Why do I teach?  I hope to have the opportunity to help my students develop a lifelong love of learning.  If I can teach them how to learn, not just what they need to learn, I will have done my job. 

What I love about teaching at St. Barbara School: I love to watch my students grow and build upon what they learn.  I love that St. Barbara is a family that works together to do what needs to get done.  I love that our daughters graduated from St. Barbara and our son still attends school here.  I have known many of my students since they were very young.  I truly feel that I am teaching my family.

Curriculum

Religion: We prepare to celebrate the Sacraments of First Reconciliation and First Eucharist by studying the ways we belong to God’s Church, asking God’s forgiveness, listening to God’s Word, and giving through peace and service.  We live the feasts and seasons of our Church by participating in Mass as readers with our Faith Partners.  We also work to serve through a variety of ways in our daily school life. Our curriculum is enhanced with the Benziger Family Life Program, which guides the development of healthy attitudes, moral values and virtues of Christian family life.  

Math: While learning to add and subtract two digit numbers, we continue to memorize number facts 0 – 20 and place value. To make graphing relevant, we become data collectors, polling our school on various topics, calculating mode, median, and range and presenting the information in different graphing formats.  We also are introduced to fractions, multiplication, and division.  

Language Arts: As a component of the “Superkids” reading series, our writing units cover grade level grammar and mechanics skills (subject, predicate, parts of speech, punctuation, alphabetical order, etc.), all the while working toward published pieces.  By using the five step writing process, students prepare autobiographies, poems, friendly letters, book reviews, imagined stories and researched and true stories, and magazine format pieces.  

Science: The second grade science curriculum consists of four major categories: Plants and Animals, Habitats, Earth Science and Matter and Simple Machines. Each unit is organized so that the students acquire the necessary skills needed that are stated in the State Standards.  Using the Scientific Method, the students learn how to answer their questions that arise as they use experiments to learn new facts about the world around them.  These experiments are a necessary part of the learning process as they help the students become actively engaged in their learning. Movies and computers are also used to expand on topics discussed in class.   

Social Studies: Our social studies book looks at the big picture of our world and narrows it down to our country, past and present.  We discuss different types of communities and environments that people live in, our natural resources, and how we can care for them.  We study goods and services and working together.  We study how our country began and how it grew and apply those lessons to a discussion of the United States government and citizenship today.  Geography and graphing skills are taught throughout our lessons.  We always look forward to attending the National Geographic Geography Bee that St. Barbara holds each year.

Reading: With the introduction of the “Superkids” reading series, our students are using a curriculum that is guided by current research and practice.  “Superkids” incorporates spelling, phonics, and reading comprehension, as well as handwriting and language components.  We have daily practice with phonics, decoding, dictation, and oral reading and comprehension skills. Classic children’s literature and non-fiction works are presented in a book club format which allows for the children’s reading of complete literary pieces.