Dear Parents,
     Happy Thursday!!!  Remember I am gone today and tomorrow.  I am attending NCYC (National Catholic Youth Conference) in Indianapolis, Indiana.  I left on a bus at 5:30 this morning.  I am going with 10 Creston youths and another chaperone.  We will spend tonight at a concert by TobyMac who is a christian Hip Hop singer.  We will then spend Friday and Saturday with some keynote speakers, at mass, in small group sessions of the student's choice, and in fellowship with other students from around our Diocese.  One night we will have a pizza dinner with Bishop Pates.  I look forward to attending some of the sessions and hope I learn some things that I can apply to my classroom and youth group on Wednesday nights.  Some of the sessions sound very interesting and very in tune to what goes on in today's world.  Mainly with the phones!  I know one was about taking selfies.  Pray for all of us while we are away.  I know I will be praying for all my students while I am gone.  I absolutely hate being away from the classroom.  I know me being gone really throws a wrench into their routine and I hate to do that to the students too.  This class has come such a long way from 3rd grade!  They have matured and are learning to be very good students.  I will honestly miss them all while I am away.  I gave them half hugs today before they left for the day.

Geography Bee-  The 4th graders get the opportunity to participate this year in our annual Geography Bee.  What happens is the 4th-8th grade students are split up between 3 rooms and put through 7 rounds of geography questions.  The top 10 scorers of the preliminary rounds will move on to the  Finals.  The Finals will be held on a Wednesday after Mass in December.  The official date will come later.  I have had 4th graders make it to the finals in the past.  It is the luck of the questions.  This is not something the kids can opt out of.  They will all participate.  This will happen Tuesday morning of next week.  I will run the 4th graders through a  practice couple of rounds in our own room Monday, so they know exactly what to expect.  

Language Arts-   We took a Unit 2 Test this week.  We completed it on Wednesday.  Your child knows how they did.  Sounds like some are very proud of their score.  I will try and look at those while I am gone but will definitely dig into them on Monday.  Since I will be gone for two days we are starting the next story Thursday and will cover it until Tuesday.  They will have a spelling pretest today and the post test will be on Tuesday.  Due to the nature of the week, meaning the story is split by a weekend and Tuesday we really don't have enough time, we will not be taking an end of the week test over this story.  This story is a nonfiction or informational text on Hurricanes.   The students will be interested in some of the content but not a lot and I feel like the cover a lot in a short amount of pages, which makes it difficult to understand it completely.  It will try to teach them how a hurricane is formed and what it needs to increase in intensity and what causes it to decrease.  The terminology is very high tech.   We will just enjoy this one as best we can!

Math -  We are halfway through chapter 2!!  Today they will take the Mid-Chapter Checkpoint which is a review over what we have learned so far.  They will work on it today in class then check it on Friday.  My intent is to see how they did and if not too well, I will do some reviewing of the material before Thanksgiving Break so we start the second half of the chapter when we return.  If they do well, then by all means, we will move on.  My goal is to definitely have chapter 2 complete before Christmas and be into Chapter 3 before we go on Christmas Break.  Let's hope it all works out like that!  Friday I plan to have them do some flash card work with multiplication.  This helps them to memorize their facts so when we are learning these strategies and processes they are not stressing about basic facts.  Playing with these basic facts at home would also be a plus for them.

Social Studies -  We are working on putting the Northeast Region in our interactive notebooks.  The students are finally getting the hang of how to do it.  I am finding small errors like not capitalizing a city name or the 2 letter postal abbreviation, or sometimes they put periods in the postal abbreviation.  I make them fix those errors.  We have talked about when to use capital letters and when not to.  They know the difference they are just being forgetful or lazy.  We will be starting Chapter 5 this week.  They will begin to do vocabulary and learning about the Narragansett Native Americans that were in the Northeast Region. They lived in present day Rhode Island.  They will learn how they used cooperation to survive.  They will learn what they lived in and what food they ate.  I plan on giving them the lyrics to the States and Capitals song when we return from Thanksgiving Break.  We will also begin practicing for our first map test.  It will only cover the Northeast Region.  Monday will be a practice run through of the geography bee and  Tuesday will be the real thing.  

Monday Nov. 20th Lunch -  This day is a special day and will most likely be our last lunch to celebrate the lives of Nate and T.J. Frey.  The boys untimely passing happened on November 30th and we are going to have a pizza lunch on the 20th to remember the boys and eat one of their favorite meals.  TJ would have graduated from 8th grade last year and Nate would be an 8th grader this year.  So hard to believe!  We are glad to help Corey and his family celebrate  their lives.  So hear is a pizza toast to Nathan and TJ Frey!  Love you boys!

Reminder that we have school Monday and Tuesday of next week but the kids are off on Wednesday!  I hope everyone enjoys their break.  My girls and I travel to Chicago every year for Thanksgiving.  It is our favorite time of the year.  We do our black Friday shopping in Chicago and believe it or not, it is not half as crowded as it is in Iowa!  The girls also get to do some sort of craft while at their aunt's house.  We are always excited for what the craft will be.  One year they made stand up mirrors for their dorm rooms.  Who knows what this year will bring.  I know I heard "sewing" mentioned.  If you are traveling, I hope all of you have a safe trip!

God Bless,
Mrs. Sickels