Dear Parents,
Happy Thursday! I hope everyone enjoyed their snow day on Monday!! I am a lover of snow but I didn't ask for this one. It is a little early, yet I know when I was a kid this was normal. I had to come home from Chicago a day early to beat the snow. I was a little irritated about it but very glad I did it. I am thankful we all got home safe and my older two back to college before "Bruce" decided to move in. I will say having a snow day makes for a crazy week. Not because of the kids but because all my plans are off a day, which can make me crazy!! Thank goodness the kids are used to me and my crazy now. They have handled this week perfectly and gone with the flow like champs. I am very pleased with their behavior.
Language Arts- This week we are taking the Unit 2 Assessment. This assessment will be easier than the first one. The first one was a benchmark test and tends to be a lot harder than others. This unit is a performance test and goes along better with the stories they read. A lot of answers can be found by looking back in the story. Their are also some questions that may be more difficult. I kept them on to see how they do. I may end of up using them as bonus points. We will finish the assessment today and we will go over it tomorrow as a whole class. The kids will pull up their test and we will go over each question one by one. I will also make them highlight things in their packet if they didn't already. I requested they do that but sometimes they know the answer and skip that part. Next week we will go back to a normal week with spelling tests and reading stories.
Math - We are still working on multiplication. This week we have focused on bigger numbers. We are doing 3-4 digit numbers times a single digit. They are doing very well with this regrouping strategy. This strategy is the one you and I were taught. We will work on the last lesson today and tomorrow and next week we will prepare for the Chapter 2 Assessment. I totally blew giving them the pretest which frustrates me because this the chapter that usually sees the most growth. When I fill out the paper work on the assessment you will not see a pretest score. Most students do pretty well on this test. The next chapter is on 2-digit multiplication. It is a shorter chapter, it is all strategies we have already learned we just apply them to 2 digit numbers times 2-digit numbers. They may struggle but will catch on. I hope to do some fun "Christmas" Math closer to Christmas and then we skip to chapter 13. I cover perimeter and area right after multiplication because I feel it is an appropriate place to do that. After two pretty heavy chapters I like to throw in a fun one to lighted the load. We do a lot of hands on activities.
Social Studies - We are starting chapter 5 which is another chapter over the Northeast Region. We spend this chapter discussing the people of the Northeast. We will continue putting states into our notebooks and will begin map work on locating the states of the region. This is a busy time for social studies. I will begin giving them map tests. The map test will only cover the Northeast Region. It is easier to learn them a region at a time then trying to do all 50 states at once. They will locate the state and list the capital with it. We will begin working on that next week. I will give them practice maps to work with. They will make one into an answer key then will have some blank ones to practice. This is very important for them to learn because at the end of the year they will need to do all 50 states!
Book It - Book It calendars are due by next Wednesday for a reward. After Wednesday I will still accept them for minutes but not a reward. Remember I need a parent signature on the calendar.
Food Pantry - Advent begins this weekend! My favorite time of the year. This year we will be collecting items for the Food Pantry from Dec 3-14. The 3-5 graders will be bringing in toilet paper to donate. Personal items such as this are bought by the pantry at normal prices. These are not provided by the Food Bank of Iowa. These items are distributed once a month, the first weekend of the month. They are always running low on these items. Please donate if possible. No matter how big or small it is always very helpful! The Food Pantry provides for 70-90 families on any given week. Our students are able to see the volume of products that go through the pantry when they volunteer unloading the truck.
Cold Weather Rules: St.Malachy plays outside under the following conditions. Morning Drop-Off Outside if feels like temperature is 13 degrees or above. K-8 Recess outside if feels like temperature is 0 degrees or above. PK students Outside if feels like temperature is 13 degrees or above.
I hope the weather cooperates better for all of us. I love this time of year and I feel it makes it better with snow but no more snow days! I hope everyone has a great weekend!
