Dear Parents,
     Happy Thursday!!  What a nice week this has been.  Weather has been very nice for us to get outside!  Weekend doesn't look very good.  I am so bummed since it is Prom.  I will be glad when this is over.  What a stressful time.  Plus, I am times 2!!!  We have had a good week in the classroom also.  No absences this week, so Iowa Assessments are finished! The snacks the kids had were awesome!  They enjoyed them.  Yesterday we enjoyed some read aloud time outside in the courtyard.  I hope our final weeks are all this nice!

Language Arts -  This week was Iowa Assessment week.  We haven't done anything in this subject yet except those tests related to language arts.  There was a reading comprehension, written expression, vocabulary, spelling, capitalization, and punctuation test.  Tomorrow we will start our Charlie and the Chocolate Factory unit.  The students are really pumped about this, as am I.  I have never been able to do this as a full unit.  I usually worked with it once a week.  This time I get to do it every day!!  The students will have vocabulary words that need completed for each section, and journal entries they need to make for each chapter.  I will hand all that out tomorrow and explain.  I will also talk about the book and all it's covers, the author and his interesting life, and where his got his stories.  Just a reminder, the book is on sale for $1.99 on amazon for your kindle or if you have the kindle app.  This app is free and can be put on ipods as well as tablets.  I have had one student take advantage, which is good because I only have 14 books. I have ordered one on my kindle so I have my copy. We would leave their devices in their bags until we needed them.  There will be lots of fun activities that we will do with this book.  I plan to watch the "old" movie when we are finished with the book.  There will also be a book project due when we are done.  We have to read the book before any of those can be completed.  We will talk about those later.

Math - We have completed math on Iowa Assessments this week and checked our review.  I gave the kids a review sheet to help them work problems for review for the test.  The test will be tomorrow.  We will end our morning with that.  Next week we will begin chapter 5.  This chapter only has 5 lesson in it.  I hope to work through this on pretty quickly then get right to chapter 6 which is on fractions.  I know we need to get as much of this chapter done as we can for 5th grade.  Again, it is hard to believe we are nearing the end of their 4th grade year!

Social Studies - Projects are looking good.  Some have needed a little more information with them but otherwise they are looking good.  We have 3 more days of due dates and then I will assign them their last project.  I know we are not quite done with the Midwest but we will be.  I want to get them on their last project because then they will have their end of book project for Language Arts to work on.  The next lesson we read is set in Wapello County, Iowa.  It will tell the students about a "land rush".  People behind a starting line and when the gunshot or sound of a whip rang out they all rushed out to claim land.  Sounds dangerous to me!  They will find this very interesting just because it involves Iowa.  Next week we will finish up this region. 

I hope you all have a great weekend.  Help me to pray the weather holds off until the prom kids are in the gym!  Here are a couple more photos of our trip!  

God Bless,
Mrs. Sickels

The graves of John F. Kennedy and wife Jackie Kennedy Onassis.  JFK is on the left. The eternal flame is hooked to a gas line and never goes out rain or shine.  It works because as you can tell it was raining when picture was taken.

This is the "pile of shoes" from the Holocaust.  After the victims were killed in gas chamber they removed the shoes and through them in a pile.  This had a huge effect on all of us.  Shoes are dirty, dusty and have an old musty smell to them.  Really put things in perspective for some.

This is the Capital building.  The dome is under construction.  They are just doing some remodeling and fixing.