Thursday, October 30, 2014

Dear Parents,
     Happy Thursday!!   I think our really warm weather has moved on.  It always seems that Halloween is when the real cold begins.  I know 17 years ago on Oct. 26, we had a bad snow storm because I ended up with no electricity, and had to take the twins to my parents for warmth.  They were just 4 months old at them time.  Funny thing is, I didn't even know it was suppose to snow that night!  Maybe the snow will stay away for a while.  At least til all our local farmers get their crops out.  I have really notice the trees this year.  They are really pretty.  The oranges and reds seem more brilliant.  My neighbor had a great orange colored tree but last weekend it lost all it's leaves in one day.  My kids make fun of me for pointing those things out, except one day one of the older two pointed a pretty red tree out to me. I hope everyone enjoys Halloween!!

Halloween at St. Malachy - Well, here are the details for Halloween.  The morning will be a regular Friday for us.  We will do everything we normally do.  Yes, spelling post test and Language Arts assessment will still take place. In the late morning about 11:15 I will begin showing them the movie The Wizard of Oz.  We just finished reading the book aloud and it  was very different from the book.  I know most of them have seen the movie a million times but I thought a fun Halloween activity.  After lunch we will continue to watch it until it is out turn to go to the Halloween activities.  I have a snack being brought in and juice to have while watching the movie.  This is what our Halloween Party consists of, movie an snack.  We will go to the upper wing when it is time and do some spooky fun activities.  At 2:30 the Halloween Parade will take place in the gym.  Get there early to get a good spot.  If you attend the parade and want to take your child home as soon as it is over just come down to the room and pick them up.  I hope everyone has a fun and safe Halloween!!

Math - We have started work on the 2nd half of the Math chapter 2.  We begin with mental math strategies.  These are strategies I have always taught, but the difference is this book throws 4 different strategies at them at once where last year I taught one strategy each day for 4 days.  We are finding out that having several options to work a problem is awesome!  Just today I shared a way I would work a problem and someone else did a different strategy from the page and we got the same answer.  What I felt was the easier strategy someone else didn't.  The kids thought it was cool.  I know I am out of some people's comfort zones with this.  It was always that way in the past also.  Today they are doing all their work in partners and will not bring it home to work on.  I also want to let you know that if your child is struggling with some of the work, bring them to school early.  I am here by 7:45 every morning.  On Mondays I have breakfast duty but Tuesday through Friday I am in my room.  Students may come in during the morning and get help.  I have had a couple take advantage of that all ready. I would encourage you to do this, especially when it is something you are struggling to help with.  Most parents want to revert to their  way of doing things.  We need to keep in mind we only learned one way to work problems.  Which is sad that our our trained that way. We are working our way up to those strategies. Your child is lucky to be getting a deeper understanding of math and how it works.  High School math will be so much easier for them.  If you aren't understanding what they are doing send them to me in the morning and we will work it out.

Language Arts -  This week we are reading Dear Mr. Winston.  This is a humorous story about a child who needed to do some research on a snake.  The snake book she needs is a reference book and can't be checked out of the library, sooooo she brings the snack in a box into the library.  The librarian is deathly afraid.  When he notices what she is doing he asks what is in the box.  She tells him not to look but he does.  He passes out in fear and is taken away.  As he passes out he drops the box and the snake gets away and wasn't found.  The story is about her apology letter to the librarian for what happened.  In the letter she states things like "My parents are making me write this and Dad is going to read it to see if acceptable."  She also supports her reasoning for bringing in the snake and the fact that she told him not to look in the box.   It's a funny story.  We are working on compound and complex sentences in grammar and we worked on beginning sounds in decoding.  Spelling post test and regular assessment of Friday.  Study spelling and vocabulary words tonight!

Social Studies -  We will be working on a study guide tomorrow in class.  If they don't get done it will be homework.  We will check the study guide on Monday and take a test on Tuesday.  Then we will begin to look at the Northeast region.  I will show the states in the region and I will also introduce the song we use to help them memorize the states and capitals.  Any practice you can do at home for locating the states will be great!  I know you can get apps called Stack the states and a United States puzzle map on iphones or ipods to help.  Stack the States makes them familiar with the shapes.  This is when social studies gets a lot more exciting!!

I hope everyone has a great weekend!  I finally have a weekend that I don't have a kid to follow somewhere for some activity! I am very excited.  We are going to work on the garage and making it so Jami and Josie can get their car in there for the winter!!  

I am praying the volleyball team wins their game tonight.  If they do, only one more game to decide if they will attend state!! We are very excited about this.  The last time Creston went to state in Volleyball was when I was junior in high school on the team, 27 years ago!!  My daughter being on the team and a junior also, is very exciting.  I think I want this as much as my daughter and their coach since we were in the same class.

