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Religion 6D

Teacher: Mrs. Denise Rose Britt

Dear Parents,

Welcome to Back-to-School Night! I am happy to say that this is my twentieth year teaching at St. Helena, and I look forward to an exciting and rewarding year with your children. I will do my best to provide your sons and daughters with a challenging educational experience in a nurturing environment. Students will have various educational opportunities to demonstrate understanding of the curriculum within the framework of differentiated instruction and special emphasis upon the rigor and relevance framework. If you have any questions or concerns throughout the year, my e-mail address is drosebritt@sainthelenaschool.org.

Curriculum Content: The focus of sixth grade religion is the Bible and the Old Testament. Our text is Blest Are We by Silver Burdett Ginn; there are also classroom bibles which are used during our classes. We also will study the liturgical calendar, saints’ feast days, Mary, prayer, the mass, and the sacraments, to name just a few other areas. In January the children will receive a Confirmation folder and text, The Gift of the Spirit. A packet listing all Confirmation dates and requirements will be distributed at a meeting later in the year. I will distribute a Confirmation Service Form to the students the first week of class, so service hours can be noted as soon as possible. Twenty hours of service are required for Confirmation.

Classroom Instruction: Students will decorate a copybook as a religion journal in which to keep notes and other entries. Students will need a pencil case with blue/black pens (preferably erasable), red pen for correcting work, and highlighter for gleaming important facts in the text. I frequently use DVD’s and Discovery Education for stories of the Old Testament. The students perform plays, as well, to help the Old Testament come alive.

Grading: Report card grades are a combination of

- Major Tests

- Quizzes

- Homework*

- Projects

- Religion Journal/Text

- Class Participation/Behavior, especially during our plays

Homework/Assignment Policies: Homework assignments are always checked on the following day. Missed homework assignments adversely affect a student’s grade. All work must be handed in on time, and points will be deducted each day an assignment is late. If a student is absent, he or she is responsible for making up all assignments, quizzes, and tests.

Social Studies 8R

American History Part Two

Teacher: Mrs. Denise Rose Britt

Dear Parents,

Welcome to Back-to-School Night! I am happy to say that this is my twentieth year teaching at St. Helena, and I look forward to an exciting and rewarding year with your children. My B.A. is in history, and my goal is to instill a love of this subject to your children. I will do my best to provide your sons and daughters with a challenging educational experience in a nurturing environment. Students will have various educational opportunities to demonstrate understanding of the curriculum within the framework of differentiated instruction and special emphasis upon the rigor and relevance framework. If you have any questions or concerns throughout the year, my e-mail address is drosebritt@sainthelenaschool.org.

Curriculum Content: Part Two of American History technically covers the years from 1850 to 1960 (Road to the Civil War to the New Frontier). This time period includes the Civil War, Reconstruction, the Gilded Age, Industrial Revolution, Age of Imperialism, The Spanish-American War, Progressive Movement, World War I, the Jazz Age, the Great Depression, World War II, the Cold War, and all the presidents who served during these periods in our history. Our textbook is Holt’s Call to Freedom: 1865 to the Present (2002 edition). We regularly use our Junior Scholastic magazine for current events news and map and globe skills.

Classroom Instruction: We discuss, read aloud, and learn how to outline notes using graphic organizers and other methods. Visuals from Discovery Education, videos, CDs, power points, and internet sites are employed in class daily. My homework website contains many of these sites that I use in class. Students are encouraged to use these sites at home, especially the Holt site, for enrichment/reinforcement. I often use the Holt 2009 edition which contains interactive maps. Students can take quizzes from our present 2002 series and challenge themselves with the more recent editions.

Skills: It is important that students complete reading of the text pages when they are assigned. Three skills that I will continue to teach are (1) learning to form terms from the section reading and not just copying terms from the back of the book; (2) answering specific written questions in well-written sentences, paragraphs, or essay format; and (3) outlining. These assignments incorporate reading skills of summarizing, finding main ideas, comparing/contrasting, cause and effect, etc. There is a Handbook in the front of the text that reviews these basic reading skills, and some students may need to review it.

