Thursday, May 4, 2017

Dear Parents,
     Happy Thursday!! I hope all of you are having a great day!  WOW!  May is here.  The kids are gearing up for summer to be here and it shows.  I keep stressing we still have about 3-4 weeks left to work really hard and get ready for 5th grade.  Please be sure to stay on top of them about homework and projects
   Language Arts-  This week we are reading a story called The Fun They Had.  It is a science fiction story about school in the year 2157 compared to school now.  No books in the future. It is all digital.  The book words run across your screen at the bottom like the news channels have at bottom of screen.  They are discussing books and how funny it is that they are printed on paper and the words do not move.  We have talked about capitalizing titles in movies, books, and newspaper articles.  We worked on appropriate punctuation at the end of sentences and the 4 main kinds of sentences. I introduced Greek word parts therm and meter.  Also Latin word parts aud and fac.  Tomorrow is the end of the week and this is the last week of stories we are doing this year.  We will be working on some writing activities until the end of the year and also a fun book. Make sure the kids study their vocabulary and spelling words for tomorrow!

Book Report -  The kids have a book report due on Monday.  Please be sure to help them finish up their books and get the project done.  I have allowed some DEAR time here at school when I can that forces them to read here.  Some of the students have worked on their summaries, vocab words, and top of the box here at school and I have printed it for them.  Some have had me help with figuring our vocab words and finding pictures that might match their characters.  I am willing to help in any way I can.  Some are still struggling to get the book read.  Please check on your student's progress.  

Math -  I think we are finally at the point of moving forward in our chapter.  Division has been a struggle for this group.  The funny thing is, they caught on to the other strategies and have hard a very hard time catching on to the process of the standard algorithm.  Well, today we will finish up the last lesson in the chapter and it looks like Monday we will work on the chapter review, the test about Wednesday.  There should be some major improvements from the pretest for sure.  A lot of kids didn't have a clue what to do.  Seeing the learning will be great!  We will then move on into a chapter on Fractions.  We may not get to take another test by the end of the year but we will work hard on learning what we can about fractions before they leave me.  Hard to believe we are at the end!

Social Studies -  We had a great discussion on Wednesday.  We read a lesson about how the Civil War effected the Southeast.  First we skimmed the surface on what the Civil War was fighting about, the we talked about the destruction to the South that happened. We also read a little bit about the reconstruction period.  When it was and what happened during that time.  then We ended talking about the Civil Rights Movement and Martin Luther King, Jr. and Rosa Parks.  The kids asked GREAT questions and were very inquisitive about that time in history.  We talked a lot about he confederate states and the flag.  We talked about the flag being a symbol of history and a specific time in the United States, but I did talk about how that flag can be offensive to some people.  Students were very in tune to this.  I was really impressed with the discussion we had.  We even spent extra time on Social Studies today because the participation and questioning was so wonderful.  Tomorrow I plan to introduce the Midwest States.

Lap-a-thon -  This event was held this morning!  Everyone did a great job running!  I was very impressed with how hard they worked!  Pat on the back to all my great 4th graders!

I hope all of you have a wonderful weekend!  My daughter at Iowa State comes home today.  Summer has started for her.  So weird thinking that her first year of college is done.  It will be nice to have everyone in the same house again for a while!

God Bless,
Mrs. Sickels

No comments:

Post a Comment