About Me

My photo
My journey with the Alaska Gateway School District began in the fall of 2012. For the first two years, I was teaching the kindergarten through 2nd grade groups in Tetlin. For the next two years, I taught the same ages at another village school in Northway. In the fall of 2016, I transferred to Tok School to teach 4th grade for two years. This year I requested the third grade, as I always enjoy taking on a new grade level of students. Before moving to Tok, my background consisted of four years living in Botswana, Africa, with my husband where I taught mostly English as second language learners in grades kindergarten through fourth. Previously, we were long time Alaska residents. Most of our years in Alaska were spent living in the interior bush community of Galena, where I taught an alternative program for teens, 7th and 8th grades, Title 1 reading, and kindergarten. For a number of years before obtaining my teacher certificate, I was part of the classified support staff in addition to serving on the local school board. It has been great to be back in Alaska, and Tok has been a good fit for us.

Sunday, October 9, 2016

Week 8

Weekly Greetings!

Before I recap some highlights from last week, I want to make sure I cover some details about this week. First, I am sending home a permission slip to take the class to the final Cross Country Track meet at Tanacross on Wednesday. It is the district championship, and some in  the class would like an opportunity to compete.

In addition, the school wide "Culture Week" will be starting on Wednesday with some special events. Not only will the students participate in activities daily through Friday, but there will be evening events I hope you all can attend. On Wednesday there will be an Athabascan Fiddling Presentation at 5:00pm. Then Thursday night at 5:00pm, there will be a community Potlatch and Native dancing. Finally on Friday afternoon at 1:00pm in the gym, there will be the closing with presentations from Michelle Anderson and Normal Carlo, with a video and song to follow. Please join us for these activities!

We had the final poster completion for our "All About Me" wall in our class. Even though the posters took far longer to complete than I ever expected, the students have really enjoyed hearing from the student presenting and I think it has helped us all know each other better. When I can get to it, the posters will go out in the hall for all to see.
MAP testing was a big part of last week, and I will be pleased to share the results with you at Parent/Teacher conferences in a few weeks. If you would like to see them before then, feel free to let me know and we can set up a time to discuss them.

After sitting in front of a computer for a large part of two days, the class really needed to learn by moving. In Math, we worked with multiplication facts by writing them on paper plates used like Frisbees. The group had a lot of fun chasing after the plates to music, and getting the facts written before the music stopped.
In Science, we started a new unit to study Matter. After reading about the "States of Matter", the students created a poster with the three forms. Using magazines, they sought out pictures representing the properties of liquids, solids, and gases that make up matter.
In closing, please look for your child's completed work and graded tests that go home with them every Friday. I have been finding packets that were handed out, and then left at school. Looking through the packet will help you see some of the concepts we covered that week, and how your child did on any written assessments that were given.

I hope to see many of you at the cultural events, and that you have an enjoyable week.

Kind Regards,

Julie Brown



Posted by at

No comments:

Post a Comment

Subscribe to: Post Comments (Atom)