September 23, 2021

Dear Parents,

Happy Thursday! I have to say this week was not as good as last week. I blame it on being a short week of school. The anticipation and excitement of no school on Friday is what does it. It also didn't help that I was gone. Next week we will be back into a normal week and get into the normal routine of things. I find it hard to believe we are near the end of September all ready and near the end of our first Unit in Language Arts. We are definitely off and running!

Language Arts

This week we read a play called The Power of W.O.W. It was a fun story about a a bookmobile in Dallas, Texas that brings books and computers to neighborhoods that are too far outside the city. They run out of funding and the kids who benefit from the bookmobile come up with a way to help raise money to save it. It is definitely a feel good story. I feel like things moved pretty quickly with this story and all its parts this week due to being shorted a day. I think we covered the play well for sure. I guess the end of the week testing will tell me the real story. Grammar this week focused on sentences, sentence fragments, run-on sentences and how to put run on sentences together. The vocabulary strategy was on prefixes non- and mis-. Next week will be week 5 of our Unit which means our last story. We will then have a Unit Benchmark test after that. These tests are long and hard. I break it up so they do a little bit of testing each day and then we do other things like a writing project. I will also be assigning their first book report to them.

Math

We finished up Topic one this week on Place Value. They took the test on Wednesday. I will return those tests for corrections on Monday and hopefully send them home to be sighed on Tuesday. We will then begin Topic 2. I may throw in some days of basic fact practice before we dive right in. The pacing of this text is a little different then the last one so I feel like I am still adjusting to how it wants to be taught and how it wants the students to be having math conversations. They are getting much better at this, as long as they can keep the fun casual talk out of it. Which is super hard for these kids, but they are improving!!

Social Studies

The students started their first study guide today. They got to begin it with partners, but it is due Monday so they will have to finish on their own. They may have been different opportunities during the day today to work on it but most will probably have it for homework. This is the big difference from 3rd to 4th grade. They don't get many class periods to do study guides at school. It will need worked on as homework at home. Please have them start studying their vocab notecards because there are a lot of them. They are looking at a test next Tuesday.

Reminder: There will be no school on Friday, September 24th due to teacher professional development.

I hope all of you have been enjoying this wonderful weather we have had this week. Get out and enjoy the long weekend. Molly actually surprised me tonight by coming home a day early. I was so happy to see here. I am looking forward to spending the weekend with her. I also have some school work to get caught up on!

Have a great weekend!!

God Bless,

Mrs. Sickels