Dear Parents,
     Happy Thursday!! This has sure been a short week for me!  Monday was a day of professional development for the teachers.  They spent the morning doing volunteer work at the Food Pantry. They cleaned all shelving and mopped floors!  In the afternoon they were working on teacher things as a group!  I missed this day due to my Grandma's funeral.  It was 10:30 in the morning.  The afternoon was spent with family. Wednesday I was at a technology conference in Des Moines.  I attended 4 different sessions.  I walked away with some great things to begin to look at for the classroom.  Some can happen right now, others need to be further investigated before we try to implement them.  So I will have taught 3 days this week which makes it feel really short!  I will say I was told by the students they had a good day Wednesday but they miss me when I am not here.  That made me smile and feel pretty special.  Thanks again for sharing your wonderful children with me!

Language Arts - This week we read a story called The Ever-Living Tree.  It is informational text on the California Redwoods.  It is a story that shows us the longevity of the trees.  They connect the life of the tree to events taking place all over the world.  Here are examples from the book of all the things that took place while this one Redwood was growing: Alexander the Great, Great Wall of China being built, Augustus Ceasar, Kingdoms in Africa, Marco Polo, Christopher Columbus, Mayflower and the Pilgrims, Revolutionary War, building of railroad, and men walking on the moon.  That covers hundreds of years!!  This is an interesting story but I am not sure the kids are as interested in it as I am.  In Grammar we were reviewing ending punctuation and capitalization.  We also talked about prefixes; pre-. inter-, and ex.  Tomorrow is our end of the week test.  Be sure your student is studying their spelling words and vocabulary words that are found in their notebooks this week.

Math-  We have learned and expanded on repeated subtraction and partial quotient.  Next week we will finish the division chapter by learning the regrouping strategy which is the standard algorithm that you and I  learned in school.  That is the last strategy to learn in this chapter.  Most students have all ready seen this strategy when working on ST Math.  This has been a great help when teaching it to the kids because they begin to really see what they have been doing in ST Math.  It also makes it to where my part in the teaching doesn't take quite as long with them because they are familiar with it all ready.

Social Studies -  We will be finishing up chapter 6 next week and testing next Thursday.  This is our first chapter over the Southeast states.  I will give them maps tomorrow to start practicing the Southeast Region.  They will need to label the map with these states.  Tomorrow morning during Social Studies we will be do an activity where the students run through a quick practice interview with partners.  This will get them ready for their job interviews tomorrow afternoon.


Biz Town -  We have filled out job applications and picked 3 jobs they want to apply for. The job interviews will take place Friday afternoon.  We have asked a couple of parents from 4th and 5th grade to help us out. We asked parents who weren't attending Biz Town. We are also going to have the the 4th grade parents interview the 5th graders, and the 4th graders will be interviewed by the 5th grade parents. We are just trying to make it more realistic for the kids. There is a good chance they won't know their future employer so we wanted to keep it as close to real as possible. Ms. Surma and I will make final job decisions and let the kids know some time next week.


Dollars for Scholars Essay - Your children have written an essay called "What Education Means to Me".  This essay is for a contest put on by the Dollars for Scholars group.  The students put their students ID numbers on the essays and I have passed them around to three teachers in this building. Those teachers were to read the essays and choose their top 3 choices to be sent on to the main competition.  They have no idea who wrote what paper since we used student ID numbers.  The top three essays will be sent on to the committee to be judged and a top essay chosen.  The person who wins receives a $50 savings bond.  One person in this room will win!  The top three essays chosen by teachers are...Josephine Bolinger, Taylor Smith, and Sasha Wurster.  Congratulations Girls!!!  We will find out the winner in the middle of May.  

I hope everyone has a great weekend!! Get out and enjoy the sun!  Seems like we have forgotten what that was like!!

God Bless,
Mrs. Sickels