Dear Parents,
     Happy Thursday!!  I hope all of you enjoyed your break!! I definitely did.  D.C. and New York were very interesting.  I highly recommend this trip to all of you when your child is a Junior or Senior.  I will share just a few pictures now and then each week maybe a few more.  I took 529 photos total.  I have shared them with the 4th grade.  They seemed very interested and asked a lot of questions.  

Language Arts - We are reading a story called The Ever-Living Tree this week.  This is an informational story about the Sequoia trees in California.  The story wants to put into perspective just how old these trees really are.  They connect it by talking about events in history and what the tree was doing during those events.  A time line appears at the top of the page to show it's life span also.  Not a story the students are really interested in reading about.  We will work on some punctuation in grammar.  Sentence ending punctuation and quotation marks.  The strategy we are working on this week is text/graphic sources.  That is any pictures, graphs, charts, maps, or italicized words in the story.  We are looking at them and deciding what is their purpose.  Why are they important to the story and how do they aid in our understanding of the story.  We worked on this skill in the small groups and also with the main story. I hope this leads the students to pay attention to these things in other books or stories that they read.

Math - This week in Math we are starting to talk about division strategies.  We are starting with strategies that will lead us up to the standard algorithm that you were taught.  These beginning strategies help students to better understand why the algorithm works.  Growing up I never understood why things worked or how they worked but I knew how to just follow the process that was given to me.  These earlier strategies help give the students reasons why we can do what we do.  They are not just following a process, they have reasoning behind it.  This will make them better students and understand math a whole lot better.  Maybe we don't see the benefits now, but I can guarantee you that in the future when taking algebra, geometry, calculus and other courses.  It will be very beneficial.  Our children are learning so much more at a younger age, they are more advanced then us.  We are taking it easy as to not to frustrate anyone.  These lessons are simple and each one builds upon the one before.  We will be masters at division by the time we are done.  It excites me to see the understanding is coming quicker than I anticipated too.  They are doing GREAT!!

Social Studies-  We started this week by choosing our projects for the Midwest Region.  Your child should have their due date page with project and state written on it.  It will be due in about 3 weeks.  I will immediately assign the next region so we get all 4 projects in by the end of year. This week we have learned about waterways in the Midwest focusing on the Great Lakes Region.  They also learned what a lock is and how it works.  We are now beginning to discuss the Badlands.  I highly recommend a family trip to the Black Hills in South Dakota if you are wondering what to do for a vacation.  It has a lot of great things to see.  As you get to the Wall, South Dakota area you can take a drive through the Badlands.  It is very interesting.  I went as a 3rd or 4th grader and still remember our visit there. 

I hope everyone has a very enjoyable weekend!!!  Enjoy the temperature on Sunday!!

God Bless,
Mrs.Sickels

Statue of Liberty

Lincoln Memorial

Dear Parents,
     Happy Thursday!!  Spring Break is quickly approaching!!  Everyone is getting all excited about plans they may have for their time away from school.  I kept thinking a storm was brewing somewhere due to how the children's behavior has been lately.  They are harder to settle down after a transition, like from P.E., Music, or Library.  They are doing a lot of talking also.  I do believe it is more to do with Spring Break being near than a storm.  The 2 hour delay and 3 hour early out has seemed to calm them down a little.  I will be going with Jami and Josie on a school trip to Washington D.C. and New York over Spring Break.  I am very excited as I have never been to either place.  I get to see a lot of great things that I talk about during Social Studies!! I am very excited.  I intend to put my pictures on my laptop so I can share with the kids on my whiteboard.  I think I am most excited about Ellis Island because I talk about that in couple grades.  Oh, well, 911 Ground Zero will be awesome too!!  I can't wait.  I will share some pictures on my blog when I can!!

Conferences - Please remember that conferences are next week.  Check out the schedule on the website.  If the time you are signed up for isn't going to work please call the office and make arrangements.   I want to have all conferences done by Spring Break. 

Language Arts -  This week we read a story called The World According to Humphrey.  It is a fun story told from Humphrey's ( a hamster) point of view.  This story had a theme.  It taught us a lesson.  The lesson we were to learn is about how there are other things to do besides watch T.V.  This story is considered Fantasy.  We talked about other stories that we have read a loud that are also fantasy.  We about Comparative and superlative adjectives this week.  If you don't know what these words mean ask your student because they do.  We also discussed advertisements and how they use different tricks to get us to  be interested in their product, service, or idea.  We will have a normal Friday tomorrow with Spelling tests and end of week assessment.  Next week seems short but we will get through the 2nd story in this unit.  Please look for the Unit 4 test results in your folder today.  I don't need these back they are copies.  I kept the originals.

Math- We are working on Chapter 4  which is division.  We have learned two different ways to estimate quotients so far.  Each lesson has built on the other.  Today we just played with base ten blocks and division.  We will be talking about using the distributive property with division but today I let them investigate some problems on their own.  I gave no instruction just walked around observed and asked questions.  Tomorrow I will make the connections of what their investigating today means to the distributive property.  We will be getting to a mid chapter checkpoint before break.  I plan on stopping at this point and start the 2nd half after Spring Break.

Social Studies - As always I am loving the projects that are coming in.  We are a little backed up right now on sharing because of illnesses this week.  The projects are all still due on the day they are assigned but they may not share it on that day.  I think we are doing to have to carry over into next week for sharing.  Of course, if it is cake or food they will take priority that day.  We just finished the last chapter in the Southeast region.  We will be doing the review tomorrow and checking it on Monday.  They will take the test on Tuesday.  We will begin the Midwest and assign next projects as soon as we return from break.

I would like to thank all of you for your donations for the Auction items the 4th grade put together.  The scrapbook went for $200 and the "Heart of Iowa" basket went for  $200.  For having such a small class I am pleased with the amount of money we made for the foundation.  Also, thank you to all who attended the event.  It really is a good time.  It is so humbling to see all the people come out to support our school.  It shows how important our school really is to those who attend now and those who have attended in the past.  Thanks again for your support!!

God Bless,
Mrs. Sickels