November 17, 2022

Dear Parents,

Happy Thursday! We are only one week out of Thanksgiving. Are you ready? I am not! I will spend the weekend getting ready. We have had a lot going on int he last month. It started with conference week and now Thanksgiving week then Christmas will be here before we know it. We started a new trimester this week which means late slips started over. Some are not doing very well all ready. We need to try to get back on track! I will say I feel like we have covered a lot of material and learned a lot in these last few weeks.

Language Arts

This week we are reading a story called Jose' Born to Dance. It is a story about Jose' Limon and how he became a famous dancer and choreographer. This story is a biography. It is interesting but not interesting enough to read 3 times in a week. When they have no interest in the story it is a struggle to keep them engaged. In grammar we have been learning about pronouns. we have learned the subject pronouns, object pronouns, reflexive and demonstrative pronouns. I teach them how to memorize them and keep them grouped together. I learned this strategy in 6th grade from Mrs. Early and still do it with the kids. I feel like we could spend a couple weeks learning about pronouns but this only has me doing it for a few days. The vocabulary strategy this week was on shades of meaning. Many words can be synonyms but they have a different level to their meaning. Example would be the words big and enormous. I see a different picture of what something looks like if it is a big spider or an enormous spider. Tomorrow is our normal Friday, we will have our spelling post test and end of the week test.

Math

This week we have worked on Area Model strategy for Multiplication and the Standard Algorithm. This is the strategy that you learned to work multiplication problems. We are only multiplying by one digit right now. We have done a number in the thousands times a single digit. We have to master this before we can move on in our chapter. The next chapter will be on double digit multiplication. They have done a pretty good job of catching on this week. We have also worked on our basic facts a couple of times since we did not last week. Keep working on flash cards if you have them.

Social Studies

We have added capitals to our Northeast states this week. We have been singing our song almost daily a couple of times a day. On November 30th we will take our first map test where they have to name the state and capital. We are learning about abolitionists and how they wanted to abolish slavery. We will also talk tomorrow about Women's Suffragists, who worked hard to get women the right to vote. It only took like 70 some years to get the job done. It is interesting to think about these two topics. The best part is kids do not understand why anyone would want to keep a slave and why someone would not think women could vote. I love the pure innocence in their thoughts.

Spirit Day

Tomorrow Friday, November 18th is a Spirit Day! It is the perfect day to pay $1.00 to wear sweatpants! Cold temps an snow on the ground makes me want to wear sweats!

Cold Temps

Here is just reminder of our winter weather rules. If the temperature is 0 degrees and above we will have the kids outside. So be sure they have their hats and mittens. The wind chill must also be above 0 Degrees. If there is snow on the ground we expect boots and snow pants. If there is a delay or no school this will be reported via email, text and on KCCI and WHO13. Winter is here!!!

God Bless,

Mrs. Sickels