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

New Links

There is another new link! This link deals with the Ted talks. If you're a Netflix or Hulu user, you might have stumbled along Ted Talks. Ted Talks are an opportunity for the world's best and brightest to promote their ideas in an attempt to gain investors. Why does this matter to you? Well, after seeing the success of Khan Academy, Ted decided that they should have an education edge to their work. Enter Ted Ed (or Ed Ted...I can't remember.) This site should be full of interesting and new ways of teaching science (amongst other subjects) to kids. Check it out.

Sorry I Haven't Written!

I'm sorry I haven't been on here for a month. It seems like the month just disappeared. The Floyd trip went extremely well today, and I'm guessing you'll have lots to talk about tonight.

I added a new link that shows different scales within the universe. I showed it to the kids and they were pretty excited about it. The link can be found with my other links, or you may click here.

I'll have a new newsletter out this Friday, I promise. Again, I'm sorry for being out of the loop for the last couple of weeks. I've been spreading my time out pretty thin lately.

adam

DARE Graduation

DARE Graduation is Tuesday, March 27 (tomorrow) at 6pm at Centennial Hall. I'm sorry for the short notice. We got announcement just before break and I didn't get them out.

Again, I'm sorry for the lateness of my post.

Adam Berkey

Update

Geckos, plants

Fourth gecko is fine, just hiding

Writing grades updated in PowerSchool.

New Newsletter Incoming

Here is your newest newsletter. Take care!

It's finally happening...

We are two short weeks from bringing leopard geckos into our family.

This Week's Newsletter

Here's the new newsletter, in case you didn't get the paper copy.

Mr. B

No Newsletter This Week

I'm not sending home a newsletter this week. I met with almost every parent this week, and I really don't have to much to add to anything I said at conferences.

The kids have been wonderful since they've come back, and I think we're going to have a fun few weeks before Spring Break.

Thank you for the wonderful conferences. I really had great conferences, and I've never felt so secure and happy within my profession. I really appreciate all of your kind words lately, and I'll work hard to keep satisfaction at its peak.

Have a Good Weekend!

Mr. B

Parent Teacher Conferences, etc.

I've come to a break in conferences, so I wanted to update the blog really quickly for habit, and to mention that my school email is now receiving email again. I apologize for the inconvenience, but also would like to point out the insanity of having our district pay for an email service during a time of budget crisis even though the email service allows next to no storage.

Doesn't seem to make sense, does it....

I'd like to say that I have had a wonderful time at conferences. On Monday night I wasn't feeling good and was very behind. Mrs. B. told me I should take a day off on Thursday because I've been going non-stop for a few weeks. The idea actually sounded pretty enticing, until the kids started coming in for conferences. Since I've seen the kids again, the idea of not seeing them tomorrow seems somewhat crazy.

No matter what, I'll be here bright and early, ready to teach my kiddos. Unless there's a snowday...that would be a completely different story.

Thank you for the wonderful year. Thank you for the wonderful students. Thank you for continuing to inspire me to be better and do better. You're a great group of families, and I genuinely enjoyed getting to know you as the year progressed.

Thank you, thank you, thank you.

Adam Berkey

What a success!

A HUGE 'thank you' to all the parents who came to help with the kids with the dissection unit! The kids had a great time and it could not have happened without you. Thank you for being a part of your child's education. You have amazing kiddos.

See you all on Monday!

Mr. & Mrs. Berkey ;-)

Sneak preview

I'm Sorry I Haven't Checked the Blog!!

As happens every year, my year has gotten busy to the point that I didn't make it home before nine two days this week. With everything going on with senate, union bargaining, and school board, updating my blog has fallen to the wayside.

I do have new link I'm going to add to my favorite links site - IXL. The kids have played with this site in class and seem to be enjoying it. Encourage the kids to look into the site. Khan Academy is still be used in class also, and I'd always encourage a kid to sharpen their skill with Khan.

This afternoon I'll be getting conference sheets together and sent out. Look for those tonight. At conferences we will be doing a lot of discussion about the MAP test, as this is going to be what middle school uses for an indicator of where the students are.

Take Care,

Mr. B (don't forget the new newsletter below this post)

New Newsletter Incoming!

Here you go!

New Newsletter Incoming! Also, Colony Notes.

Out on Wednesday

I am currently in a class looking at data from MAPs. I was out for the day, but the kids were left with instructions and expectations. I imagine that the kids were respectful to the adults.

I added a new link on my "Two-Thumbs Up" links section. This link allows kids to play math games in specific areas that are highlighted by the MAP test. We can discuss this at conferences, but feel free to have the kiddos try it out. I'm curious to see what the student response is.

I'll be back tomorrow, and Math Club will continue as normal on Tuesday.

Friday's Newsletter

Here's Friday's newsletter. The letter gets done right before the kids leave on Friday, so it usually takes me part of Monday to get it online and sent out electronically, in case you were wondering.

Mr. B

Independent Writers' Guild

Here are the blog posts from last week's writer's groups. The kids will edit the blog posts this week.

