Dear Parents,
     Happy Thursday!   Hello welcome to the cold! I am thinking we are actually having a Fall!   I am packing up by capris and pulling out the sweaters!  I am happy to have Fall for once.  Normally we skip it.  We are back to a pretty normal week this week but so far I have had one student absent every day this week.  All different kids!  I hope tomorrow is perfect attendance!  We will see!  

Language Arts -  This week we are reading the story "Invasion From Mars".  This is a piece out of War of the Worlds by H.G. Wells.  In 1938, since they had no TV, radio shows read books or even acted books out over the radio.  On October 30, 1938, they were acting out this section on the radio.  If you didn't know that it was a radio show, you would be terrified hearing it.  Many Americans tuned in after is started and it caused panic. You can pull it up on Youtube.  Today I will let the kids listen to it.  We are working on Verbs in grammar.  We learned about action verbs, helping verbs and linking verbs.  Our vocabulary strategy focus was on suffixes -y, and -ous.  Please remember to study the vocabulary words (yellow packet) tonight and spelling words for the post test.

Math - We have begun chapter 2.  The first couple of lessons are about multiplication comparisons.  We have covered the first lesson.  We will be practicing more of it today and they will then do their worksheet.  This is pretty easy to understand but lesson 2 when I put this into practice with word problems it tends to get a little more difficult or tedious.  This is one strategy to working word problems that are making comparisons.  I will drill this into them and they will be able to work these problems well.  This whole chapter is focusing on multiplication.  Any fact work you can do at home will be great!  Anytime you can do flashcards or find a computer game drilling basic facts, that would be fabulous.  

Social Studies - We are learning this week how to put items in our Interactive notebooks.  All the kids were to have a composition book.  This composition book is what we use for their interactive notebooks.  We started this week with the United States.  We made a book on important facts like: largest city, national bird, national nickname, national flower, capital city, and when it was established.  We also colored the US Flag.  Tomorrow we will glue all these things into our notebook.  This is a routine thing we will do with all 50 states throughout the year.  At the end of the year they will have a notebook with facts and information about all 50 states.  It's a pretty cool thing for them to have.  We will begin digging into the Northeast Region next week.  We begin by talking about some natural resources the it has.

The students are doing a great job reading their book report books at school.  I feel like most are keeping track of their minutes for book it.  I can't believe we are almost mid way through October.  In a teacher's perspective the end of the year is close.  Once we hit Halloween, it is conferences, then Thanksgiving and then Christmas.  We have a lot of breaks in there and days off from school.  It always seems to go very fast!  Weather is changing please be sure your child dresses appropriately.  I know they can still wear shorts BUT they will be going to recess and freeing when the highs for the day are lower 40's.   I hope everyone has a great weekend!  

God Bless, 
Mrs. Sickels