The Final Stretch

We are walking into the final days of the school year. In the next 8 or 9 weeks we will get through SBA's, field trips, field day, and fifth grade promotion. Before any of us realize what is happening, this school year will be over.

I am currently shopping for our dissection critters. As is stands, I think dissection day will occur right after SBA's. Look for the new dissection date on Friday's newsletter.

In recent 5th Grade news, I finally got the Raspberry Pi up and running. If there are any students from last year who are still determined to see this small machine, please feel free to contact me. We can certainly figure something out. If you're wondering what the Raspberry Pi is, feel free to visit http://www.raspberrypi.org/ to get more information about this amazing device. Essentially, the Raspberry Pi is an attempt at making a cheap PC. The Raspberry Pi is a working PC which costs about $30. It is a very limited machine, and I do not claim special knowledge about how or what this PC can or should be used for. I simply find it very interesting that we are now living in a world that has internet ready computers ready for $30, no matter how limited or slow they are.

I started speaking to the students about The Raspberry Pi last year. I was never able to get the Pi going before the end of the year came. However, at Spring Break I had a friend visit who works in IT, and he was very curious about this semi-famous PC. So, he got it going. I'm very glad he did. Again, any students from the past curious about the Pi need only to contact me. My new email address is adam.berkey@juneauschools.org.

I hope everyone is doing well and I'm very sorry about my prolonged absence from the blog. It's been a very busy year this year.

Take Care Out There -

Adam Berkey

A Brief Moment of Silence

I rarely have time to Blog in the first couple of months of school. The first two months require that a teacher be vigilant in keeping expectations high. We are now at a time in which the kids listen when I say "Get to work" and I rarely catch a kid messing around while I'm working. It's a pleasant, quiet environment in Mr. Berkey's room, and work is beginning to look worthy of fifth grade.

The fourth graders have had to deliver a level of quality they weren't expecting, but I'm proud of them for reaching those expectations quickly. I've got a very big group, but they're proving that they have potential to be a very big AND enjoyable group. As things become more routine the class is beginning to find its pace. The pace is not always as quick as I'd like, but it's much quicker than it was in September.

We're doing writing assessments this week. Right now my room is filled with heads hovering over paper as the children try to do their best on their writing prompt. Hopefully there's some quality writing going on. I won't know until the prompts come back graded.

There will be parent-teacher conference slips coming home soon. I'll try to have them all ready by tomorrow. If I don't get them to you tomorrow, look for a conference slip attached to your newsletter. I'm going to try to have them out today, but I make no promises. Keep an eye out.

I think our first weekend class will occur the first week of Decemeber and it will involve dissection. I'll make an order for dead animals and I'll keep you in the loop. Start readying yourself for a Sunday dissection (if that's your sort of thing.) If you want no part of the dissection that is okay. Your student can come without an adult, but they will need to listen to their adult helper.

One last bit of news: Homework journals will stop soon. After conferences the kids will move to a nightly homework assignment called Drops in the Bucket. This will be more like the traditional homework you're accustomed to seeing.

Finally, I've brought two geckos into the class. They will (almost certainly) make their appearance on the blog soon. If nothing else, it gets the kids paying attention to  the blog.

Take Care,

Adam Berkey

Playing Catch-Up

It's a busy year. This is a big class with a lot of different needs, and I'm doing my best to meet them all.

Occasionally a parent comes in who is near panic that their child is failing fifth grade. First, no one is failing. Kids don't fail in this room. The closest thing to failure is getting a 'C.' A 'C' involves me standing behind the student pushing them to get the work done. I don't let kids just sit and fail. It's simply not an option here.

There has been some parents worried about homework, but this shouldn't be a worry either. The homework journal is the way the your student and I communicate in the beginning of the year. The journal lets me know who the child is. If your child isn't writing in their journal, the downside is that I don't know much about your child. It also means that your child is not doing the amount of writing that I would like them to. Why am I sending home writing? Because at this time of the year we spend most of our time in intense grammar lessons. The nightly writing is when the children are supposed to be using the information from our grammar lessons. Those kids who are writing are showing growth. Those students who are not writing are not showing growth in their writing.

Another Note on the Homework Journal: The homework journal is not private correspondence between the student and I. There are no secrets in the journal. If you look in the journal you should growth in writing over the last six weeks. If your student isn't writing, you won't see the growth. The homework journals will be an artifact for conferences. Please take a look at the journal before conferences come in November.

