Dear Parents,

     Happy Thursday!!  Well, this is a short week for us.  There will be a few changes in our schedules.  I plan to cover those below.  I am looking forward to conferences next week.  Everyone has signed up for a time. I always like to  visit with parents about their students.  I like to share what I am seeing and hear from you on what you are seeing. I hope the kids enjoy their extra day off.  I sure wish I was getting that extra day off.  Next week will be a crazy week for sure.  Halloween and Conferences in the same week is insane.  I hope to have a fun and successful week.

Halloween- We will be celebrating Halloween on Wednesday, October 28th.  I plan to have a normal morning then spend the afternoon enjoying ourselves.  Our Homeroom Mom, Sam Baird, will be supplying snacks and drinks for the afternoon.  I plan on playing a geography game and then doing some Halloween Art.  There will be a Halloween parade so be sure to send your child's costume to school.  The parade this year will be done virtually. I am not sure on specifics but each class will go to the gym and be filmed parading around the gym in costume and they may even be interviewed about their costume choice. I will get you information about the virtual link next week.

Language Arts - This week we are reading an informational story called Coming Distractions Questioning Movies.  It is interesting the first time you read it, but not the 2nd and 3rd time you read it.  The vocabulary strategy we discussed had to do with Greek and Latin word parts.  Phon, photo, tele, graph, phono are the word parts.  I showed the kids what they mean and how it works in certain words.  I grammar we talked about the 3 verb tenses: past, present, and future, and we learned about helping verbs and past participles.  Fancy words for a helping verb and a past tense main/action verb.  This wee is a short week but I am going to use next Monday as our "Friday".  Since next week is an even shorter week I am extending this week into next.  The spelling Posttest and end of week test will happen on Monday.  Then Tuesday and Wednesday we are going to work on writing Personal Narratives.  This is just a short story or essay about themselves.  I have video clips to watch to help the kids.  A personal Narrative is a Standard that the students must work on in 4th grade.  We will follow the steps on brainstorming, prewriting, editing, revising and publishing to complete the paper.

Math -  This week in math we have focused on multiplication comparisons.  They have done a great job understanding how to write a comparison statement from a multiplication problem.  We then moved onto learning how to use those comparisons to write a word problem with pictures to help us solve.  We finished that lesson today.  If you looked at it you would go, "huh!"  It is not easy stuff.  I am super proud of them for learning it and learning it quickly.  Next week we will begin to move on in the chapter.  Lesson 3 is super easy, I will teach them 2 strategies in one day.  It is multiplying tens and hundreds.  So problems like 100 X 3  or 1,000 X 6.  Then we will learn to estimate products.

Social Studies -  The students have enjoyed putting their first 2 states into their notebooks this last week.  They love to color, cut and paste.  Plus they are learning facts about the state.  We will soon begin learning our States and Capitals song.  I will give them a sheet with the lyrics on it and we will sing along with the song.  It is a great way to memorize all the states and capitals.  The song is found on youtube, it is called States and Capitals Song by Macho Nacho.  You can practice it at home too.  I apologize now because once they learn it, they will sing it all the time.  This class is constantly singing.   The next lesson are over resources in the northeast and harvesting Chesapeake Bay.  

Conferences - Conferences are next week on Thursday.  Everyone has signed up for a time.  Please be sure to read through the rules again.  I will be cleaning thoroughly in between each conference. If you requested a virtual meeting I will just meet you on the classroom link.  It's the same thing your child goes to when getting online for school.

● Conferences will last 12 minutes - this allows for time to clean between each visit. ● 1 Parent/guardian may attend (we recommend the other parents/guardians attend via facetime or speaker phone call) 

● Teachers will take the temperature of the parent/guardian in attendance 

● Masks are required 

● To reduce exposure we ask that parents/guardians use the door nearest your child’s classroom door ● We ask that children to not attend 

● We will have the Book Fair in the gym on Thursday from 1-9:30. We ask parents to social distance and sanitize their hands before shopping.

 I hope everyone has a great weekend.  The student should enjoy their long weekend.  I am preparing for a crazy week next week.  We will survive!  I hope you do as well.  See you next week!