God Bless,
Mrs. Sickels
Thursday, November 29, 2018
Thursday, November 15, 2018
Dear Parents,
Happy Thursday! Can you believe next week is Thanksgiving?! I can't ! This year is going very quickly. I guess time flies when you are having fun. We have been working really hard in 4th grade. We are all pretty much adjusted to the routine and doing very well. Tomorrow is the end of the first trimester and I will be working on report cards over the weekend! I try to have them done before Thanksgiving break. We travel to Chicago every Thanksgiving! It is our favorite time of the year!! We leave on Wednesday and come back Sunday. We do our Black Friday shopping out there. It is not a huge deal in Chicago so the stores are not packed or stand in line kind of shopping like it is back here. Plus we get some items that are not around here. I hope anyone else who is traveling has a safe trip.
Language Arts - This week they are reading a story called Jose! Born to Dance. It is about a famous dancer and his life story. He didn't take up dancing until later in life. He was an immigrant from Mexico. This is a story that the kids find hard to understand and they are not big fans of it. That just means that tomorrow I have to work hard to be sure they understand it. If your student brings their book home and rereads they night before the test you might read it with them so you can see if they are understanding. This week in grammar they are learning about pronouns. We have focused on Subject, Object, Reflexive, and Demonstrative Pronouns. We also will learn what an antecedent is. That is the word that the pronoun replaces. For our vocabulary lesson we talked about Shades of meanings when it comes to words like: big, large, huge, giant, enormous, and gigantic. They all have similar meanings but the all make us picture something a little different or a little bigger than the other words. This section of the test might be a tad bit difficult for them. We always want to choose the more exciting words or the more professional sounding word. The end of week test is tomorrow along with spelling post test. We are then ready for a Unit test. We will not take that until the week after Thanksgiving. This Unit test will not be as bad as the first one. I always see scores go up but I will require them to go back into the stories and highlight the answers. We will talk about taking their time and working hard. I will get the test done in 3 days then spend a day going over test results with them.
Book Reports - Reminder that book reports are due tomorrow. I can't wait to see what they come up with. We will share them in class next Monday. The 1st graders will vote on the cereals and I will give a prize to the top choice.
Cuddle up and read - On Tuesday, November 20th, we will be having a special day. ON this day the students will be allowed to bring a blanket, pillow and stuffed animal. They may bring one item, two items, or all three, whatever they want to carry. We will begin our day normally with Music class. After that they will return tome for our special reading time. The students get to pick a spot in the room to lay down, snuggle up and just read. We will spend 60-75 minutes just reading . They may count all the minutes on their "Book It" calendars. I will also be reading along with them. It is just a fun da to enjoy reading. They have been looking forward tothis day ll year. I hope they enjoy it as much as I do!
Math - This week we have spent our time working on word problems. These word problems are multistep word problems. This means that you can't just do one problem to find the answer. You at least need to do 2 or maybe even more to get to your answer. The students don't like this because it is a lot of work. They want a simple easy problem to do and be done. This lesson really challenges them to think. They have to think about what the problem is saying, what information is important, and how to solve the problem. The next lesson is teaching them the regrouping strategy of multiplication, which is the standard algorithm that you all learned in school. They may struggle catching on because they won't understand how it all works but the more we practice the better they will get. We will work on this strategy until Thanksgiving. Then when we return we will work on it again but will bigger numbers. I will work on it until I feel all students are understanding.
Social studies- We just finished chapter 4 and took a test. They all did very well on the test. We are now putting more states into our notebooks and we will learn the States and Capitals song tomorrow and Monday. We will also start practicing where the Northeast states are on the map. I will give them practice maps to work on and then we will have a map test. They have to be able to label all the states in the Northeast Region on a map. They will also need to know their capitals. This is when Social Studies gets a little challenging yet fun for some. It is very important for students to know what our Unites States looks like and where the states are. Again you can get the song on itunes. It is by Macho Nacho. The students will have a copy of the lyrics in their folders.
