Dear Parents,
Happy Thursday and welcome back!! I feel refreshed and ready to finish out the year strong!!! I hope the kids feel the same way. It was nice to see all their smiling faces back in the classroom. We have had a crazy schedule this week due to the cross walk, sedar meal, and rosary for the Sharp family. We are praying everyday for family and friends of the Sharp's. All instigated by the students. We are lucky to be at a school where prayer plays a role in our day. I ask that at home you keep them in your thoughts. In case some of you didn't know, Kadley, was a first cousin to Kevin. So keep the Bailey's in your thoughts and prayers.
Language Arts - This week we came back to one of my favorite stories in this book. It is called The World According to Humphrey. It is a chapter book and we read only a portion of it. It is a fantasy because the story is told by a Hamster, named Humphrey. It is a fun light-hearted story. I feel they enjoyed it and we will see some elevated test scores due to that. The few I have seen had increased for sure. We talked about comparative and superlative adjectives and adverbs this week for grammar. This was a review for them but the questions on the test were complex. We talked about context clues for our vocabulary strategy. I feel like I crammed everything into 4 days but we did it and I think successfully! Next week we will be working on writing an essay for Dollars for Scholars along with our next story.
Math - We worked on remainders with division this week. We spent a couple days learning about them. I started with manipulatives to help them actually see what it meant, then we moved on to solving problems without them. We were unable to fit math in today due to Sedar Meal and this being our "Friday" end of week testing in Langauge arts. The story was longer than normal. Next week we will move on with division. We will be dividing tens, hundreds and thousands to begin with. Them we will move into some strategies for division. I hope to get a couple things in next week that will help them with division problems on Iowa Assessments, which is the following week.
Social Studies - We have read the last lesson in Chapter 7. We will be taking a test next week. We will work on the study guide on Monday, check it on Tuesday, and Test Wednesday. This will finish up our unit on Southeast. We will then move onto the Midwest. They are excited about getting to the Midwest for sure.
Iowa Assessments - These assessments will take place the week of the 9th-13th. We will spend most of our days testing in the morning and then we will do different subjects in the afternoon to fit them all in.
Conferences - Thank you for coming in and seeing what your child is doing in 4th grade. I had 100% attendance. Also, thank you very much to all those who bought a book from the book fair for the classroom! I appreciate it. I like to keep my shelf as up to date as I can. Your donations help tremendously!
I hope all of you have a blessed Easter this weekend! I am looking forward to getting together with my family and most of all, having my college kids under my roof again!
God Bless,
Mrs. Sickels
Thursday, March 29, 2018
Thursday, March 8, 2018
Dear Parents,
Happy Thursday! Another week almost over! We are quickly approaching Spring Break. I hope everyone is looking forward to a nice relaxing week whether that be at home or on a short vacation. I am heading to Dallas, Texas to my cousin's house. I have done this for the last 4 years. She has a pool in back yard and a hot tub. These are my relaxing days! I look forward to my time with her. We are one year off in age, she is older. We both have teaching degrees and like similar things. I couldn't think of a better way to spend my break then with her. Not sure the weather will cooperate much while we are there but I don't care. She keeps us busy with craft projects inside. Looks to be upper 60's lower 70"s. I will take that! I hope everyone enjoys their time off!
Parent/Teacher Conferences - I only have 3 parents not signed up for conferences. I have asked your kids to remind you of signing up. I love meeting with each of you to discuss growth and areas where growth is still needed. Here is the link to my sign-up.
http://www.signupgenius.com/go/20f0544a5a72ca1fe3-4thgrade4
Book Fair - The book fair will be in the gym next week during conferences! Your child will get a chance to look at the fair during their library time. Maybe there will be a book there for book reports or something they will want to read over Spring Break. The teachers will also have wish lists for their classrooms.
Food Pantry- We have been gathering toilet paper, paper towels, and kleenex for the Food Pantry this week. We do not have very much down there. Thank you to those who have purchased items all ready. One box of Kleenex or one roll of paper towels would sure help. We will collect these items until the first week in April.
Language Arts - This week we are reading a story called Sacagawea. It is a very interesting story about her role in the Louis and Clark Corps of Discovery team. She really did quite a bit to help them along their journey. I think the kids found some interest in this story. In grammar this week we have focused on abbreviations. We covered abbreviations of People, places, mailing addresses, and measurement. These did include days of week, months, hour, minute, second, states, street, lane, avenue, inch, foot, yard, ect. They learned they mostly begin with a capitol letter and have a period at the end of the abbreviation. This was a rather easy grammar lesson week. I told them Unit 5 which we will start after Spring Break and the grammar is all review. We will be reviewing all the things we have all ready touched upon this year. Next week will be the Unit 4 test week. We will test over a 3 day period on the unit. I will also assign to them their next book report. We will go over my expectations on books and the project next week. That way if they are laying around on Spring Break they can work on their book report book. Some are very anxious for me to get this going. I like to see them excited about reading. Sad thing is some of them are excited but don't choose to pick up a book on their own and just read it. Hopefully that will change.
