April 4, 2024

Dear Parents,

Happy Thursday! It is April! I can't believe it. The rest of the year will fly by for me. We have so much that goes on in the last couple months. Of course I start really figuring out what I need to get done in my 35 days of school. UGH! Again hard to believe it is April.

Language Arts

This week We finished a story, took an ISASP practice test, and started a new story. Whew! That's busy. Our next story is called the Grand Canyon. It is Literary Nonfiction. It is telling a story but has facts in it. We figured out it has two different story lines in it also. It is telling of the history of the canyon plus about people riding on pack mules down to the bottom. We will pay attention to figurative language and the use of similes and metaphors. We will also talk about Author's craft. We will take a spelling pretest tomorrow first thing. Then we will do some grammar and decoding which matches up with the spelling test.

Math

We have taken a ISASP practice test this week for Math. They really need to take their time when testing. Some of them moved pretty quickly and did not do so well. We also started a new lesson in Division learning about remainders. We will continue to have lessons next week but not as many due to the testing.

Social Studies

The students have a test over Chapter 8 tomorrow. We checked the study guide today and they are ready to study for the test. I am glad we are getting this over this week instead of next week. We will have social studies almost every day next week like normal. We will be moving right into Chapter 9. No waiting. I only have 35 days!!!

Dollars for Scholars Essays

All the students in the class wrote an essay on What Education Means to them. This essay is for Dollars for Scholars. One student will have a chance to win $50 from this classroom. The essays were voted on by teachers in the building. We narrowed it down to the top 3 who will advance to the finals. Our 4th grade students moving on are Brooklyn, Norah, and Mary. All the kids did a nice job. We will find the results out at the last mass of the year

ISASP Testing

We begin testing next week. We took some practice tests this week. They did pretty well on the reading tests and I feel like their writing was much improved. It was the math that they did not do very well. I feel like they were rushing though. Please talk to your students about taking their time. Breakfast is an important meal for them to get next week. Eating a hearty breakfast has shown better test results. Also getting a full 8 hours sleep is important next week. We will be taking tests in the morning on Monday, Tuesday and Thursday of next week. We try to keep our rotation schedule as best we can and we definitely keep our specials like PE and Music in place.

Spirit Day

Tomorrow is a spirit day. They can pay $1.00 to wear sweats or a hat. We are also deeming tomorrow Black and gold day for the Hawkeye Women's basketball team. We want to support Caitlin Clark who went to our sister school St. Francis in Des Moines and graduated from Dowling Catholic. So bring on that Black/gold. Just a disclosure: this is the only time I will cheer on the Hawks. I do it happily but my gold shirt will unfortunately have Cy on it.

I hope everyone had a great Easter last weekend. My son-in-law joined the church so it was a very joyous occasion. I hosted my family at my house for Easter. We had a very nice dinner. I love having my kids at home for sure. I was missing one this year as she went to her in-laws. Learning to share is so hard. Enjoy them while you can because in a blink of an eye they are married and having their own children.

God Bless,

Mrs. Sickels