Dear St. Raphael School Families and Parishioners,
We are back from Easter break and on our last leg of this school year, which is pretty hard to believe! There are still many exciting things happening at school, and we are busily making plans for next year as well.

This weekend brings two major events for our 6 ^th ? 8 ^th Graders. We have students representing St. Raphael at the state-wide History Day competition in Columbia, Missouri this weekend. Projects this year include displays, skit presentations, and documentaries. Competition is stiff at this event as our students gather with history scholars from around the state. We also have students representing St. Raphael at the final Bellarmine Speech Meet this weekend. Again, we have a variety of entries in the serious, humorous, and duet categories. Students give their speeches before a panel of judges and the judging criteria are quite difficult to achieve. We are so proud of all of these students and wish them the best of luck!

Our Upper Department teachers have been meeting and discussing some changes for next school year, always in an effort to improve learning for their students. We will retain the Standard and Challenge groupings of classes for Math, English, and Literature as these groupings have been very successful and have allowed students to move at an appropriate pace, and to be in a learning environment that is most productive for each of them. We will also retain the Math Workshop class for each 6 ^th, 7 ^th, and 8 ^th Graders, but with a slightly different focus. Mrs. Berns will include whole group instruction on necessary math topics in Math Workshop, as well as utilize various online learning programs to review, enrich, and accelerate student math skills.

Our 6 ^th ? 8 ^th Grade classes will be transitioning to a block schedule for next school year to give our teachers and students more time to delve into important subject matter, do more activities and lab work, and develop much needed critical thinking skills. Students will have fewer classes each day and the school day will have a less frantic pace. Block scheduling is used by many middle schools, both public and private, with great success.
Block scheduling will work like this: Each student?s courses will be split into ?A-Day? and ?B-Day? courses, with half of the courses in each. On ?A-Day? (Mondays & Wednesdays), students will attend all ?A-Day? courses for about an hour and a half. On ?B-Day? (Tuesdays & Thursdays), students will attend all ?B-Day? courses for about an hour and a half. Then on Fridays, students will attend both ?A? and ?B? courses for about 45 minutes each. Religion and all Specials classes will run for 45 minutes every day, regardless of whether it?s an ?A? or ?B? day.

Homework will not be lessened, but will be chunked by days. So your child might only have Science homework twice each week instead of four times a week, but there will be more of it . The idea is that block scheduling allows students to put more focus on subject areas, instead of frantically trying to complete homework in all subject areas every night. We are very much looking forward to the positive changes that block scheduling will bring to our Upper Department.

Please remember to pray for our 2 ^nd Grade students as they receive the Sacrament of First Holy Communion this Sunday. They have been working very hard with Mrs. Franklin to prepare for this important day, and we know that they will shine with the love of Jesus!
Peace and Blessings,
Kim Vangel
Principal