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