Math - We finished up perimeter and area and will begin Division tomorrow or Monday. This chapter is not an easy chapter for 4th graders. The best part is we are getting some in before the Iowa Assessments. Usually we don't have much division under our belts but this year we will for sure. That will be very helpful. Everyone took a pretest on this chapter and they found it frustrating because they didn't know a lot about what they were doing. Some of them were just downright mad because we don't give any help on a pretest. I am testing what they know and not knowing it is something I figure out on the pretest. This means I really need to watch for mastery and do my best to teach this chapter. Good Luck to us!
Social Studies - We are talking about a lot of historical things in the Southeast in this lesson. They learned about 3 settlements: St. Augustine, Roanoke Island, and Jamestown Virginia and they learned about 3 important people from the Southeast: Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, and Andrew Jackson We talked a little about Thomas Jefferson's famous home "Monticello". They have gone online and looked up videos about Monticello. Many have loved this and found them very interesting. They are coming to me and telling me stories of things from the videos that they are enjoying. Now that is learning at work!
This will be my last blog until after Spring Break. Next week since we are meeting for conferences I won't put one out. I may put some announcements out if there are things I need you to know. I hope you have a great week with your kids.
God Bless,
Mrs. Sickels
Happy Thursday! Another week almost over! We are quickly approaching Spring Break. I hope everyone is looking forward to a nice relaxing week whether that be at home or on a short vacation. I am heading to Dallas, Texas to my cousin's house. I have done this for the last 4 years. She has a pool in back yard and a hot tub. These are my relaxing days! I look forward to my time with her. We are one year off in age, she is older. We both have teaching degrees and like similar things. I couldn't think of a better way to spend my break then with her. Not sure the weather will cooperate much while we are there but I don't care. She keeps us busy with craft projects inside. Looks to be upper 60's lower 70"s. I will take that! I hope everyone enjoys their time off!
Parent/Teacher Conferences - I only have 3 parents not signed up for conferences. I have asked your kids to remind you of signing up. I love meeting with each of you to discuss growth and areas where growth is still needed. Here is the link to my sign-up.
http://www.signupgenius.com/go/20f0544a5a72ca1fe3-4thgrade4
Book Fair - The book fair will be in the gym next week during conferences! Your child will get a chance to look at the fair during their library time. Maybe there will be a book there for book reports or something they will want to read over Spring Break. The teachers will also have wish lists for their classrooms.
Food Pantry- We have been gathering toilet paper, paper towels, and kleenex for the Food Pantry this week. We do not have very much down there. Thank you to those who have purchased items all ready. One box of Kleenex or one roll of paper towels would sure help. We will collect these items until the first week in April.
Language Arts - This week we are reading a story called Sacagawea. It is a very interesting story about her role in the Louis and Clark Corps of Discovery team. She really did quite a bit to help them along their journey. I think the kids found some interest in this story. In grammar this week we have focused on abbreviations. We covered abbreviations of People, places, mailing addresses, and measurement. These did include days of week, months, hour, minute, second, states, street, lane, avenue, inch, foot, yard, ect. They learned they mostly begin with a capitol letter and have a period at the end of the abbreviation. This was a rather easy grammar lesson week. I told them Unit 5 which we will start after Spring Break and the grammar is all review. We will be reviewing all the things we have all ready touched upon this year. Next week will be the Unit 4 test week. We will test over a 3 day period on the unit. I will also assign to them their next book report. We will go over my expectations on books and the project next week. That way if they are laying around on Spring Break they can work on their book report book. Some are very anxious for me to get this going. I like to see them excited about reading. Sad thing is some of them are excited but don't choose to pick up a book on their own and just read it. Hopefully that will change.
Math - We finished up perimeter and area and will begin Division tomorrow or Monday. This chapter is not an easy chapter for 4th graders. The best part is we are getting some in before the Iowa Assessments. Usually we don't have much division under our belts but this year we will for sure. That will be very helpful. Everyone took a pretest on this chapter and they found it frustrating because they didn't know a lot about what they were doing. Some of them were just downright mad because we don't give any help on a pretest. I am testing what they know and not knowing it is something I figure out on the pretest. This means I really need to watch for mastery and do my best to teach this chapter. Good Luck to us!