If the volleyball team would make it, State is during the week of conferences.  I will need to make arrangements to change my conference times.  Please go ahead and sign up for conferences like normal.  I will contact each of you if things work out and I need to be gone. We will set up times before that week or in the following week.  I will be very flexible and work with each one of you.  This is just a heads up.  We will know for sure if we lose tonight or if we win the 3rd game next Tuesday.

God Bless,
Mrs. Sickels


Thursday, October 23, 2014

Dear Parents,
      Happy Thursday!!  Again I feel like I just wrote a letter.  Most of the time I feel the week is dragging along.  We are still working very hard in 4th grade.  You should see all results of things on Power School.  I put all tests and most of the student's homework on it.  Please keep in mind, homework is for the students to practice what they are learning and for me to see how they are doing and if more time is needed in that area.  If I feel the score is not where I think they should be I will have them make corrections.  If they do a good job on corrections then I will adjust their grade appropriately.  So you may see one score one day and the next it may be different after they have made changes.  I hope you are all on there following your students. This is how I keep up with my high-schoolers and how they are doing. It is very handy to see if they are getting their work done.  I don't receive late slips from high school teachers telling me my kids are falling behind.  Now is the time to get online and learn how to keep track of your student.  If you are unsure how to do it come see Sarah or give her a call.  She is a great resource to answer your questions.

Language Arts - This week we are reading a story called Me and Uncle Romie.  It is written about Romare Beardon a well-known collage artist. (if you follow the art world)  We have talked about what a collage artist creates and the story actually has a good example.  We have talked about verb tenses again this week focusing on present progressive verbs.  We also reviewed the 4 kinds of sentences we write.  Our target skill was characters and paying close attention to characters, what they are thinking, what they are doing and how they speak. This gives us a good idea of what kind of character they are. We also spent some time on the target strategy of visualizing.  I read a paragraph from our read aloud book to them (Wizard of Oz) and they were to draw a picture of the scene they were hearing.  According to a couple students it was a fun activitiy.  I  also compared it to books that have been made into motion pictures.  I told the kids to create that motion picture in their mind as they read.  Remember to study spelling words and vocabulary words for tomorrow.

Math -  We have completed half of chapter 2!  The students worked on their mid chapter checkpoint review yesterday.  We went over it today.  It shows me I need to spend about one more day on partial product.  Some students had corrections to work on today and those who didn't played a game.  I have a 30 sided die that they role to make multiplication problems and then they were to use the expanded form and partial product strategy to work them.  Tomorrow we will review the partial product strategy and have a worksheet to complete on it.  I just feel they need a little more practice before moving on.  This chapter is very important because in chapter 3 we do the exact same strategies but with double- digit numbers instead of single digit.  It will be harder, so we need to master the strategies now.  I love these strategies and totally enjoy teaching this chapter.  They are learning a lot!

Social Studies - We are finishing up lesson three so we will be looking at reviewing for a test towards the end of next week.  I am glad to be at the end because we will talk about each region separately and I enjoy doing that.  Especially those regions where I have not been but the kids have. I learn a lot and enjoy it. I will be getting packets ready to send home over the social studies projects that 4th graders will do this year.  If you have had me before you all ready know all about them.  I will discuss them at conferences so everyone is up to speed, in case this is your first year with me.

I hope all of you have a great weekend!  This is "Molly" weekend.  It is dancing at Ice Hockey game Saturday night then parents preview on Sunday. Also, volleyball with her on Saturday morning.  I am happy to be right here in town though.  Maybe I can get some much needed things done!!

God Bless, 
Mrs. Sickels 

Thursday, October 16, 2014

Dear Parents,
     Happy Thursday!!  Wow, time seams to fly in 4th grade.  I feel like I just wrote a parent letter!!  We are working very hard.  The weather seems to by turning cooler, which is to be expected.  This is the last month for the students to wear shorts. On November 1st, we are no longer able to wear shorts.  Please refer to the handbook and look back over the dress code.  I love the sunshine today. Conferences are coming.  I hope all of you are following your child's progress online.  I am entering test scores and homework assignments on there so you can keep up with how your child is doing.  If you are unable to get online please contact Sarah in the office and she will help you.

Math - I am very excited about Math this week.  I have begun teaching partial product which to me is the best way to do a multiplication problem because you walk through every step and you understand exactly what you are doing.  This made multiplication make better sense to me as an adult.  I learned this strategy about 8 years ago and have been teaching it ever since.  Please, take the time to learn the strategy from your child.  It incorporates the distributive property into it and uses expanded form which we learned in chapter 1.  I also like to to show them how what we learn carries over into other things.  It would be of great help if you worked on some basic facts at home with your child.  Do flashcards or find an online game or program that works on memorizing those basic facts.  Math would be easier for them if they were able to multiply basic facts quickly.