God Bless,

Mrs. Sickels

Dear Parents,

      Happy Thursday!!  I hope everyone is having a great week!  This seems like it has been a crazy week! I have had 2 students online due to not feeling well and one that was gone the end of the week.  Wednesday I only had 2 students in class with me.  That was a weird day.  I hope that next week I have all 5 back with us.  I do understand if your child is really stuffed up and sneezing or blowing their nose a ton and you choose to keep them home.  I am fine with it.  Being online works well! I will have information on Halloween and what we are going to do for it next week in my blog!

Language Arts -This week we are back to reading a story in our textbook and completing spelling.  The story we are reading this week is called Invasion From Mars.  It is a fun "true" story of an event that happened.  On October 30, 1938,  a radio was broadcasting a reading of "The War of the Worlds".  A book written by H.G. Wells.  The section they were reading that day was on an extraterrestrial object landing on earth.  People who did not hear the introduction and turned on the radio in the middle of the broadcast became frantic.  They were thinking the broadcast was really happening.  It caused quite a panic for some.  We have read the story.  Today I plan to have them listen to the live broadcast of this.  They will then see why some Americans thought it was truly happening.  You can search it on Youtube and find it.  My classes really love this story because there is a good story behind it.  In grammar we have started working on verbs.  We talked about action verbs, helping verbs and main verbs, then linking verbs.  The vocabulary strategy was on the suffixes -y, and -ous.  Tomorrow is a normal Friday.  We have a spelling post test and end of the week test.  Be sure they are studying their yellow packets tonight!

Math -  We are beginning our chapter on Multiplication!  This will be a very long chapter.  I will teach the students several different strategies to work multiplication problems.  The exciting part of this is, we know when we grew up we only learned one way to multiply.  Not everyone understood how to do this way.  Kids struggled to learn and be very good at multiplication because they didn't understand.  I understand what I needed to do to manipulate the numbers and get my answers but I never understood exactly how it worked.  I will be teaching your students several strategies to help them understand what they are doing.  I know they are strategies you struggle with and I don't want you to stress over helping them.  I am here before school everyday and usually here after school until at least 4:30 unless Molly has an event.  I will be glad to be the one that helps your student.  I personally like the strategy of "Partial Product" much better than the standard algorithm.  It is so much easier to understand and find mistakes.  This is my favorite chapter to teach in the year.  I will make your children masters of multiplication when we are done.  WOOHOO! 

Social Studies - We are learning about the Northeast this week.  We have learned the location of Niagara Falls.  We talked about it's beauty and its power resource.  They learned that something beautiful can be of great use.  Hydropower plants are generating hydroelectricity to help give energy to the state of New York. We also talked about how glaciers played a huge role in the formation of Niagara Falls.  We also have looked at the different mountain ranges found in the Northeast and how they are important to the skiing industry.  I plan to compare the difference between the Main coastline and the New Jersey coastline.  We will finish up this lesson and then we will put our first state into our interactive notebooks.  They are excited about this!  They think getting to color, cut and paste in Social Studies is super fun!

HELP!!  HELP!!  HELP!!   We are going to run out of wipes next week.  So if anyone could purchase some wipes to send in that would be great.  The students each use 2 wipes a day.  They wipe down at lunch and then at the end of the day.  With only 5 kids 5 bottles didn't go very far.   Thanks for all and any help!

Spirit Day!   Tomorrow is a Spirit Day!   You can wear sweats or a hat for a $1.00.  Perfect day for it   Bring those dollars and be comfy! 

I am headed to Denison today for a Cross Country meet.  It is a long drive to watch someone run 20 minutes.  This could be her last time running though.  She has to run well to get to run in the State Qualifying Meet next Thursday.  If she does not run well, she will be done. Since she is a senior I just can't miss it.  I am listening to a book as I drive.  I am excited because I have not listened since last Thursday.  It is read by a person with a British accent so I am struggling to pick up on everything.  Wish us luck!  Have a great weekend!

God Bless,

Mrs. Sickels

Dear Parents,

    Happy Thursday!  I feel like this week has gone pretty quickly.  The kids think so also.  I am not sure why but it feels like it.  I think the students have finally adjusted to 4th grade.  They understand how important it is to use any time I give them to work on their homework.  I give them things to do every day BUT if they use their time wisely they can get most of it done at school.  There are some days where we have more homework then normal and so some of it may have to come home but it should not take them that long to complete it.  Mainly it would be finishing up some little things.  I try to have them do the things they can complete quickly here, so they are not taking too much home.  When I sign their assignment books, I usually ask them what they have left to take home to complete.  This gives me an idea of what I may need to adjust, or what I can do to help them get more done here at school.  