Social Studies - We are talking about a lot of historical things in the Southeast in this lesson. They learned about 3 settlements: St. Augustine, Roanoke Island, and Jamestown Virginia and they learned about 3 important people from the Southeast: Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, and Andrew Jackson We talked a little about Thomas Jefferson's famous home "Monticello". They have gone online and looked up videos about Monticello. Many have loved this and found them very interesting. They are coming to me and telling me stories of things from the videos that they are enjoying. Now that is learning at work!
This will be my last blog until after Spring Break. Next week since we are meeting for conferences I won't put one out. I may put some announcements out if there are things I need you to know. I hope you have a great week with your kids.
God Bless,
Mrs. Sickels
Thursday, March 1, 2018
Dear Parents,
Happy Thursday!! It is very happy because we have had a full week of school! This of course makes me happy but not so much the kids! We have been busy this week. The kids have worked hard! I am super proud of the way they have come back and worked. We will continue to work hard through Spring Break! We only have like 11 days until then. I have not pointed that out to the kids. I am afraid they will go on break early.
Book It - The February Calendars are due by Monday, March 5th to receive a pizza certificate. We are ready for our last month of keeping track. March is the last one with a goal of 600 minutes!
Conferences - It is that time of year again and they are fast approaching! Here is the link to my sign up. Please be sure you get your name on a time you want. I have a couple times on Tuesday after school I am doing. I am gone Monday at a track meet in Ames for Molly and Wednesday I have my own high school conference, so Tuesday was my only extra day. So go check it out.
http://www.signupgenius.com/go/20f0544a5a72ca1fe3-4thgrade4
Language Arts - This week we are finishing up what we started last Monday. We are reading Harvesting Hope: The Story of Cesar Chavez. It tells us the story of how migrant workers living conditions and pay were pretty poor. Cesar Chavez decided he wanted change and marched from Delano, California to Sacramento. He started with 67 followers and not very popular but then at the end he had 10,000 followers and also created a Migrant Workers Union. He also got a contract for them to work for better pay and better conditions. The kids found this story interesting. I had one student who watched a show on TV about Cesar on Wednesday night. This topic also appeared in our read aloud book this week! Such great timing for it all! We are talking about some pretty heavy content in grammar. Independent and dependent clauses and focusing on the relative pronouns and adverbs they start with. This is some pretty complicated content and we only spend about 3 days on it. We did 2 of the 3 worksheets together and was able to discuss each one. The worksheets are harder than what the students will do on the assessment. I assured them they would do great! Our vocabulary strategy this week was on reference materials. The focus was no learning to look up a word in the dictionary and also understand all that a dictionary entry provides to the student. It tells what part of speech the word is, gives the definition(s) of the word, may tell synonyms or antonyms, how to pronounce the word and what part of the word is stressed! That is a lot of stuff. Yes, I made them use actual dictionaries and not a digital dictionary. From what I have seen the actual book has more information than what the internet provides. Tomorrow will be our normal Friday with a spelling post test and end of week assessment over the story.
Math - We have completed what I need to teach in Chapter 13. It consisted of 3 lessons. Learning Perimeter and Area and then area of combined rectangles. We have spent the last two days reviewing perimeter and area. Today we will do a review then I plan to have them test over this tomorrow. I will write the formulas for perimeter and area on the board so they can refer to it when doing their test. There will not be as many questions on the test since we didn't cover all the lessons. We also did not take a pretest over this material.
Social Studies - They are moving through lesson one in Chapter 7. They are learning about the Cherokee Native Americans right now. Today they learned about Sequoyah, the Native American that wrote an alphabet for their language. This made the Cherokee learn to read and write. They were the only Native American group to have their own alphabet. We will finish this lesson tomorrow and they will do the worksheet that covers the information. We will start the week next week with putting a state in their notebooks. We are moving through this quite well. I hope to finish up the Southeast before Spring Break so we can hit the Midwest as soon as we come back. We have 3 more regions to go. We are picking up the pace a little bit.
Auction - The auction is this Saturday night!! We ended up getting more donations this week! Thank you so much. The 3-5 Garden Basket is looking fabulous! Lots of great items in it! Also our silent auction item turned out great. I love it. Lots of silent auction items this year were pictures of students, their hands, crosses, ect. They are a lot of fun!
Dress Code - Yes, it is March and the dress code now allows shorts. Please please keep in mind just because they can doesn't mean they should. We still go outside so wearing shorts in 40 degree weather is not a good idea. They will be awful cold outside. I tell my students this exact thing. If it is going to be 60 great but it is just not necessary to do when it's 40 just because you can. Save that for home on the weekends.
I will not be attending the auction this year. I have only missed like 3 in my 20 years. All had to do with my kids. This weekend in Mom's weekend for Jami's sorority and Mom's Day for Josie's. I will spend the weekend at Jami's but go to Josie's for like 2 hours on Saturday. Best part is Josie does get to participate in Jami's house activities. I think Saturday we are going to the Blank Park Zoo. We have lunch catered by Hickory Park (my fav) and Saturday night the Cyclone Theater is showing "The Greatest Showman" which I have seen twice but love and can't wait to see it again!
