Naaktgeboren's Class Blog

Greetings Families, I hope you are doing well. This week we have concluded our study of fractions, but many students are still struggling to understand them. We will continue to review them during class time, during morning work, and during math tutoring. Over the next weeks, they should start to gain a better mastery of the concepts they are still struggling to understand.  Ms. Rasic and I have been really focused on classroom behaviors over the past couple of weeks, and we are seeing improvements. We've struggled with students talking, shouting out, and getting out of their seats. I'm proud of the growth they've had this week.  Typing Some students misunderstood the assignment. They are only required to type the copy work once and have the whole week to do it. Some students were doing it every night. I'm sorry for the miscommunication.  Math Facts The math facts worksheet that I am sending home for students to complete in part nightly is not a timed assignment. They ...

Greetings Families, I hope you have enjoyed your weekend. I'm looking forward to starting school today. I have a couple of quick notes, and then I'll jump into the lessons for this week.  First, today is spirit wear day. Students should wear uniform pants, socks, and shoes, but instead of the uniform shirt, they may wear an Arete spirit wear shirt to celebrate our 100th day of school. Second, we've added two short homework assignments last week and this week. Last week we introduced typing homework. This is just copy work so they can get some practice typing. The other one will go out today. With most students completing XtraMath in the classroom, I'm providing a little math facts practice worksheet for home. There is one for each day of the week and it is due Friday. Okay, let's look at the lessons for this week.  Lessons English: Spalding will be the same with nightly homework. We will be creating a final draft of a three paragraph essay on the Titanic and will le...

Greetings Families, I hope you are doing well and have enjoyed the long break thus far. Please remember that there is no school tomorrow, January 18th, in honor of Martin Luther King Day. On Tuesday, we will be reading this article  about Martin Luther King Jr. together, but feel free to read it yourself or with your child (students participating in the 95% reading intervention will not be reading this article with the class). I suspect that many students are aware of the events from this summer, and this is likely a good conversation for families to have with their children. We will not discuss the current events in the classroom.  Fractions Before I get into lessons, I wanted to make sure you knew that I sent home graded work on Friday which included an assignment grade report. Some of you may be discouraged by your child's performance on Friday's math test over fractions. I would like to offer a few thoughts about this. (1) Don't let this cause you too much stress. We s...

Greetings Families, I hope you are having a good weekend. I'm looking forward to week two. Last week, the students were a little talkative, so I'm hoping they will get back into the swing of how we operate in the classroom.  I don't have many things to discuss this week, so I'll jump into what the lessons look like this week.  Lessons English: We will continue The Trumpet of the Swan this week. Spelling will be normal, with a test on Friday. Writing and grammar will focus on informational writing as we create a class essay on Monarch butterflies. Students will review their stanza to memorize from "The Adventures of Isabel." The recitations will be on January 20th. Math: During week two, students will continue to look at fractions. The focus this week will be equivalent fractions and simplifying fractions. Science: In science, students will learn about water’s distribution from a demonstration and will then look at the geosphere. During learning about the geos...

Greetings Families, I hope you have had a great break. After two weeks off, I'm missing my students and look forward to seeing them again tomorrow. Before I go on to anything else, I do want to extend my thankfulness for your generosity. Leading up to the days before the break, I was blessed and blessed by your children with their kind gifts, which I ultimately know come from you. Many of you were gracious in giving money to the class fund at the beginning of the year to help pay for class celebrations and also used it for gifts for Ms. Rasic and me. Many of you probably had no idea that Ms. Pabin, the class mom, used those funds to purchase me a gift. She, unknowingly to me of course, went to my wife to ask what I would want. I've wanted a kayak for years, but haven't been willing, or should I say my wife hadn't been willing, to make the expenditure. It turns out that Ms. Pabin's father owned a kayak he was willing to separate from and your generosity at the beginn...