Language Arts - We have taken the Unit 1 Benchmark test this week.  I break it up into 3 sections. I do not want to overwhelm the students with it all in one day.  We have also done some handwriting during this time and written a Halloween story based off the story  Goldilocks and the Three Bears.  Tomorrow I intend on assigning them their first book report.  This is a cereal box book report.  The students will be asked to read a chapter book that challenges them and then complete the cereal box book report items.  They will need a cereal box and they will need to cover it with paper. You can just wrap it like a package or cut construction paper to cover all sides.  It is up to the student.  I will hand them out pieces of printed papers to help them on the top, and two sides of the box.  These will be filled out, cut out and glued to the proper places.  The front and the back of the box is up to them to create on their own.  It all has to deal with the book.  They need a cereal name that goes along with the book they read.  On the back they will need a game to do.  They also need to include a prize in the box that has to do with their book. Now, they don't really need to have the prize, they just need to talk about it on the box somewhere.  I plan to go over all the directions with the students and give them a print out of directions for them to keep.  I will not give them the items needed until they tell me they are finished reading the book.  This report will not be due until the end of the trimester which is November 13th.  Next week we will go back to a normal language arts week with spelling tests, vocabulary words,and worksheets.

Math - We have finished up chapter 1 in math.  The students have completed a review over the chapter.  They are now working on a "Dress Rehearsal" of the test.  They will do this today and tomorrow.  I will check them over the weekend and on Monday we will go over the test together.  Then on Tuesday they will take the final test.  This one will be online and on paper.  The same test online will be in front of them so they can do all the work on it and then mark their answer on both the paper copy and online.  The online portion helps to sort standards and benchmarks automatically for me.  The paper copy allows me to look at their work and see where they are making mistakes.  It may seem like a lot but it is super easy.  We will begin chapter two at the end of the week.  In this chapter we will begin talking about multiplication.  This is 14 lessons long and really takes us a long time to get through.

Social Studies -  I have introduced the Northeast region to the class.  We have written the 11 states that make up the Northeast in their notebooks along with their capitals.  I am now introducing the interactive notebook to them.  We have put in out front page with all 50 states on it.  Now we are working together through the first set of pages on the United States of America.  They have colored the American Flag, we have created the piece that has the picture of the United States, the abbreviation for it, and the capital.  Today we will work on the fact booklet.  When we have all these things done and cut out, we will glue them in.  They are super excited to get to that part today.  I am always hopeful that this is a book filled with information that the students will want to save for later.  I try to stress for them to so their best handwriting and coloring on these pages.  I will say they don't always listen very well. We will dig into chapter 4 a lot more next week.

CDC Guidelines -  Please refer to Mrs. Simmon's letter she sends out or to our website about the new guidelines about masks from the CDC. It focuses on Gaiters and mask wearing in the classroom, who would quarantine and who would not.  The 4th graders have decided they will wear their mask all the time but will take breaks when needed.  They will take them off for 10 minute periods when they need a break.  I am not mandating this happens, but the kids are making the decision so we can stay in school face-to-face. 

Book It -  We have started keeping track of the minutes we do any free reading in a book of our choice.  We will keep track for the next 6 months.  The kids have an orange calendar where they can keep track.  Please, keep track in minutes only.  So if they read 2 hours please write 120 minutes.  At the end of the month a parent will need to sign the calendar and the students will turn it in.  If they meet the goal at the top of the calendar they will receive a certificate for money off the buffet at Pizza Ranch.  Since we no longer have a Pizza Hut we don't have that as an option.  This month the kids are to read 350 minutes.  This breaks down into 12 minutes a day.  If they do that they will meet the goal easily.  They are also trying to beat Mrs. Sickels.  They are finding that is hard when I have found a good book.  Right now I have found a great book and I am reading most of my evenings.  I have a chart I will keep track of each month for the student.  At the end I total up all their minutes they have read. I give prizes to the top readers.  Happy reading!!