God Bless,
Mrs. Sickels
Happy Thursday!! It is very happy because we have had a full week of school! This of course makes me happy but not so much the kids! We have been busy this week. The kids have worked hard! I am super proud of the way they have come back and worked. We will continue to work hard through Spring Break! We only have like 11 days until then. I have not pointed that out to the kids. I am afraid they will go on break early.
Book It - The February Calendars are due by Monday, March 5th to receive a pizza certificate. We are ready for our last month of keeping track. March is the last one with a goal of 600 minutes!
Conferences - It is that time of year again and they are fast approaching! Here is the link to my sign up. Please be sure you get your name on a time you want. I have a couple times on Tuesday after school I am doing. I am gone Monday at a track meet in Ames for Molly and Wednesday I have my own high school conference, so Tuesday was my only extra day. So go check it out.
http://www.signupgenius.com/go/20f0544a5a72ca1fe3-4thgrade4
Language Arts - This week we are finishing up what we started last Monday. We are reading Harvesting Hope: The Story of Cesar Chavez. It tells us the story of how migrant workers living conditions and pay were pretty poor. Cesar Chavez decided he wanted change and marched from Delano, California to Sacramento. He started with 67 followers and not very popular but then at the end he had 10,000 followers and also created a Migrant Workers Union. He also got a contract for them to work for better pay and better conditions. The kids found this story interesting. I had one student who watched a show on TV about Cesar on Wednesday night. This topic also appeared in our read aloud book this week! Such great timing for it all! We are talking about some pretty heavy content in grammar. Independent and dependent clauses and focusing on the relative pronouns and adverbs they start with. This is some pretty complicated content and we only spend about 3 days on it. We did 2 of the 3 worksheets together and was able to discuss each one. The worksheets are harder than what the students will do on the assessment. I assured them they would do great! Our vocabulary strategy this week was on reference materials. The focus was no learning to look up a word in the dictionary and also understand all that a dictionary entry provides to the student. It tells what part of speech the word is, gives the definition(s) of the word, may tell synonyms or antonyms, how to pronounce the word and what part of the word is stressed! That is a lot of stuff. Yes, I made them use actual dictionaries and not a digital dictionary. From what I have seen the actual book has more information than what the internet provides. Tomorrow will be our normal Friday with a spelling post test and end of week assessment over the story.
Math - We have completed what I need to teach in Chapter 13. It consisted of 3 lessons. Learning Perimeter and Area and then area of combined rectangles. We have spent the last two days reviewing perimeter and area. Today we will do a review then I plan to have them test over this tomorrow. I will write the formulas for perimeter and area on the board so they can refer to it when doing their test. There will not be as many questions on the test since we didn't cover all the lessons. We also did not take a pretest over this material.
Social Studies - They are moving through lesson one in Chapter 7. They are learning about the Cherokee Native Americans right now. Today they learned about Sequoyah, the Native American that wrote an alphabet for their language. This made the Cherokee learn to read and write. They were the only Native American group to have their own alphabet. We will finish this lesson tomorrow and they will do the worksheet that covers the information. We will start the week next week with putting a state in their notebooks. We are moving through this quite well. I hope to finish up the Southeast before Spring Break so we can hit the Midwest as soon as we come back. We have 3 more regions to go. We are picking up the pace a little bit.
Auction - The auction is this Saturday night!! We ended up getting more donations this week! Thank you so much. The 3-5 Garden Basket is looking fabulous! Lots of great items in it! Also our silent auction item turned out great. I love it. Lots of silent auction items this year were pictures of students, their hands, crosses, ect. They are a lot of fun!
Dress Code - Yes, it is March and the dress code now allows shorts. Please please keep in mind just because they can doesn't mean they should. We still go outside so wearing shorts in 40 degree weather is not a good idea. They will be awful cold outside. I tell my students this exact thing. If it is going to be 60 great but it is just not necessary to do when it's 40 just because you can. Save that for home on the weekends.
I will not be attending the auction this year. I have only missed like 3 in my 20 years. All had to do with my kids. This weekend in Mom's weekend for Jami's sorority and Mom's Day for Josie's. I will spend the weekend at Jami's but go to Josie's for like 2 hours on Saturday. Best part is Josie does get to participate in Jami's house activities. I think Saturday we are going to the Blank Park Zoo. We have lunch catered by Hickory Park (my fav) and Saturday night the Cyclone Theater is showing "The Greatest Showman" which I have seen twice but love and can't wait to see it again!
I hope everyone has a great weekend!
God Bless,
Mrs. Sickels
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)