Take Care-

Mr. B

Arias’s Blog news This week in math, we’ve been learning about bar graphs and line graphs. The 2 things that the graph has is Y axis, and X axis. Y goes up and down, and X goes left and right. This week we also are starting an artist act every week. Go acting! We all acted like the Earth, well Alex was the Sun. How boiling for a guy like Alex! We’ll be starting to do Solar System models really soon. Sweet SCIENCE !! I hope everyone loved New Years and Martin Luther King J.r. Day. We finally finished George’s Cosmic Treasure Hunt. I wonder if we’ll get to read George And The Big Bang. This week in our red history books, we read about Powhatan, the man who had to help the English people in the middle of Tsenacomacoh, [John Ralph], and the person he married, [Pocahontas] I hope everyone also enjoyed the spelling bee. It was pretty good to have Kyle, Nyah, Arias, Emily Bowman, Alex, and Simon do the school spelling bee. The Battle of the books, and the Rad River Ropers show are going to happen this February! I can’t wait until that will happen. This has been a very special week, and especially since we will be having some of our classmates competing in these events really soon. I will think about this every time we an amazing event.

Ileiv Math
Today in math we had a test on chapter 8 on ratios, rates and proportions. we also had a pre-test on angles and shape.
-Nyah :)

Ileiv Reading
Starting yesterday in reading we are working on Greek and Latin etymology. It hasn’t been a walk in the park but, It is a good challenge. I think i speak for everyone when I say it’s very interesting. I know i am happy with it.
-KATESTER!!! =D



Alaskan weather has finally caught up. It’s been just freezing could out side. Even with snow pats, gloves, a sweater, snow boots, and a hat it’s still cold! Might as well live in Antarctica. For the past two days we’ve had indoor recess.( at least it has not been windy)

- Jill

Ms. Iliev’s reading
Today in Ms. Iliev’s reading we studied Etymology (the study of words). We’ve been working with Greek and Latin roots. Geo, Terr, Mall, Ject, Jet and Aqua are just a few of these different roots. They all come from a book called Words On The Vine . It’s actually quite fun

For the past few weeks in Iliev reading we have been working on stories. The stories we have been writing are all fiction. The stories are due by the Ms.Iliev’s next report card. I hope they get done in time!

Ms. Iliev’s math

Today in Ms. Iliev’s math we had a test on chapter 8[which was about ratios and changing fractions and decimals to percentages] in the McDougal Littel math book.
Also we had a pretest on chapter 9 [which is about geometry.]


This blog is brought to you by,
Emily B. and Kyle FR.

Emily N. and Hannah’s blog post
lliev math:
Today in Ms. Iliev’s we took a math test on chapter eight which was about percentages, ratios, and proportions. We also pre-tested for chapter nine which was about angles. That’s what we did in Ms.Iliev’s. lliev Reading:Today we worked on Greek and Latin roots. I worked with my learning partner on -cur which means run. We are currently working on -ject which means throw.
Berkey Reading:
For Mr.Berkey’s Reading group we read our orange books and we answered questions for Mr.Berkey to grade us. Berkey Math: In Mr.Berkeys math group we started to do line graphs.
Geography:
Today we played geography games. Geography games are educational games about geography.

-Emily N. & hannah

Solar Systems

Last week Mr. Berkey's class worked on solar systems. Thought you all might be interested in showing your parents some photos of them. You guys did a GREAT job!

:-) Mrs. Berkey

Forgot Digital Letter!

Here is the letter from Friday! Sorry for the delay.

On Friday we took our history quiz and no one scored under a 'B.' I think we'll do more quizzes in Social Studies from here on out.

On Friday afternoon we finished our solar system models. I'll take pictures in the morning and put them on the blog tomorrow. I also need to publish the blog posts from the students last week so they can edit them this week. The solar systems came out really neat and the fifth graders taught their second grade reader buddies about the solar system using the very models they made. I was really proud of the kids.

I hope your weekend is going well. It is a half-day at school tomorrow - Early Relase Monday.

Take Care,

Adam

This Week's Newsletter

Dear Parents-

Here is the newsletter I sent out today. It's shorter than usual, so there isn't a page missing this week. It's just one page, one side.

Remember, there is no school on Monday. The kids did really well with testing this week. They deserve a Monday off.

Take Care Out There-

Mr. B

I'm Back

I am back in the class and teaching again. I'd like to report that the behavior for my class over both days was very good. Almost every single student gave 100% respect. I honestly thought that by the second day behavior would start to fall apart, but the subs were very pleased.

I am proud that I can leave my class behind for a couple of days and know that they will do what is necessary to learn. You should be proud too. You've got some great kids, and they are doing some great things.

I missed the kids a lot while I was gone, but I did catch up on quite a bit of grading. If I work my butt off this week there should be some progress reports by Monday.

Take Care Out There-

Mr. B

Out One More Day

I will be back on Wednesday morning. I hope ROSR is being upheld in my absence. See you Wednesday kiddos!

Mr. Berkey is out of town

I'm sorry for the short notice. I've got an ill uncle in Ketchikan, so I am currently in a plane in Wrangell, about to fly to Ketchikan. I will be gone Monday and quite likely Tuesday. If I am gone Tuesday we will not have math club. You will know more as I know more.

Again, I'm sorry for the inconvenience.

Sincerely,

Mr. B

Updated Newsletter For 1-6

I'm so sorry I haven't been blogging more. I have been running non-stop since school began again. The kids from my class have been wonderfully behaved. This is not the norm in our school right now. However, my students have chosen to get right back to work and to return to a classroom based on creating a respectful learning environment.

I'm very, very proud of them. Take care out there.

Mr. B