Looks like the weather is going to make for a very nice weekend.  I hope all of you get out and enjoy it.  I keep thinking our nice weekends are going to be few and far between.  I am celebrating a friend's 50th birthday with dinner Saturday night. 

God Bless,

Mrs. Sickels 

Dear Parents,

     Happy Thursday!!!  I hope everyone is having a great week.  For my it is Homecoming week for my Senior.  It is so hard to believe that she is there.  It has been a fun week but busy.  Cross Country in Knoxville on Tuesday and Perry tonight makes for a very busy week for mom!  The weather has been pleasant but sounds like it intends to cool off.  It will be a very chilly football game tomorrow.  We have had a really good week in 4th grade.  I feel they are finally getting the hang of a class routine and also how Mrs. Sickels does things.  We are to the point of really enjoying class and learning.  I love, love, love when we get to this point.  It means I can have some fun with teaching!

Language Arts -  This week we are reading a Tall Tale called "Stormalong".  It is a story about a baby that is giant.  He grows into a very big, strong man.  He is determined to live his life on the sea.  He proved himself a great sailor but it just way too big for a boat.  He travels inland to try his hand at working the land, but he is not happy.  He goes back to the sea.  They build him a giant boat that he can fit on.  He is now happy.  We are paying attention to characters in this story.  Trying to decide what kind of a person Stormalong is by how he interacts with others. We worked on reference materials as our vocabulary strategy.  They focused on dictionary entries and what they tell us.  In grammar we learned or reviewed capitalization.  It focused on historical events and documents, titles of books or stories, and today we are  learning names. languages, and Nationalities.  The spelling list was a bit of a challenge this week.  It was over homophones.  These are words that sound the exact same but the spelling depends upon the meaning of the word.  An example would be wait and weight,  sent, cent, and scent,  and heard and herd.  The students will take their post test tomorrow. They will also do the end of the week test.  Next week we will do our first Unit test.  It will be quite difficult.  They are shocked by what they have to remember from the first 5 stories and lessons. 

Math - We are finishing up chapter one.  We will be completing it next week.  This week we have learned how to rename numbers (hard and some struggled), we have reviewed adding large numbers and now subtracting large numbers.  The subtraction gets hard due to regrouping.  Sometimes there is a lot of zeroes in a problem that have to be regrouped.  We will then move onto problem-solving.  That will be our last lesson before we begin studying for a test.  I will walk them through how math testing works.  We first take what they call a "dress rehearsal".  They will actually be given the test without any practicing(this is the practice).  If anyone gets a perfect paper they are done.   I will then go over the test and every problem with the class to model how the work is done.  They will then take the final test and this test will be scored in the grade book. This gives each student the opportunity to be successful on the test.  Miss Surma does the same thing.  We learned this strategy at a conference we attended last October.  It proved highly successful with our classes last year.  We really collaborated on how to make it work.

Social Studies -  We have taken our first test.  The students all did very well on it.  There were a lot of vocabulary words which some had some trouble matching.  You will see the test today.  Please sign it and have your student return it to me.  They have made corrections and I have based their score off their corrections.  Please look through to see how they did.  They are working on a couple of map skills worksheets before we begin our next chapter.  One of the map skills is focusing on the compass rose.  We will review how to follow one and what the cardinal and intermediate directions are on it.  We will dig into chapter 3 next week.  We are moving along very well in this subject. I hope to keep our pace going.

CDC Guidelines -  Please be sure to read Mrs. Simmons "St. Malachy Minute".  It talks about the new guidelines for quarantine.   Also be sure to fill out the google form on conferences and whether you prefer a face-to-face conference or a video call.

Homecoming!  We dismiss tomorrow 3 hours early.  That means instead of 3:15 you will need to pick up your students at 12:15.  It is a Spirit Day tomorrow!  Bring your dollar to wear your sweats with panther gear!  It will be a good day to do it.  The temperatures are suppose to drop tomorrow.  Remember our dollars go for a great cause.    There will be NO LUNCH served tomorrow due to the very early out.

I hope all of you enjoy your weekend.  The Fall temps are definitely here.  I am going to enjoying my last Homecoming as a parent!  I am really okay with this.  After 3 girls, definitely okay with it.  I will happy to just look at all the pictures next year instead of worrying about taking them!

God Bless,

Mrs. Sickels