Dear Parents,
     Happy Thursday!!  I hope everyone had a very enjoyable Spring Break!  I know my family sure did.  We went to Dallas, Texas to stay with my cousin and her family.  We had a great time.  The weather was 80-90 each day.  We enjoyed relaxing by the pool and reading books, shopping, playing with virtual reality, and eating different places Iowa does not offer.  We went to a fondue restaurant which was quite an experience.  
      The students all seemed to come back tan and relaxed from their break.  The first few days were great!! They were glad to be hear and were quiet and paid attention.  They are still doing a great job, just a little more chatty than the first two days.  We have put in some good work time this week and will continue until the end of the year.  We have a lot to accomplish before 5th grade!

Language Arts -  This week we read a story called I Could Do That!  This is a biography about Esther Morris.  She was a women who believed women should have the right to vote.  She was the person who made it happen in the state of Wyoming.  Wyoming was the first state to give women the right to vote.  This happened about 51 years before women were granted the right to vote by the U. S. Government.  We even looked her up on the computer and learned more information about her.  We have talked about contractions and negative words this week in grammar.  We learned to not use two negative words in the same sentence.  We talked about ways to change sentences with 2 negatives to make it correct.  We also read a small story on the constitution.  I reminded us that the government was made up of 2 branches and that citizens have rights and responsibilities.  I love this story and I may have triggered an idea for some of the girls in the room, who seemed interested in Esther.  Next year they will need to read a biography book and do a report.  This is a person they may want to find a book about.

Math -  This week we completed our mid-chapter review.  We also started the job readiness section for BizTown and will soon be applying for jobs. Today we will begin the next lesson in the chapter which is on using repeated subtraction and multiples to find quotients.  We will probably spend a couple days on this lesson.  The last half of this chapter will get a little heavy and I want to be sure they are understanding the content before I move forward.  Please remember, if you are struggling with helping your student at home, I am available in the mornings before school to help them. This will also keep them from getting any late slips because they didn't understand what they were doing.

Social Studies- We are in the 2nd lesson of chapter 6 on the Southeast states.  We talked about the climate of Florida, we talked about the Florida Keys, and we talked about Hurricanes a little bit.  The students have their assignment dates for their projects.  They have about 4-6 weeks to work on them.  Some students have brought in their poste rboard for me to trace their state on. That is only if they are doing a poster or a person.  We will be doing BizTown activities on Fridays during Social studies.  With our days off in April this field trip  will come upon us pretty quickly.

BizTown -  We have been working on BizTown, we are working on the Job Readiness section.  We talked about interests the students have and skills they need to have.  I talked a lot about me and how I came to be a teacher. I talked about all my interests and the skills I need to do my job.  We talked about jobs being "people jobs',  "ideas jobs", "things jobs", and "data jobs.  People jobs are jobs that have you working with people, idea jobs involve coming up with new ideas or thinking about solutions to complex problems,  thing jobs  are poeple who like to work with things such as machines or tools. They enjoy making, fixing or building things, and working outdoors.  The data job involves working with numbers and information.  People who like solving math problems and working on gathering information are good at these jobs.  The students will be introduced to the jobs available at BizTown.  They will choose their top 3 choices of jobs when filling out the application.  Students will then be put through an interview process.  There will be a panel of people making the decision on who gets what jobs.  The kids are very excited for this process.

April 3rd -  Just a reminder that there is NO school on Monday, April 3rd.  It is an inservice day for the teachers.

As most of you have probably all ready heard, I lost my last grandparent on Monday evening.  Grandma was 94 and lived a good full long life.  she has been without my grandpa for over 30 years. It was time for our to join him.  I had family away so funeral arrangements will be made today.  I will most likely be attending a funeral Monday instead of professional development.  Worse case scenario is I would be gone Tuesday for the funeral instead.  I will know for sure tonight.

God Bless,
Mrs. Sickels