January 30, 2025

Dear Parents,

Happy Thursday! Can you believe it is the end of January? I can't ! Mainly cause we have not had one snow day! Where is the fun in that! We have covered a lot of material this month because of that. This week has been kinda crazy but fun. Monday and Tuesday were great! Wednesday we struggled a bit because it was a very different day. No Mass throws us for a loop. We did settle down and get all our work done. Today and Friday are different days also. Our mornings will be the same so hopefully we can complete our lessons in the morning with no problem.

Language Arts

We started Module 4 on Monday. The story is a sort-of Fairy Tale. It has some similarities to Cinderella. The Module will focus on Heroes. We talked about traits heroes might have. We watched a video clip on heroes from movies to real life heroes. The story is meant to humorous but I feel its a stretch. I am not sure the students found it that funny. It is called Prince Charming Misplaces his Bride. I would be interested to have you ask your child about it and if they found it to be funny. Our grammar for this story is all about Pronouns. I have taught them the pronouns like I was taught in 6th grade. Mrs. Early was my teacher in Cromwell, and we had like a chant to recite the pronouns. We focus on Subject and Object pronouns. We will also focus on the antecedent. Which is what the pronoun is replacing. The spelling list this week is again over r-controlled vowels. The strategies we are using with our story are: theme, text and graphic features, and point of view. The spelling post test and end of the story assessment will be on Tuesday, February 4th.

Math

We finished up talking about the Area Box method of double-digit multiplication. On Wednesday we started to practice Partial Products. I modeled a few times on the board. I had them try a couple in their book, then we checked them to see how we were doing. Today, we practiced a few more on the board and they were assigned the rest of the problems in their books. This strategy is not hard at all. It just is a lot of writing. I require them to write all the steps so I know they understand what they are doing.

Social Studies

Well, they did their first sequence worksheet this week. I taught them a strategy of using post-it notes to help them. Many of them did a great job. I had a few who struggled and needed to correct. Sometimes you can place the post it notes in the wrong place which throws their order off. I still feel it is a great strategy to use. We have moved into talking about many historical events that took place in the Southeast or important people. George Washington, James Madison, Thomas Jefferson, and Andrew Jackson all were born in the Southeast. The main settlements we skimmed were St. Augustine, Roanoke, and Jamestown. We will also skim the subject of slavery and the Civil War. These are huge topics that one could spend an entire unit teaching but we just skim the surface.

Grandparent Mass

Friday is Dress to Impress Day. We are all to look our best for our special guests. The kids will be dismissed at 1:00 that day. We will start loading kids in cars at that time. The expectation is that their grandparent or guest takes them right over to the church for Mass. We want Mass to begin at 1:30. The kids are dismissed to go home with their special guest/grandparent at the conclusion of Mass.

Homework

I have been having trouble recently with many students turning in homework that is not complete. I am not sure why they are doing that besides they are being careless and not double checking that their work is done. I told them today that I have to check all the problems so I am not going to miss the fact that the paper is not done. They will still get late slips, but they will deal with the score they receive. For some, they will get the paper back for corrections, for others they will just take the score they are given (this is decided by the number they miss). I am hoping this will help them to be more careful about being sure the work is complete. Maybe some of you want to start helping them at home by making sure their things are complete before coming to school.

CYC Presentation

Next Wednesday, February 5th will be a CYC presentation after Mass for the students. This is an introduction to the camp. They usually show a video of all the fun. Registration is all ready open. I know many of the student have attended in the past. So get them signed up.

Ben Tracy

The presentation by Ben Tracy has been reschedules for Wednesday, February 12th. Mark your calendars. This is to be a very interesting presentation.

Today was a great day bowling and golfing. I had not been in the place for a long time and I was very impressed. What a fun place to have with fun things to do. I felt like all the kids had a great time. Have a great weekend. I think I am just lying low this weekend. Lots of reading and relaxing is what I want to do.

God Bless,

Mrs. Sickels