October 20, 2022

Dear Parents,

Happy Thursday!! This week has moved along quickly. Even the students feel like it. They pointed out today that the week has flown by. We have experienced out first wave of cold weather. The students were not ready for it. We should be happy that the weekend will be warmer. We have been very busy this week. Lots of quizzes/tests have been happening. They have done a good job this week. It has been a noisy week, not sure what the reason for that has been. We changed desks today because I felt like a change might help that a little bit.

Language Arts

This week we read a story called Coming Distractions: Questioning Movies. It helps point out to us the things in movies that just can't happen in real life. Examples would be, when a parent loses a job, they still live in a big house and drive fancy cars. Also, you see some women in a fight and they fight wearing high heels and do just fine. We also see very bad car wrecks in action movies and no one is injured. We do not see anyone go to the hospital or be treated. IN grammar we talked about verb tenses (past. present, and future), we also learned about helping verbs and past participles, and then the consistency in using verb tenses. The vocabulary strategy this week was on Greek and Latin word parts phon, photo, graph, auto. and tele. We learned what each part means and how we can get the meaning of the word when using these meanings. We also had some free reading time this week for our book report books and we had a small writing activity. Reminder that the book Report is due Monday, November 7th. The students should be working on finishing up their books and working on the cereal box. Tomorrow is a normal Friday, so they need to study their spelling words and vocabulary packets (yellow).

Math

We have finished up Topic 2 this week. We did the practice test Monday and Tuesday. Wednesday we went over the test together and today they began the test. Not everyone finished it so we will work on it tomorrow also. I do not plan on starting Topic 3 until next week. Topic 3 begins our journey with Multiplication. I hope to do a few activities with fluency and basic facts before we begin the topic. You can help your child by finding websites or flash cards to practice basic facts at home. Education has gone away from requiring us to know the basic facts in addition, subtraction, multiplication and division. It is to me is the foundation of all math. If we can not fluently retrieve these answers from our brain, it makes the work harder for us. The more we practice these facts the better we will get a the math content. I guess you can call me old-fashioned.

Social Studies

We took a map quiz this week over the Northeast states. I had 8 people pass the test. The 4 students who did not will take it again next Wednesday. Their results are in their mailboxes to come home in their folders tonight. I can tell some did not study at all. Again it is important for the students to learn the a region at a time. Smaller chunks are easier to learn than the whole 50 states at once. We are talking about Chesapeake Bay right now. We are learning that watermen harvest from the sea like a farmer harvests crops from the ground. We are learning what seafood is caught and how. Crab Pots are used to fish for crabs and the people who do it are called crabbers. It is a very interesting lesson because they learn where certain seafood comes from. They seem very interested in this learning.

Conferences

Just a reminder that conferences are coming up. I will post the link to the sign up on here again in case you missed it. Most everyone is signed up. If anything changes you can delete the one you are on and sign up on another ope spot. I am looking forward to visiting with all of you.

https://www.signupgenius.com/go/20f0544a5a72ca1fe3-fall2

Halloween

Halloween is Monday this year. We have activities in the afternoon sponsored by the middle school. I also have a small party in the room before we go to the activities. There will also be a Halloween parade in the gym at 2:30, all are invited to this activity. Happy Halloween!

Spirit Day

Tomorrow is a Spirit Day! You can pay $1.00 to wear sweats!

I hope everyone enjoys the weekend and weather. I plan to cut all my rose bushes back and get rid of flowers. I would have done that last weekend but I went to St. Louis instead! I also will be taking a trip to Ames to see my youngest and take her some things she needs. I plan to attend church in Ames with her Sunday Morning. Only the best way to start your day.

God Bless,

Mrs. Sickels