Thursday, March 29, 2018

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

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