Catholic Identity
Our Catholic Identity is an important part of who we are at St. Dominic. This year classrooms have been intentional about recognizing the 10/10 discipleship challenge in classrooms with a visible bulletin board and activities for each month. Last month, our middle school retreat incorporated different ways to encounter God through prayer, including gratitude jars, sacrifice beads, five finger prayer, and prayer with color to name a few. The day ended with Adoration. Our middle school students also enjoyed a trip to Holy Hill to visit the relics of St. Therese and recently honored Mary with a meditative afternoon for the Immaculate Conception. Additionally, 7th and 8th grade students now have their own Bibles to annotate, and Fr. Sweeney and our youth minister come in regularly to do a Bible study as part of 7th and 8th grade religion class. We rebranded our campus ministry into IGNITE, an after school extra curricular where students can dive deeper into relationships and prayer. I look forward to growing in our Catholic Faith as we journey into the New Year together, including celebrating our students who are showing our next discipleship challenge "Love Thy Neighbor".
Speaking of the new year, all K5-8th graders will complete a January MAP test in addition to the end of the year MAP. It is important that we look at data to ensure our students are growing while we still have time with them. Teachers will complete a data dive in February to ensure we are thinking critically about how we meet the needs of our learners. The archdiocese requires Catholic elementary schools to pick one standardized test. Given this fact, we will spend our time diving into MAP tests and forgo the Iowa testing.