Academics at St. Thomas More School

 

St. Thomas More School has high standards of academic achievement for all students, and the results of our standardized achievement tests indicate that our students flourish in our academic environment. The exemplary achievement of our students is influenced by the following characteristics of our school and our program:

  • We care about the success of all students and we use information technology and learning support resources to insure that all students achieve our performance standards.
  • We provide a strong foundation for basic skills development and, at the same time, many opportunities to do creative problem solving activities that enrich students’ learning and develop conceptual understanding.
  • We continuously analyze student performance to evaluate and improve our curriculum, our teaching, and our learning activities.
  • Our parents and the St. Thomas More community work with the school in a partnership to reinforce our educational efforts.

Organization

Our School is organized to serve the student and educational program needs at different grade levels.  Kindergarten and first grade are located in the Primary Learning Center.  Grades two through six are located in the main building, and grade level classes are grouped together.  Grades seven and eight are also located in the main building, but they have a separate wing so that they can operate in a middle school environment.  The following details provide a more complete perspective of our school organization.

  • We are organized to have three or four full-day Kindergarten programs with a maximum enrollment of 20 in each class.
  • Grades two through eight have three homerooms in each grade with a maximum enrollment of 26 for each homeroom.
  • Total enrollment for the 2008--2009 school year is 604.

Program

Our Academic program follows Diocese of Allentown curriculum guidelines and our instructional activities are enhanced by our commitment to the highest standards of student performance. Our commitment is demonstrated by the following curriculum and instruction activities.

  • Our reading and language arts program emphasizes both skills development and application of skills in analyzing literature, researching and writing for a comprehensive variety of purposes.
  • Our mathematics program emphasizes skills, problem solving and conceptual understanding.  Students in grades five and six receive seven periods of mathematics instruction each week so that they are better prepared for Algebra.  Students take pre Algebra in seventh grade and Algebra 1 in eighth grade.
  • Students take three periods of Spanish each week in seventh and eighth grade.  In these two years, students complete the equivalent of first year Spanish.
  • We have a learning support team leader and learning support teachers to serve every grade level.  Our gaol is to provide the enrichment or learning support that every student requires to achieve our academic performance standards.
  • We have two guidance counselors who work with the learning support team, teachers and parents.
  • We have a full-time coordinator of educational technology who works with teachers to use our information technology resources to achieve our instructional goals.

Achievement

      The Average Achievement of Students in Grades 2--7 on the IOWA's Taken in March 2008

  

Grade
 Reading Total
Language Total
Math Total
Social Studies
Science
Sources of Information
Word Analysis
Math Computation
2
89
91
87
 
 
 
86
79
3
87
85
78
77
81
84
80
70
4
81
88
84
81
77
82
 
87
5
86
89
90
83
86
87
 
88
6
85
88
91
82
81
82
 
92
7
88
87
90
78
84
86
 
88
 
*Data recorded is percentile ranks of average SS: National Student Norms

 

                 
*The Percentile rank is a score that tells the percent of students in the nation (taking the IOWA test) that earned lower raw scores
than the average score of our students.