May 1, 2025

Happy Thursday and it is May Day! I use to love May Day. I would make May Baskets and deliver them to the neighborhood kids. As I was out delivering, other students were delivering to my house for me. It was a fun day. It is definitely something that has died out over the years. In my day everyone participated. I handmade all my baskets. Today people just use Solo Cups to make it easier and faster. Also popcorn was not in the baskets much but today a lot them have popcorn. I guess its a good filler. Last year I received an Adult May Basket which was a fun surprise. So enjoy the day no matter what you do.

Language Arts

We are reading the last story in Module 5 this week. It is on Poetry. Poetry can be boring sometimes. I am working to try to liven it up a little bit. We have talked about the poems having a theme and their use of figurative language. The spelling list focuses on the strategy of turning a -y into an i and adding es, or er, or est. Like in the words funnier, ladies, and tiniest. We are practicing finding the root words and paying close attention to their spelling. In grammar we are working on irregular verbs, the "be" verb and helping verbs. We are looking at a post test next Wednesday or Thursday. This will also be out last Module in the book. I always end my year with a Unit I have made on Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. The kids love it and so do I. We will use the skills we have learned this year and put it to work in a fun fiction novel. I will tell more about it in next week's blog.

Math

We are still working on division. Again we spend a lot of time practicing this skill so I know they are getting it. Next year they do soooo much with division. I want them to be able to remember how to do it. We will work on it a few more days then we will begin gearing up for a test over division. After that we will go into Fractions.

Social Studies

Today they took their test over chapter 10 which was the first chapter in the Southwest Region. We will being covering just the important things in chapter 11 and most likely will not test over that chapter. We then need to move into the West Region. We will take the map test over just the states then we will take a 2nd one over states and capitals. We will cover the most important things in the chapter but not every single lesson. We also will not test over the material.

Spirit Day

Tomorrow is Spirit day. They can pay $1.00 to wear sweats. The high is to be 60 so that is perfect sweat pants weather in my eyes. Bring in those Dollars.

FAST testing

I have begun FAST testing. Any spare minute I have I pull someone up to my desk and test. I am hoping to do it without taking an afternoon with a substitute this time. There is a piece that they have to do with me and then there are parts they do on the computer. The part they do with me focuses on fluency and their rate of words per minute. The computer part in Math is what we look at to decide interventions.

Glow-a-Thon

Reminder that the Glow-a-Thon Run is next Thursday during PE. Please be sure you are getting your pledges or donations lined up. It will be a fun day in the gym. Our PE time in 1:22 to 1:52.

Well, we are getting down there. We are in our last month. I changed the calendar and the door theme for the last time. We have exactly 20 full days left. Seems unreal to be at this point. I had a student say today, "Wow this year has gone fast". I said because we have been so busy learning. Their reply was "we must be having fun doing it cause it is going quickly.". I love this answer. I hope you all have a great weekend. I have a weekend to myself and I am going to take advantage of it. I have a book to finish, a little bit of cleaning and some paperwork to catch up on. I hope to complete it all.

God Bless,

Mrs. Sickels