Browsing Archive: September, 2011
Posted by Jamie Kovacs on Wednesday, September 28, 2011,
The morning started out a bit rough (science is killing us) but wow, what a wonderful afternoon. We immersed ourselves in math and will continue with that tomorrow. You got a HUGE compliment from Mrs. Olsen and as you know, I love that. You guys rock.
Keep Sperry and Antonia in your thoughts and thanks for the wonderful cards. You can wrap them up tomorrow morning after you finish your morning work. If you remind me to make a giant card that everyone in The Village can sign at Cafe time , ...
Continue reading ...
Posted by Jamie Kovacs on Tuesday, September 27, 2011,
24/26 of you got rave reviews from the sub. 1. Can that be changed into a better fraction? If so, what? 2. What percent of kids is that? 3. What is a rave review and what does it mean to get a rave review from the sub?
Answer #1 in a blog and you can have 2 tickets.
Answer #2 in a blog and you can have 4 tickets.
Answer #3 and you can have 2 tickets.
Thanks for being wonderful. I wonder what I meant by "we will immerse ourselves in math tomorrow". Do you wonder too? You will find out to...
Continue reading ...
Posted by Jamie Kovacs on Monday, September 26, 2011,
I have to be at a meeting tomorrow so you will have a sub in the morning. Kids not done with their MAP test will finish it at 9:25. We have science--sink or swim experiment--at 10:00. Snack and reading and then recess and lunch and I'll be there. It should be easy enough to behave. Ms. Stamson is going to be keeping an eye on you.
I will give 2 tickets to every kid that is good for the sub. We will vote to see who was the most helpful and gracious and cooperative and that person can have...
Continue reading ...
Posted by Jamie Kovacs on Friday, September 23, 2011,
I LOVED the Artist Trading Fair today. Did you? My only complaint about it is that it was too short. I would like to have one on every Friday. Is there a time we could have the trading fair that would allow us more time--like maybe 20 minutes? Let's think about it. I think we should teach our families about Artist Trading Cards and then make some during cafe time one day and then on Fridays maybe we could have a large trading fair with EVERYONE in the Village. Blog a comment that tells...
Continue reading ...
Posted by Jamie Kovacs on Thursday, September 22, 2011,
We learned about the constitution, had some elections and choose delegates to the student council. Wow, what a day. Congratulations to ALL the kids who ran for the job. They would have all been great. Our new student council reps are Rachel Miller, Maddie Wallace and Yobster the Lobster. We had our first meeting today. Student Council kids, remind me tomorrow to let you report back to our class and put some posters up in the hallways.
Next week is WBL's homecoming celebration. Homecomin...
Continue reading ...
Posted by Jamie Kovacs on Wednesday, September 21, 2011,
Somedays it seems like all we do is science, science, sciene. Weird. Tomorrow we have a science quiz. Know about pendulums, mass, length, release point, pictograph and what our variables were and why you only change variables one at a time and which variables made a difference and what our conclusion can be and...wow, that's a lot of stuff, no wonder Mrs. Barnett thinks it's time for a quiz. Know the vocabulary too.
Today's reading was NON fiction. Some of us like that better and some of ...
Continue reading ...
Posted by Jamie Kovacs on Friday, September 16, 2011,
Weeds that need to be pulled include blurting out, talking when the teacher or a classmate is talking, bullying, etc. Blog a comment about what this has to do with weeds and where in the world I got the idea to call these weeds and you can have 4 tickets.
Following that same analogy, what are the "tools" a teacher uses? In the book Mrs. Spitzer readies the soil and gets the rake and hoe ready for work. What does a teacher get ready and what tools does he or she use? Answer these questions ...
Continue reading ...
Posted by Jamie Kovacs on Thursday, September 15, 2011,
Many of the 5th graders noticed that the 2nd grader and 4th grader they have in their family was a bit wild and off task today. They reported that this made them frustrated and tired and left them not wanting to meet with this group again for a few days. Hmmm...it's time to think about that. What bugged you about your group today? Have you even been guilty of acting in a way that bugged others? Have you ever been disruptive or difficult to work with? It is interesting to look at things ...
Continue reading ...
Posted by Jamie Kovacs on Wednesday, September 14, 2011,
It seems that today was super exciting. Kids were exhuberant all day long. I love enthusiasm but we do need to tone it down a bit or we will all collapse before the year is over. I wonder if the problem was too much contact with other 5th graders. Hmmm...I hope this science thing works out.
Thanks for all the reminders posted on my desk this morning. That really did help. Mr. Hansen helped me too by bringing me some curriculum night sheets to send home with you. Don't forget to give mom...
Continue reading ...
Posted by Jamie Kovacs on Tuesday, September 13, 2011,
Please remind me to send home a note about our 5th grade "year at a glance" night which is Thursday, September 15. Parents come and we tell them about 5th grade. I will give you 6 tickets if you write a note on a sticky page and stick it to my desk first thing tomorrow morning.
Gotta run and get Vlad. See ya tomorrow.
Continue reading ...
Posted by Jamie Kovacs on Monday, September 12, 2011,
Did anyone else feel like this was a crazy day? There is a full moon so maybe...
Anyway, tomorrow we get to meet with an officer about being a safety patrol member. Did you all remember to turn in your slips? Remember, there is a job for each and every one of you in our patrol unit. You should all give it a try.
So the end of the day was a bit too much for me. We had kids getting pulled for reading, kids getting trained for news, kids having trouble winding down after an exciting cafe time...
