St. Dominic Elementary School

At the end of 8th grade, students are required to take standardized social studies, language arts, math and science exams. Consequently, this year at Saint Dominic Elementary School focuses on making sure that students have a firm grounding in these areas so they are set to excel in high school.

Language arts class focuses on creative dramatics, listening and speech activities, figures of speech, functions of sentence elements, simple business letters and inductive and deductive rea­soning. Students sharpen their math skills, showing that they understand how to calculate factors, multiples, integer amounts and square roots and use them in problem solving. They also become versed in metric and non-metric geometry, beginning trigonometry and statistical terms. (Advanced math instruction is also offered to students in 7th and 8th grade.)

Social studies starts with European Imperialism, followed by World War I and World War II and ending with current world affairs. In science, students gain a more sophisticated understanding of scientific nomenclature, composition of the earth, ocean and atmosphere, forces in liquids and gases, types of energy, the atom, periodic table of elements and compounds and mixtures.

Religious education prepares students for the Sacrament of Confirmation, with discussions on how the Holy Spirit is involved in students’ everyday lives and students completing at least ten hours of extracurricular community service.