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