Grading: Report card grades are a combination of

- Major Tests

- Quizzes

- Junior Scholastic maps

- Homework*

- Projects/Reports

- Copybook notes/terms/worksheets

- Class Participation

Homework/Assignment Policies: Homework is assigned regularly Monday through Thursday, and all assignments are always checked. Specific handwritten (or typed) assignments on loose leaf paper are always collected for a homework grade, as is all assigned homework. Missed homework assignments adversely affect a student’s grade. All work must be handed in on time, and points will be deducted each day an assignment is late. If a student is absent, he or she is responsible for making up all assignments, quizzes, and tests. Projects/reports will be assigned and will require work to be completed over

weekends. A research paper will be completed in the second trimester along with the Study Skills course. The topic of this paper will be relevant to our study of United States Presidents, and I use this paper for differentiated instruction.

Welcome to Back-to-School Night! I am happy to say that this is my twentieth year teaching at St. Helena, and I look forward to an exciting and rewarding year with your children. My B.A. is in history, and my gold is to instill a love of this subject in your children. I will do my best to provide your sons and daughters with a challenging educational experience in a nurturing environment. Students will have various educational opportunities to demonstrate understanding of the curriculum within the framework of differentiated instruction and special emphasis upon the rigor and relevance framework. If you have any questions or concerns throughout the year, my e-mail address is drosebritt@sainthelenaschool.org.

Curriculum Content: Part One of American History technically covers the years from 1492 to 1850 (Discovery of the New World to Road to the Civil War), and emphasis is on how the United States became a country from its origin of thirteen colonies. This time period includes the empires of the world before the Age of Exploration, the establishment of colonial empires during the Age of Exploration, consequences of this exploration to existing cultures, settlement of the English colonies, the American Revolution, the establishment of our government including our U.S. Constitution and related topics of citizenship, the War of 1812, Age of Jackson, Mexican-American War, the movement westward, sl avery, and all other issues related to that movement. Presidents Washington to Buchanan also will be studied. Our textbook is Holt’s Call to Freedom: Beginnings to 1865 (2002 edition). We regularly use our Junior Scholastic magazine for current events news and map and globe skills.

Homework/Assignment Policies: Homework is assigned regularly Monday through Thursday, and all assignments are always checked. Specific handwritten (or typed) assignments on loose leaf paper are

always collected for a homework grade, as is all assigned homework. Missed homework assignments adversely affect a student’s grade. All work must be handed in on time, and points will be deducted each day an assignment is late. If a student is absent, he or she is responsible for making up all assignments, quizzes, and tests. Projects/reports will be assigned and will require work to be completed over weekends. A research paper will be completed in the third trimester along with the Study Skills course. This topic of the paper is relevant to our study of the Industrial Revolution and coordinates very well with our May trip to Baltimore, Maryland.

I am happy to say that we have a new science series in our school this year. Unfortunately, because of the problems with the Pennsylvania budget, the books have not yet arrived. Nevertheless, the series has a wide variety of CDs, and access to the text can be found online. The site is now on my homework web page.

Curriculum Content: The seventh grade life science curriculum is an in-depth study of the scientific method, lab equipment, metric measurements in the lab, use of the microscope, the cell and microbiology, taxonomy and the kingdoms, and the human body. It also involves an overview of zoology, botany, and ecology. Our new textbook is Glencoe Life Science by McGraw Hill. Our Science World magazine features articles in all three main branches of science: physical, life, and earth. We use this periodical for up-to-date articles on current science news.

Classroom Instruction: We discuss, read aloud, and learn how to outline notes using graphic organizers and other methods. Visuals from overhead transparencies, Discovery Education, videos, CDs, power points, and internet sites are employed in class daily. My homework website contains many of these sites that I use in class. Students are encouraged to use these sites at home, especially the Glencoe site, for enrichment/reinforcement.

Homework/Assignment Policies: Homework assignments are always checked. Specific handwritten (or typed) assignments on loose leaf paper are always collected for a homework grade. Missed homework assignments adversely affect a student’s grade. All work must be handed in on time, and points will be deducted each day an assignment is late. If a student is absent, he or she is responsible for making up all assignments, quizzes, and tests. Projects/reports will be assigned and will require work to be completed over weekends.