Social Studies -  We are moving through lesson 3 rather quickly.  Before long we will move into chapter 4 which begins our learning on each region of the United States.  We will focus on only those states within that regions.  We will learn about the people who once lived there, resources that are found there and what they have to offer the rest of the United States.  We will also begin focusing on the map of the United States and practice placing the states in their proper places.  We will do a region at a time.  My intent is that they master the region before we move on and add more states.  By the end of the year, they should be able to do all 50 states. This is also something that can be reinforced at home with a map, a game, or computer game.  We have sequence United States at our house.  It helps to familiarize them with the shape of the states.  These are all fun ways to learn.

Language Arts - This week we are reading a story called "Coming Distractions".  It is informational text on movie making.  I am not sure the students were very interested in this story.  I tried to do a lot of discussing to pull some interest out of them.  I related to movies that I know they watch.  We are working on verb tenses in grammar.  There are three verb tenses: past, present, and future.  They have bee doing some worksheets showing their understanding of these.  We worked on a reading strategy summarizing this week.  I found a great sheet called FAB 5 for summarizing.  It is an easy way to summarize a fictional story.  We completed an activity on summarizing where they had to use the FAB 5 to give me a summary of a very short story.  We found out not all aspects of the 5 are necessarily used in every story.  They wrote a few summaries for me.  We also discussed that this strategy would not lend itself to the information text stories full of facts.    Remember to study spelling words and vocabulary tonight for the assessment tomorrow.

Book Orders were placed today!! Thank you very much for the orders!!!

I hope all of you have a great weekend!  Mine is not as busy as last weekend but I do have a Molly playing volleyball on Saturday and Jami playing in Winterset on Saturday.  Wish I could be two places at once!!  Where is the Harry Potter time turner when you need it!!  Sorry, if you are not a Harry Potter fan you won't know what I am saying.  It does make it so someone can be two places at once.

God Bless, 
Mrs. Sickels

Thursday, October 9, 2014

Dear Parents,
     Happy Thursday!!!  Remember there is no school tomorrow!!  There will be around 450 teachers at the Creston High School for 21st Century Learning.  These are mini session on how technology is incorporated into the classrooms.  Most of the sessions are lead by teachers who are successful with technology in their rooms.  It is an interesting day and I usually learn something very helpful.  I also think being taught by peers that are having success helps.  The 2nd half of the day the St. Malachy teachers will be at St. Malachy for School of Faith which is faith formation for the teachers.  It is a time where we get to share about our faith backgrounds and learn and grow in faith together!  I enjoy this time with my co-workers.  All ready I have made some changes in my life dealing with faith.  I am looking forward to both activities tomorrow brings.

Book Orders - Here are 2 book orders for the month of October.  Please look them over and return to me by Thursday, Oct. 16th.  If I order by the 20th I get extra bonus points and free books for the classroom.  Fourth grade students should be moving into reading chapter books on a regular basis.  Picture books are okay for fun reading every now and then, but at this level they should be finding authors that they enjoy.  Mike Lupica is a great sports writer along with Matt Christopher.  I would recommend those for the sports readers.

Language Arts - We were back to normal this week.  We read a play this week. On October 30, 1938, Orson Welles and the Mercury Theater Company broadcast the radio play Invasion from Mars, adapted from the novel The War of the Worlds by H.G. Wells  Listeners who tuned in after the broadcast began were alarmed by what they heard.  They thought what was happening was real.  We read this story but I also let them listen to the exact broadcast.  I found it on Utube.  I typed in War of the Worlds radio broadcast.  It is an hour long but out story takes place at about the 10 minute mark.  It sounds very real.  We listened to the introduction than skipped ahead.  We discussed how important hearing that introduction was.  If you missed it, you would have thought it was really happening.  We started talking about verbs this week.  I threw a lot at them, linking verbs, action verbs and we discussed helping verb with a main verb.  It was a short week but I have been checking their assessments for the week and all are doing rather well.  Check the scores online next week.

Math -  We have spent some extra time on lesson 2.4 which is on estimating products.  I was not real pleased with how they did on their homework assignment so we made corrections today on them and I gave them another worksheet to hopefully show me they are better understanding it now.  I went over with them the problems they were struggling with.  I plan to move onto the next lesson on Monday.  It is the distributive property which is a great strategy for multiplying.  I have just learned this strategy two years ago and have been teaching it.  The students like it and some use it all the time to do their multiplication problems because they understand exactly what they are doing because they have a visual.  It is something you were not taught, it is just another strategy.  I love that we are giving kids more choices on how to work problems instead of just one firm way of doing things.  More kids will be successful because of all the different strategies to work problems.  This will take a couple of days for us to get down but I will take as much time as they need.  If your child is struggling be sure to have them come see me before school and we can work out any problems that may occur.

