IMPORTANT DATES FOR YOU

2-14 Valentine Exchange

2-20 Presidents’ Day-No School

2-24 I LOVE to READ  breakfast

2-21, 23 & March 2 Evening Conferences

2-28 Spring Musical @ALHS

3-13 through 3-17 Spring Break-No School

I Love to Read Month

February is I Love to Read month.  To celebrate, Sibley has some fun activities planned for the students. 

Dress up days each Friday:

Friday Feb  17-Dress Like a Tourist

Friday Feb 24-Dress like your state

 We are NEW MEXICO

 I told the students to dress like cowboys and cowgirls.  Any other ideas would be wonderful.

We are looking forward to a fun month of celebrating reading!

Valentine’s Exchange-students are welcome to decorate a box or a bag and bring it to school before Feb 14^th.  I have sent the list of names.  Please let me know if you need another list. Thank you.

Our spring musical is February 28^th.  This will be held at the Albert Lea High School in the evening.  More details will be available soon.

WHAT HAVE WE BEEN UP TO

Math

 The students have been working on:

§  Reading and creating line plots

§  Understanding fractions and decimals

§  Writing fractions and decimals on a number line

Over the next couple of weeks, we will be working on:

• Patterns in Numbers
• Algebra Skills

§ 

Reading

This week the students have been learning about the features of pourquoi tales and cause and effect text structure.

They have also been participating in Readers Theater.

Next week we will be working on identifying the author’s purpose in their reading. 

In writing, the students are finishing their book reviews and will be starting our unit on procedural writing.

BABY CHICKS

We had the opportunity to have baby chicks in our classroom. Students in Mrs. Jensen’s 4^th grade class have been reading the book “The Secret Chicken Society” by Amanda Haley.  In the story a fourth grade class hatches eggs. We decided that it would be a fun and a wonderful learning experience to hatch eggs in our classroom. After receiving the eggs and an incubator from Andy Bakken, a local farmer, we were able to turn the eggs, candle them, and eventually observe them as they hatched in our classroom. The students learned about the life cycle of the chicken from the beginning of the embryo development. Students were able to candle the eggs, observe the heart beats, and see them hatch over the course of the 21 days.

Star of the Week!

Sam was our star of the week!  Sam loves baseball, hockey, hanging with his cousins and playing outside.  Sam is a very happy go lucky kind of guy who would help anybody out if they needed a hand.  Thanks SAM for being an awesome star of room 119.

Makenzie is our star of the week! She is kind, caring, and very helpful to others.  Thanks Makenzie for being a one-of-kind person. You are GREAT! 

Hannah is our star of the week!  She is 

the oldest sister to 2 siblings.  I think she is going to grow up to be a teacher.  She is always willing to help a friend out in class and has lots of patience.   You are a rock star of room 119. 

SAGE is our STAR of THE WEEK! You are such a great friend and so kind to everyone.  Keep up the great work and continue being a star of room 119.  

 THE SCHOOL PLAY~It was a fabulous week of the Prairie Fire Theater. Thanks to all who participated.

Fun Night

Fun Night is coming up!  February 10th from 6-8 pm at Sibley Elementary School. There will be a prizes, jumpers, food, carnival games, and lots of other things. 

We have been learning about Venn Diagrams and using them to compare and contrast in reading class. Students were to compare a rainstorm, snowstorm, tornado, hurricane, or another natural element in nature. Then we created paragraphs using a hamburger graph organizer. I was really impressed with the paragraphs that were created.