Dear Parents,
     Happy Thursday and welcome back from Christmas break!  It was a very good break for all of us and I am happy to be back with the kids.  We will be working very hard over the next 2-3 weeks.  The goal is to keep the students moving and progressing.  We are halfway done with the year and I need to get cracking to get all the things I need to finish by the end of the year.  I know that might seem crazy but I begin thinking about the whole picture this time of year.  I will speed some subjects up and keep the pace on others.  We have Catholic Schools Week, Spring Break and  Iowa Assessments as our next big things in our calendar.  We have to work hard so we can enjoy CSW and Spring break but yet do well on our Iowa Assessments.   

Language Arts -  I feel like it has been forever since we have completed a normal week of language arts.  It wasn't too much of a struggle getting them back into the routine of it.  This week our story was called The Earth Dragon Awakes.  It is kind of a scary story.  It would tend to bring our a little anxiety in some.  A little bit of fear too.  It is about a father and son who are in their apartment building and earthquake happens and their apartment falls.  They are trapped in the rubble or buried alive.  Isn't that a fear for everyone? It talks about what they did during the earthquake and what they did after to be rescued. This story was Historical fiction because it was based on a real event, the earthquake of 1906 in San Francisco, California.  A lot of the description of the damage that was done, is real but the story of the father and son was fiction. Maybe it happened but they would have changed the names of the people.  The students worked on singular and plural possessive nouns in grammar.  Using apostrophes to show ownership in nouns.  We reviewed synonyms for the vocabulary strategy and we read a story about twisters.  This was our short story to go along with the main story.  We talked about similarities and differences between the two.  We talked about the technology used in both and how people make disaster plans for both.  It has been a good lesson this week. Be sure to have your student study their vocabulary packet and spelling words for tomorrow.

Math - We are moving along in Chapter 3!  We have completed 2 full lessons all ready.  We are using strategies to multiply by tens and estimating products.  They all informed me estimating was super easy.  They liked that lesson a lot.  A few have some corrections to make and I will meet with them to do that. We will be starting the next lesson today.  This lesson is on area models, which is my absolute favorite lesson.  Some of the students have all ready been using this strategy on Dreambox.  I will help it make complete sense today.  I like this strategy because of the visual it gives us.  We can see exactly what we are doing and how it comes together.  This is using or distributive property that we learned in chapter 2 and giving us problems that are easy for us to work.  If you are unsure of this strategy look at your child's book and see or ask them to show you.  Most 4th graders really do like this one.  It's a great strategy to have in their tool belt to use.

Social Studies -  We are going to be finishing up the Northeast states.  We have all of them in our interactive notebooks.  We will be taking our 2nd and final map test for this region.  If your child chooses not to study and does poorly, they are way behind.  They need to learn each region as we go so they can do all 50 states at the end of the year.  I will move into the Southeast region next.  We will attempt to move more quickly through these 2 chapters.  Getting map tests, map skills, and states in the notebook is a lot of work.  We may need to double things up.  They are in the 2nd half of the year they can handle it. I try hard to not give them too much and I definitely don't give them more than they can handle.  

Server training - We are in need of more servers for church and school.  These trainings are for Catholic children and will be held after mass this weekend and next. Please check the bulletin or the St. Malachy website for exact times.  We are really wanting the 4th graders who are Catholic to be sure they attend one of the trainings.  It is a service for the school and church and it is greatly appreciated.  Even if you child is a little timid.  Maybe being an altar server can help with that.  

Talent Show -  This year for Catholic Schools week we will be having a talent show.  We have not had one in about 3 years.  The kids are asked to share a talent they have, if they choose to.  They do NOT have to do anything, they can sit back and enjoy the show.  For those who are putting together talents, they will need to try out in front of the committee.  This is just to ensure the students actually have a routine or something practiced so they don't get up on stage and just stand there.  I all ready have had tears in my room from a student being left out.  She asked a group to join and was pretty much told no.  I talked to the kids that this was not how this was suppose to be and it is excluding students.  I do not like when we make people cry so I said maybe no one needs to participate if we are going to leave people out.  The situation has been solved.  I hope to not have anymore problems.  I am also trying to work on students not being mad and holding grudges.  They are too young to start this behavior.  I just wanted to make you aware and explain this is meant to be a fun event and to not cause problems with students. It takes the fun out of it when people are hurt.

I hope everyone has a great weekend! I will be spending some of my weekend with some classmates from High School.  I am so looking forward to it.  It's super fun to be nostalgic sometimes!  Also be safe in our little snow storm.

God Bless,
Mrs. Sickels