Social Studies - Students took chapter 2 test on Tuesday.  They made corrections today.  I will hand them back to be signed on Monday.  We will move into chapter 3 next week.  This is the last chapter that is about the whole United States.  Chapter 4 starts with the first region.  I will be getting their State Project packets together and be handing those out at conferences.  We will also sing a states and capitals song to help memorize them.  You can find it on Utube.  Just look up States and Capital song by Macho Nacho.  It has a nice tune to it and I have copied all the words down on paper for the students to sing along until they memorize the song.  Put it on their ipods at home and they will be able to memorize it much faster.

I hope all of you have a great weekend with an extra day thrown in there.  I am off to Overland Park, Kansas to watch Josie play in the Kansas State Softball Tournament for USSSA Softball.  It will be a cold one!!!

God Bless,
Mrs. Sickels

Thursday, October 2, 2014

Dear Parents,
      Happy Thursday!!  Well, the week started out nice and warm and ending on a very chilly note!!  I have been seeing lots of Farmer's Almanac predictions for winter and whether it will be good or bad.  Seems everything I see says LOTS of snow.  I guess time will tell.  I would rather have snow than freezing temps!!  
     Today we were in charge of Mass.  I think the 4th graders did an excellent job!!!! I normally always get them their parts on Monday, but some of them didn't get them til the day before and did a great job learning them.  I was very proud of them and I let them know that!!  

Math- We have been working in chapter 2 this week.  This chapter is focusing on multiplication.  It has started out with us understanding comparison multiplication.  These students will have a good understanding of this because we have spent 2 lessons on it.  I love the model or picture it shows us to draw because it shows an understanding of the problem.  It helps the students to work the problem.  Some of the problems require more work than the others.  This is a great strategy for them to learn and understand.  We are giving our students so much more opportunity to be successful by teaching them more than one strategy.  One strategy may click with a student more than the standard algorithm which is the only way we learned to work a problem.  I understand that a lot of the things your child is doing may be unfamiliar to you.  If you don't understand the strategy we are using and your child is struggling, tell them to come visit me in morning before school.  I want to help them so they are using the strategy we are working on.  I was okay at math in high school because I just did what they told me and never understood why we did it or how it even made sense.  So many things make more sense to me now, because I am being introduced to the nuts and bolts of math.  Math is so much more than the standard algorithm.

Social Studies - We are talking about rights and responsibilities.  The important part of being a citizen of the United States are the rights that the Constitution gives us, but it also includes our responsibilities as citizens.  We have been talking about the basic rights our Constitution protects. Mainly freedom of speech, freedom of press, and freedom of religion.  We also discussed things that we must do as citizens to help our country be successful.  We talked about passports and their importance.  If you have one share it with your child so they see what one looks like.  We also talked a little bit about taxes.  When taxes are paid and what the money is used for.  Most of them had no idea that's how police/firemen were paid and that's how our roads are fixed or maintained.

Language Arts - We have been focusing on testing this week.  We have been testing over Unit 1.  This test is long but I chunk it up so the students are not taking it all in one day.  I will be sending home the results of this test next week.  We doing the last section of the test today.  It is a constructed response section.  The rest of the test was multiple choice.  I also assigned their first book report this week.  It is due on October 31st.  They must read a book with more than 130 pages.  I also count off for pictures.  I am very strict about the students reading chapter books this year and not picture books.  I don't allow Diary of a Wimpy Kid, Bones, or Big Nate books to be read as book report books.  I also don't like them to read them during out DEAR (Drop Everything and Read) time.  There are a lot of chapter books out there to interest the students. We will also be beginning to write Halloween stories tomorrow.  It gives us most of the month to work on it and get is completed.  It is a fun writing project that most of my 4th graders have a lot of fun writing!  Next week we will get back into the book and begin Unit 2!

Homecoming!!  This week is Homecoming week!!  Tomorrow is RED and Black DAY!!  Please come dressed in your best outfit to support the Panthers!!  We will have a pep rally in the morning to get us all pumped up for the football game! St. Malachy will have float in the parade. Your child is welcome to ride on the float if they want.  They are to meet at Prairie and Sycamore to get on the float and students are to be picked up at the Holy Spirit Church parking lot after that parade!  They will get to throw candy to the crowd.

Have a safe and fun filled Homecoming!!!

God Bless, 
Mrs. Sickels