Continue reading ...
Posted by Jamie Kovacs on Friday, September 9, 2011,
One week down, a few more to go! But what a wonderful week it was. We really really had a great first week and I am excited to come back on Monday. We have so many fun things planned that I can hardly wait to come back and get started on them. I wonder if you guys feel that way too. Blog a comment to let me know how you are feeling about the first week and you can have a couple tickets.
I owe Rachel time to write on the sidewalks and I owe the rest of you a ticket drawing. You will add i...
Continue reading ...
Posted by Jamie Kovacs on Thursday, September 8, 2011,
I am so excited. I get to teach a game called Drop 21. I can't tell you anymore about it yet, top secret stuff. If I tell you I'll have to kill you.
If we looked at it today in class, then it's old news and can not earn you some tickets. But this can: blog a comment about what you have liked best about cafe time this week. If you do I will give you 2 tickets. Any ideas for things you'd like to do in cafe time? I have some ideas that relate to a post office, a newspaper and a store. D...
Continue reading ...
Posted by Jamie Kovacs on Wednesday, September 7, 2011,
So far so good, at least from where I am sitting. I have loved being back to school and you wonderful kids in my class make me glad to be a teacher. Love you!
I was wondering, what was your favorite thing that we've done so far? Was it wondering? How about community word building, life journals, locker tags, assembly, fire drill, shoe lesson for math? If you tell me in a blog comment what your favorite thing has been so far I will give you a choice between 2 more tickets or a chance to ru...
Continue reading ...
Posted by Jamie Kovacs on Sunday, September 4, 2011,
There were 20 kids plus Mr. Doebler, 2 nieces and a nephew, my mom, my husband, Vlad and me at the back to school party. Check out the summer vacation tab to see a couple of pictures. It was a fun time. There was frisbee golf, putting, corn hole, wiffle ball at a real ball field, the inside slide, ping pong, foosball, food and more. It was fun to have your names written on my driveway in the colorful sidewalk chalk but sadly the rain has washed it away. Good thing some of you wrote your ...
Continue reading ...
I am married to John Kovacs and have 5 sons, John age 33, Jim age 31, Joe age 26, Jake age 24, Vlad age 22. I also have 3 grandchildren, Jack and Lydia, who are the kids of my oldest son and his wife, and Baby Kennedy who is the newborn of my second son and his wife. The older kids are 5 and 2. My family lives in White Bear Lake.
____________My son John is married and lives in Turkey with his wife Pamela and son Jack and daughter Lydia. Hey, that makes me a grandmother--yikes! John is a teacher too. A couple years ago he taught at White Bear Lake but for the last couple years he's been teaching social studies to middle school kids at Hope Academy in Minneapolis. He also has taken classes at a seminary. He wrote a book called "The Historia" which you can buy on Amazon.com. He was a hockey player and played college hockey at Bethel. His wife is a lawyer worked at a big law firm in Minneapolis. Cool! Hey, guess what. I am a lawyer too!! This will be my 13th year teaching as I practiced law for over 15 years. Teaching is way more fun!! Now they are living in Turkey and simply trying to learn the language and make connections. This year my son will be teaching high school world history at an international school.
__________My son Jim lives in Blaine with his wife Courtney. They both graduated from Winona State where they were star pitchers on their baseball and softball teams. Jim graduated from St. Thomas School of Law. He clerked for a judge and now he works for a law firm in Golden Valley. His wife graduated from Des Moines University Medical School where she studied to be a physical therapist. She works for Twin Cities Orthopedics. You can check out pictures of their wedding on the summer vacation tab.
__________My son Joe graduated from Moorhead State. He, like his brothers was a good athlete and loved sports. He also is a great singer and performer and was Danny Zuko in Grease, Gaston in Beauty and the Beast, and Curly in Oklahoma--all in WBL high school. He has a teaching license and did some long term subbing in WBL most recently at Hugo Elementary School. Next he worked at Infinite Campus training teachers on software that his employer makes. He got to travel all over the United States. He is married to Emily, and there are pictures of them you can check out on the vacation tab as well. Emily is a pharmacist for CVS in Targets. They just moved to Washington DC so he could attend George Washington University and get an MBA.
__________My son Jake graduated from University of Minnesota with a degree in Mechanical Engineering and Computer Science. He is a superstar in math. He was a TA for a professor in the computer science department. He really likes to golf and was on the White Bear Lake golf team. He worked at Gem Lake so if you ever golf there, you may have seen Jake. Do you like golf? As soon as he graduated he started working full time at a company that writes online computer games. He spends his day writing code to create games. He loves that kind of writing, do you? He taught many of my students to write code in Scratch.
_________Vlad officially became our son in June of 2010 although we have loved him since we met him a couple years before that. We traveled to his homeland, Latvia, 3 times to make him ours. He has been living with us since March of 2010. He graduated from WBL High School too. He traveled to China with the high school a couple years ago and wants to go back. Can you believe that you can travel with your classmates and friends when you are in high school? He is currently a senior at the University of Wisconsin, River Falls. He spent a semester in Seoul, S. Korea in a study abroad program through River Falls. We will officially be empty nesters.
_________My husband John works for Collins Electrical Company as a project manager but he is amazing with computers. He set up this web site for me!! Thanks John. He is the IT guy for my mom, his parents, and our whole family!!
My husband and I have a cute teddy bear puppy who is 1 and a half years old. He is very spoiled.