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.
Again I want to wish you all a great Thanksgiving! I know I will eat too much! Also, we will have our Mass on December 5th. That day will be a noisy change collection for our adopt-a-family and our Christmas Program that evening. What a way to kick-off the Advent Season. There will not be a blog next week due to Thanksgiving.
God Bless,
Mrs. Sickels
Happy Thursday! Can you believe next week is Thanksgiving?! I can't ! This year is going very quickly. I guess time flies when you are having fun. We have been working really hard in 4th grade. We are all pretty much adjusted to the routine and doing very well. Tomorrow is the end of the first trimester and I will be working on report cards over the weekend! I try to have them done before Thanksgiving break. We travel to Chicago every Thanksgiving! It is our favorite time of the year!! We leave on Wednesday and come back Sunday. We do our Black Friday shopping out there. It is not a huge deal in Chicago so the stores are not packed or stand in line kind of shopping like it is back here. Plus we get some items that are not around here. I hope anyone else who is traveling has a safe trip.
Language Arts - This week they are reading a story called Jose! Born to Dance. It is about a famous dancer and his life story. He didn't take up dancing until later in life. He was an immigrant from Mexico. This is a story that the kids find hard to understand and they are not big fans of it. That just means that tomorrow I have to work hard to be sure they understand it. If your student brings their book home and rereads they night before the test you might read it with them so you can see if they are understanding. This week in grammar they are learning about pronouns. We have focused on Subject, Object, Reflexive, and Demonstrative Pronouns. We also will learn what an antecedent is. That is the word that the pronoun replaces. For our vocabulary lesson we talked about Shades of meanings when it comes to words like: big, large, huge, giant, enormous, and gigantic. They all have similar meanings but the all make us picture something a little different or a little bigger than the other words. This section of the test might be a tad bit difficult for them. We always want to choose the more exciting words or the more professional sounding word. The end of week test is tomorrow along with spelling post test. We are then ready for a Unit test. We will not take that until the week after Thanksgiving. This Unit test will not be as bad as the first one. I always see scores go up but I will require them to go back into the stories and highlight the answers. We will talk about taking their time and working hard. I will get the test done in 3 days then spend a day going over test results with them.
Book Reports - Reminder that book reports are due tomorrow. I can't wait to see what they come up with. We will share them in class next Monday. The 1st graders will vote on the cereals and I will give a prize to the top choice.
Cuddle up and read - On Tuesday, November 20th, we will be having a special day. ON this day the students will be allowed to bring a blanket, pillow and stuffed animal. They may bring one item, two items, or all three, whatever they want to carry. We will begin our day normally with Music class. After that they will return tome for our special reading time. The students get to pick a spot in the room to lay down, snuggle up and just read. We will spend 60-75 minutes just reading . They may count all the minutes on their "Book It" calendars. I will also be reading along with them. It is just a fun da to enjoy reading. They have been looking forward tothis day ll year. I hope they enjoy it as much as I do!
Math - This week we have spent our time working on word problems. These word problems are multistep word problems. This means that you can't just do one problem to find the answer. You at least need to do 2 or maybe even more to get to your answer. The students don't like this because it is a lot of work. They want a simple easy problem to do and be done. This lesson really challenges them to think. They have to think about what the problem is saying, what information is important, and how to solve the problem. The next lesson is teaching them the regrouping strategy of multiplication, which is the standard algorithm that you all learned in school. They may struggle catching on because they won't understand how it all works but the more we practice the better they will get. We will work on this strategy until Thanksgiving. Then when we return we will work on it again but will bigger numbers. I will work on it until I feel all students are understanding.
