Mrs. Joan Wagner

Mrs. Wagner and Mrs. Atkinson work together as a "team" teaching all of the fifth graders. I teach math and social studies to all of the fifth graders as well as Religion and reading to my homeroom (Room 206). Mrs. Atkinson teaches all the fifth graders science and language arts.Our school theme is "Together with God we become a rainbow of excellence." All the fifth graders become "rainbows" to others by completing service projects that focus on caring for others in our community. In the fall, we use our artistic talents to make cards for the homebound of our parish community.

Later in the year, we design quilts that focus on the Little House books and a study of pioneer life. We donate these handmade quilts to Project Linus at a special prayer service at the conclusion of the school year. We learn how our hard work gives warmth to others. We also learn to appreciate all that God has blessed us with after serving at the St. Vincent de Paul meal program.Our social studies lessons focus on geography and American History. Our textbook is supplemented with a weekly newspaper called USA Studies.

Our first field trip to Indian Summer is a wonderful introduction to our first unit on Native Americans. Math lessons include problem solving, Weekday Math, decimals, measurement, fractions, and percent. Our reading program is supplemented with computer generated Reading Counts quizzes to assess comprehension.Learning from others and respecting their differences is an important part of our classroom experience. We learn by doing activities and stress the importance of the quality of our work. By using all the gifts that God has given us, we truly become "rainbows of excellence'!