- Science labs
- Utilization of computer lab in curriculum
Grade 4
- Religion –Commandments, Beatitudes, Sacraments in the Church, and Social Justice
- Science–Plant Structure and Function, Animal Structure and FunctionEnergy in Ecosystems, Surviving in the Environment, Matter, Force andMotion, Electricity and Magnetism, Light and Sound, Weather, Makeup ofthe Earth, Exploring the Oceans, Movements in the Solar System, Digestive,Circulatory, and Nervous Systems, Health and Lifestyle
- Math–Data, facts, and graphs review, Place value and time, Adding andsubtracting whole numbers and money, Multiplication and division concepts,Fractions and customary linear measurement, Fraction operations andcustomary measurement, Decimals and metric measurement, Probability
- Social Studies– The United States: Land and People, Southwest, Southeast,Northeast, Middle West, Mountain States, West
- Language Arts–Integrated Phonics, Spelling, Reading (various genres),English (Sentence structure, parts of speech, punctuation, letter writing,use of a thesaurus and dictionary). Various writing prompts and assignments completed throughout the year on a regular basis.
Grade 5
- English – 8 Parts of Speech, grammar, usage and mechanics, grammatical structure of sentences; Writing assignments with focus on paragraph structure emphasizing topic, detail and closing sentences
- Science - Life Science – 6 life processes, cell reproduction and ecology; Physical Science – types of matter and forms of energy; Earth Science – earth resources, climate and astronomy; Puberty is discussed by a RN in the Spring.
- Math -Data and graph, whole numbers, decimals, and fractions, multiplication, powers and multiples of 10, exponents, division, geometry, faction operations, measurement, ratio and percent.
- Social Studies - American History and American Geography and their relation to our lives.
- Reading - Whole language and is literature-based.
- Religion - Sacraments, seasons and feast days of the church year, Bible, Mass and the Rosary.
- Wordly Wise Vocabulary – Vocabulary, definitions, and spelling
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