Social studies- We just finished chapter 4 and took a test. They all did very well on the test. We are now putting more states into our notebooks and we will learn the States and Capitals song tomorrow and Monday. We will also start practicing where the Northeast states are on the map. I will give them practice maps to work on and then we will have a map test. They have to be able to label all the states in the Northeast Region on a map. They will also need to know their capitals. This is when Social Studies gets a little challenging yet fun for some. It is very important for students to know what our Unites States looks like and where the states are. Again you can get the song on itunes. It is by Macho Nacho. The students will have a copy of the lyrics in their folders.
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.
Again I want to wish you all a great Thanksgiving! I know I will eat too much! Also, we will have our Mass on December 5th. That day will be a noisy change collection for our adopt-a-family and our Christmas Program that evening. What a way to kick-off the Advent Season. There will not be a blog next week due to Thanksgiving.
God Bless,
Mrs. Sickels
Thursday, November 8, 2018
Dear Parents,
Happy Thursday! I hope everyone is having a great day!! Are you enjoying the weather? Looks like we are going to take a drastic change. Will we see the white stuff? I hope so!! If is it going to be cold then we might as well have some snow. BUT I hope the farmers have time to get their crops out before it hits too hard. We know today's won't last! I think all kids came prepared for recess today with coats! That makes me very happy! Sweatshirts just don't cut it. I see hats and mittens too. I have recess duty today and brought my winter coat, headband and mittens myself. It does put me in Christmas spirit a little bit. I am all ready shopping but just not feeling it yet. The kids aren't really feeling it yet either!! Thank goodness.
Language Arts - We are reading a great story this week! It's one of my favorites. It is called Dear Mr. Winston. It is a fun story about a girl who gets a snake, wants to know what kind it is, but can not check the book she needs out of the library. So she sneaks the snake into the library in a box. The librarian questions her, opens box, and is deathly afraid of snakes and faints. The ambulance has to come to take him away. She is writing an apology but yet it really isn't much of an apology cause she finds many ways to blame the librarian for the problem. The kids seemed to enjoy it too. That may mean they will do well tomorrow on assessment. This week in grammar we are learning about compound and complex sentences. We learned what a dependent clause was and how it can not stand alone without a simple sentence. Our vocabulary strategy was a review topic of antonyms. Be sure to study vocabulary words and spelling words tonight!
Math - This week in math we have learned 2 new strategies to multiply 2 digit numbers. One was using expanded form and the other is partial product. One actually leads right into the other. Learning to use expanded form leads right into partial product. They are almost the very same just recorded differently. The partial product strategy starts us on the beginnings of the standard algorithm also. Only in the order in which we do the problems. The book teaches them to start in the hundreds or largest place value and I teach them to start in the ones because that is how the standard algorithm works. All strategies we learn are leading us into that algorithm that you learned as a kid. We make sure they understand exactly how multiplication words and why they are doing what they are doing now. I know I would have been more successful in math if I would have know these strategies for sure. So much of it lends itself to algebra also! If your child ever has any questions I am available in the mornings before school. I happy to help. I give them time at the end of the day to also search out for help.
Social Studies - We are finishing up chapter 4 this week. We are learning about the resources that come from the Northeast Region and learning about Chesapeake Bay and all the seafood that comes from the bay. Kids are learning that fishing is not just a hobby but way of life. They are shocked to think about it but when I talk about seafood restaurants and explain they get it. We will be doing a study guide on Monday, checking it on Tuesday and taking a test on Wednesday of next week! We are moving along quite nicely in Social studies. We will spend some days next week putting more states into our notebooks also!!
Veteran's Day Program - We are hosting a Veteran's Day Program at St. Malachy tomorrow in the gym at 2:00 P.M. Students are asked to wear red, white, and blue to celebrate. Please feel free to attend and please invite any Veteran's that you know to also attend. There is something for everyone there!!
Book it! We has a very successful October for reading minutes! I hope the students keep it up in November! It makes my heart happy to see them reading things they enjoy and finding authors that they enjoy! I have a definite favorite author. Colleen Hoover is my favorite. She writes so many books dealing with so many different things. if you have not read any of her books I recommend them. I keep a blog of the books I read. Here is my link in case you are looking for something to read. I am part of a book club and so the books we read are on here also.
https://msickels0.wixsite.com/mysite
I hope all of you have a great weekend! Thanksgiving is coming very quickly!! Tomorrow is a Spirit Day! Students can wear sweats for $1.
