Dear Parents,
     Happy Thursday!!  Best day about Thursday is tomorrow is Friday!!!  Best part about tomorrow is, it is Spirit Day!!!  The kids can pay $1.00 and wear sweat pants for the day.  Teachers get to pay and wear jeans!  The money raised goes into our Pay it Forward Fund.  The teachers do different things with this money to help those in need.  We may give to a family who is going through a difficult time, or  a school who has lost a student or co-worker.  Last year we collected a lot of money and unfortunately we sent out a lot of goodie baskets.  Our baskets went as far as Waukee and Boone.  We let the kids know what we do and where the money goes.  It is a really good thing.  We know this is a great feeling when other schools are thinking of you.  We experienced this ourselves and received a basket from another school.  This is when it all began for us.  If your child doesn't want to wear sweats a donation is greatly appreciated!

Language Arts -  We have spent this week testing.  It is our first Unit test.  This is a very large test which I spread out over 3 days.  We are finished with it.  Today we will enter our results online.  I have found the tests online where it can generate reports for me.  It will show me who is struggling and in what areas they are struggling.  We are also going to start a Halloween writing project this week!  They will be writing a Halloween story based on a story line of a children's story or fairy tale.  Examples would be The Three Little Pigs, Goldilocks and the Three Bears, Jack and the Beanstalk, Cinderella, Three Billy Goat's Gruff, Gingerbread Man, and  Little Red Riding Hood.  They have also been assigned their first book report.  The book needed to more than 100 pages and a chapter book. I don't allow Dairy of Wimpy Kid, Dork Diaries, or any book that is mainly pictures.  At the 4th grade level they need to be challenging themselves with more Chapter Books.  I  asked that they stay away from Magic Tree House and Animal Ark books also.  I want them to branch out and discover new books.  Next week we are back to the book, reading stories and learning strategies and skills!!

Math - We finished chapter 1, we took pretest for chapter 2 and today we will get started with chapter 2.  This is a long drawn out chapter.  I talked to the students yesterday about what they can do to help get us through this chapter smoothly.  Their suggestions were to pay attention, participate, listen and focus.  These are great ideas. I told them I would hold them to that.  This chapter is over multiplication.  We will learn several strategies to solve a multiplication problem.  All the of them are really good!!  They really explain what multiplication is doing and how it works.  It takes some time to get used to and I know parents will struggle trying to help at home.  It will all be fine and we will get through it.  I am taking the lessons and teaching them my own way instead of how the book says to teach it.  Yes, we will be doing the same thing you just may not see them filling out their books fully.  Yesterday we ripped out all of chapter one from their books.  That will be coming home in their folders tonight.  You can see we use some of the pages but not all of the pages.  That will be the same with this next chapter.  You are welcome to use the pages in the book for practice at home, ONLY if we have passed that lesson and I didn't use them.  I will definitely use the On Your Own section.  

Social Studies -  We are working on chapter 2.  We have discussed 2 theories of how Native Americans came to North America.  We talked about explorers who explored the area and why.  Now we are talking about our Government.  We are learning about the 3 branches and their purpose and Who makes up each branch like President, Congress and Supreme Court. We only skim the surface of government.  There is a lot of information in this one lesson.  We discuss being a republic, democracy,  and representative democracy.  We also talk about Congress being made up of the Senate and House of Representatives.  I also shared with them how many members are in each, or at least how the figure it.  This is a very informative chapter. We will begin working on a map skill next week.  We will cover a Time Zone Map.  I like this lesson because some kids don't realize we have time zones and why.  This tells them why and shows about where they boundaries are.  They will color a map in and answer time zone questions using the map.

I hope all of you have a great weekend!! I know I will, I have family back from Texas!  I am excited to see them and get to spend some time with them.  Now, let's pray the weather cooperates.

God Bless,
Mrs. Sickels