I hope all is well for you. Take care out there.

Adam Berkey

Hello 2013!!!

September is a crazy month for a teacher. I don't know about my colleagues, but outside of my five day absence from town, I have been in the classroom every day. I'm not complaining. I like working with kids. They are energetic and innovative and full of hope. Their optimism instills optimism in me.

Teaching, for me, is a creation of systems each year. Treating two classes the same is a serious mistake. Every group that comes into my room has their personal struggles and their personal strengths. Based on these strengths and weaknesses, my job is to create an environment in which every person is moving forward. When a class is really spread in their abilities, this gets tough, but it's far from impossible. I feel like we are beginning to really move forward, and that most of the systems are now in place for success. There are still program changes coming, and there's the possibility that there will be some grouping based on ability, but we are beginning to find our groove.

I'm excited to begin Math Club for the year. If kids take Math Club seriously, students can make tremendous math growth in one year. NOTE: To give the kids a break, 2:30 - 2:45 will be the time we quickly unwind and get afternoon snacks. We will begin Math Club at 2:45 and end at 3:30. This will also take care of kids who want to stay at school until Lego League.

I'm getting to know the kids quite well. The homework journals have been a huge help with this. The kids are willing to write me a lot about their lives, and from this correspondence I can get to know who my students really are.

Thank you for not losing your minds through the beginning of the year. I'm sorry it took me so long to Blog. I'll try to do better. I really will.

Finally, I will be out one day (October 30th) to go receive External Leadership training. I will let you know what that is after the meeting. It has something to do with school leaders meeting with administrators and going through intense leadership training.

I Hope Your Sunday is Going Well -

Adam Berkey

MIA Mr. Berkey

Families -

I wasn't in today, Monday (8/27) because I was in math training all day. If everything went as planned, the students worked on making their homework journals today. The journals will be ready to be tested later in the week. We will be Modge Podging the covers tomorrow.

I hope everyone got out and enjoyed the beautiful weather on Sunday. I'll write more soon.

Adam Berkey

Solar System Scope

Solar System Scope, an interactive 3D exploration of our solar system

Some fun sites for exploring and learning about our solar system.

• http://www.solarsystemscope.com/  A site that lets you explore and examine planets in our solar system.  My two favorite aspects of this site is that it displays the current locations of all the planets according to the current time.  Something that used to annoy me in school was they would always have charts showing the solar system, but the size and distances (from the sun) would always be incorrect because to make an accurate depiction of our solar system with distances taken into account the planets would only be small pinpoints on the map.  On the left side of the interface there is a gear that will bring up these options and allow you to set it up so the planets are easier to see, or to make it all accurate with size and distances.  Of course if you do slide the bars over to accuracy all the planets shrink down to small pinpoints because our solar system is that vast.
• http://www.sunaeon.com/#/solarsystem/ Is the main page of Solar System Scope and lets you zoom into different planets where it will give you a detailed explanation of what makes up each planet and allows you cut away the layers to see what the planet's core looks like. 

Hope you have some fun with the exploring the solar system.

Another Year In 4th/5th Grade

How Does A 5th Grade Teacher Become a 4th/5th Teacher?

This is an interesting question, but it comes with a fairly boring answer. The simple fact is our team needed someone to make a sacrifice and the other fifth grade teacher is new to our school. It would have been terrible behavior on my part to demand that Ms. Munroe (our new wonderful addition) take the class.

Besides, here's a little secret. I don't believe that we should really be treating kids too much by their grades. Every fifth grade I've taught had fifth graders with third-grade writing skills or fourth grade math skills. This did not change the way I taught them, just the place we started. As always, I'll start some kids in one area and some kids in another.

The first day of class was wonderful. You've got some talkative kids, but I guarantee you that we will figure out a solution to this problem. It will take work from everyone but we'll get things running smoothly.

For transparency reasons, my room is not at its most beautiful right now. Parents who have been through a year with me already assumed this would be the case. My room is an ever-changing space and I am on journey to create the ultimate learning space. I'm getting closer, but there's much more work to do.

I have much, much more to explain to you, but I'm tiring quickly.

Take Care Out There -

Adam Berkey