God Bless,
Mrs. Sickels
Happy Thursday! I hope everyone is having a great day!! Are you enjoying the weather? Looks like we are going to take a drastic change. Will we see the white stuff? I hope so!! If is it going to be cold then we might as well have some snow. BUT I hope the farmers have time to get their crops out before it hits too hard. We know today's won't last! I think all kids came prepared for recess today with coats! That makes me very happy! Sweatshirts just don't cut it. I see hats and mittens too. I have recess duty today and brought my winter coat, headband and mittens myself. It does put me in Christmas spirit a little bit. I am all ready shopping but just not feeling it yet. The kids aren't really feeling it yet either!! Thank goodness.
Language Arts - We are reading a great story this week! It's one of my favorites. It is called Dear Mr. Winston. It is a fun story about a girl who gets a snake, wants to know what kind it is, but can not check the book she needs out of the library. So she sneaks the snake into the library in a box. The librarian questions her, opens box, and is deathly afraid of snakes and faints. The ambulance has to come to take him away. She is writing an apology but yet it really isn't much of an apology cause she finds many ways to blame the librarian for the problem. The kids seemed to enjoy it too. That may mean they will do well tomorrow on assessment. This week in grammar we are learning about compound and complex sentences. We learned what a dependent clause was and how it can not stand alone without a simple sentence. Our vocabulary strategy was a review topic of antonyms. Be sure to study vocabulary words and spelling words tonight!
Math - This week in math we have learned 2 new strategies to multiply 2 digit numbers. One was using expanded form and the other is partial product. One actually leads right into the other. Learning to use expanded form leads right into partial product. They are almost the very same just recorded differently. The partial product strategy starts us on the beginnings of the standard algorithm also. Only in the order in which we do the problems. The book teaches them to start in the hundreds or largest place value and I teach them to start in the ones because that is how the standard algorithm works. All strategies we learn are leading us into that algorithm that you learned as a kid. We make sure they understand exactly how multiplication words and why they are doing what they are doing now. I know I would have been more successful in math if I would have know these strategies for sure. So much of it lends itself to algebra also! If your child ever has any questions I am available in the mornings before school. I happy to help. I give them time at the end of the day to also search out for help.
Social Studies - We are finishing up chapter 4 this week. We are learning about the resources that come from the Northeast Region and learning about Chesapeake Bay and all the seafood that comes from the bay. Kids are learning that fishing is not just a hobby but way of life. They are shocked to think about it but when I talk about seafood restaurants and explain they get it. We will be doing a study guide on Monday, checking it on Tuesday and taking a test on Wednesday of next week! We are moving along quite nicely in Social studies. We will spend some days next week putting more states into our notebooks also!!
Veteran's Day Program - We are hosting a Veteran's Day Program at St. Malachy tomorrow in the gym at 2:00 P.M. Students are asked to wear red, white, and blue to celebrate. Please feel free to attend and please invite any Veteran's that you know to also attend. There is something for everyone there!!
Book it! We has a very successful October for reading minutes! I hope the students keep it up in November! It makes my heart happy to see them reading things they enjoy and finding authors that they enjoy! I have a definite favorite author. Colleen Hoover is my favorite. She writes so many books dealing with so many different things. if you have not read any of her books I recommend them. I keep a blog of the books I read. Here is my link in case you are looking for something to read. I am part of a book club and so the books we read are on here also.
https://msickels0.wixsite.com/mysite
I hope all of you have a great weekend! Thanksgiving is coming very quickly!! Tomorrow is a Spirit Day! Students can wear sweats for $1.
God Bless,
Mrs. Sickels
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