Dear Parents,
     Happy Thursday!  I hope you are all having a great perfect Fall week.  I love this cool weather.  It is perfect Fall weather.  I am hoping we have a Fall this year.  Seems we go from Summer to Winter and skip it completely.  Try to pay attention to the weather and send your child with appropriate clothing.  I am referring to jackets or sweatshirts.  Our room is hard to get at a certain temperature. Sometimes we are chilly and sometimes it seems warm.  I try to keep in comfortable but everyone has their own temperature gauge.  Sometimes at noon recess it is not heated up enough and some need a light jacket to wear.  I keep a fleece at school for this reason.  Thank you!

Language Arts - This week we read a story called Stormalong.  It is a Tall Tale about a sailor.  It is a story that has been passed down for many years about people living a seafaring life.  This is not a tale we commonly hear because of where we live.  The story is fun to hear the first time but not so much on the 2nd and 3rd.  I think the students become a little bored with it.  In grammar we are talking about capitalization.  We have worked on capitalizing historical events and documents, titles of stories or books, languages, Nationalities, and people's names.  This is an easy yet important week of grammar.  A lot of the students don't even remember to capitalize the first letter in a sentence so learning all these other rules is hard to remember.  Our vocabulary strategy this week was on reference sources.  We were reviewing using a dictionary.  The students use an online Thesaurus every week when doing their vocabulary packets.  It is also considered reference materials.  Next week we will take our first Unit test.  I break the test into 3 parts.  We w) time. I will begin a new read aloud book, one that I have not read before so I can model how I read a book and what goes on in my head as I am reading to help me comprehend. I will also Assign their first book report to them.  We will go over the directions thoroughly in class.  The students will have until the end of this Trimester to complete the book report.  I do have some rules on what kinds of books to read.  No graphic novels.  Must be a chapter book.  It can have pictures but there shouldn't be a ton of pictures in the book. Due to the Unit test there is no spelling test next week!  They get a week free of spelling words!  I like Unit testing week because we do a lot of free reading.

Math - We are finishing up chapter 1.  We have practiced adding large numbers and subtracting larger numbers.  We will end the week going over some word problems.  Next week we will do the review in the book and take our test. It looks to be Tuesday or Wednesday that we will test over chapter 1.  We will then begin chapter 2.  The chapter 1 test is done online.  I will send a sheet home that will show their scores, how they did on the benchmarks that were covered.  We cover about 4 benchmarks in this chapter.  Only. 2 of those I am required to report on, which means you will see them on the report card.  The other two I don't but I still let you now how they do with them.  

Social Studies -  We are finishing up our chapter this week.  On Friday the students will be completing  a study guide.  We will check it on Monday and take the Test on Tuesday.  We will then begin our journey through the regions of the United States. We start in the Northeast Region.  We will focus on the states in that region learning their location, what their flag looks like, and keeping our interactive notebooks.  This will be a new experience that will take some time to learn.  Once we are through the first couple of states it becomes much easier for them and they do it quickly.  We will be using our chromebooks more and doing a lot of cutting and pasting.  The students usually end up enjoying their notebooks.  They have facts about all 50 states in it by the end of the year.  We will also be learning the capitals of each state.  I use a States and Capitals song to help us memorize them.  It is found on Youtube and can also be downloaded from itunes. It is called States and Capitals song by Macho Nacho.  The Youtube version is pretty cool because they pinpoint each state and where it's capital is as the song is being sung.  I will give the students a copy of the lyrics so they can sing along.

Book It -  Book It starts in October.  I will send a calendar home with the kids to keep track of the minutes they read at home.  There is a goal at the top of the page.  Each month has a different goal.  We do this reading challenge through March.  I will also keep track of my reading time.  I am an avid reader and belong to a book club so I read a lot.  I challenge the students each year.  If there is anyone that can beat my total number of minutes at the end of the 6 months, I will reward them with a prize.  I give prizes and awards to the 3 that have read the most minutes at the end of the 6 months. I ask that all students turn in their calendars even if they do not meet the goal.  They still have a chance to win even if they don't meet the goal every time. Our goals are as follows:  October 350, November 400, December 450, January 500, February 550, and March 600.  This ranges from 12 minutes a day to like 18-20 minutes a day.  I feel these are not unreasonable numbers for the students to reach.  We start slow and work our way up to more!  Because of my love for reading I will talk about this a lot.  I have also found a site that gives the kids challenges for the month on what kinds of books to read. I hand those out also.  The website is called Brightly.  It is a great site for books!  It gives great grade appropriate books. I am in love with this site and I have purchased 4 books from it in the first two weeks I found it.  I am restraining myself now!  It is worth looking at if your child struggles to choose books of interest.

I hope everyone has a great weekend!  I have nothing planned which is nice, yet it is more fun if I have something to do.  I think housecleaning will be one of my activities.  That's not a fun one though. Maybe a trip to Ames should be on my agenda!  I could do some Christmas shopping. Yes I am thinking of that all ready!

God Bless,
Mrs. Sickels