Dear Parents,

     Happy Thursday!! I feel like Thursdays are coming around very quickly.  We are nearing the end of the year.  The end of the year from conferences/Halloween to Christmas break always seems to fly by.  We are coming up to Thanksgiving all ready.  We have really had a great month.  I feel the students have really enjoyed a lot of the things we have been doing in class.  Even though I had an extra month of summer vacation, I am looking forward to Thanksgiving.  We are traveling to Chicago, with my two 16 year old girls sharing in the driving!!  It will be great experience for them.  Honestly, there is no traffic at the time, except on I-80, but once we are off that right inside Illinois, it's smooth sailing.  I hope all of you who may be traveling have a safe trip and a great Thanksgiving.

Math - We only have about one more lesson in Math that is required in the Iowa Core.  I will preparing them for a test.  We will take it before Thanksgiving, so we are able to start something new when we return.  We will move into reading and interpreting graphs and data.  It will be a chapter that the kids will enjoy.  After that we will really hit the hard stuff, meaning multiplication.  We will learn to multiply double digits.  I really enjoy teaching this section because it is a "new" topic and the kids really feel "big" when they learn it.  I see the smiles, and I see them working hard to understand because they want to be like the big kids.  You can help by starting to work on their multiplication facts at home.

Language Arts - We finished up the Unit 2 test last week.  We are in the 2nd story in Unit 3 now.  Last week we read a story on hurricanes, this week it is on Earthquakes.  The difference in the stories is that last week was informational text or a non-fiction selection that was chock full of information.  This story on earthquakes is historical fiction, so while trying to give us information on earthquakes it is also telling a story.  It is an interesting story line about a father and son in the San Francisco earthquake of 1906.  They were in a tenement building at the time and end of trapped.  It brings up fears of natural disasters with kids.  We have talked about our fears in class.  This is also a story that makes us look a little deeper into the thoughts of the characters.

Social Studies - I hope everyone is working on their projects for the Northeast.  Some students need to bring in their poster board so I can get it ready for them.  I want to remind you these are meant to be fun and only a few require adult supervision.  These are not meant to be stressful.  I know students are very busy outside of school, which is why I try to give them an ample amount of time to work on them.  Please check out the dates they are due.  I wrote down some wrong dates.  The day is correct but the date is wrong. If I said the 8th, 9th, 10th, or 11th, the dates are a day off.  Not sure what I did wrong but maybe was looking at wrong calendar.  We are moving through this chapter quite quickly.  We just finished a lesson on the Narragansett Tribe of Rhode Island.  We learned how they lived, what they lived in, how society worked, and what they used for government.

I hope you all have a great weekend!!

God Bless,

Mrs. Sickels