About Me

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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 16, 2016

Week 9

 Weekly Greetings!

What an incredible week the 4th grade had while attending school last week! Starting the week, we had a rather normal schedule in Reading and Math. In Science, the class continued to learn about Matter by looking at properties of solids and liquids. Working together in small groups, they sorted solid objects by color, shape, and texture.
 The next day they then explored properties of two liquids based on density recording similarities and differences.
Wednesday afternoon the class traveled to Tanacross to run in the last Cross Country meet of this year.
 One of our students was the first place girl in her age group.
 There was even a neck-to-neck finish as a tie with another student from our class.
 Everyone gave their all in the race and finished in good time.
There were awards after with the top 3 girl and boy finishers. The students even got cake to celebrate before we headed back to Tok.
 In Art the class has been fortunate to work on clay projects, and when we returned they were able to paint their creations in preparation for another firing in the kiln.
Also on Wednesday, the school wide culture week started. Our class displayed the drums they made earlier and I plan to send them home with the students this week.
Every morning there were stories and special activities for the students to learn from. The first day, they all made necklaces.
 The next day the students learned about the different traditional potlatches in preparation for that evening's feast.
That afternoon, the class made a cranberry dessert to share at the potlatch with the cranberries we picked a couple of weeks ago.
I forgot my camera at that evenings potlatch, but there was so much food and a great turnout from the community. After the food was cleaned up, there was Native dancing. The next morning, the students got to do more Native dancing and it looks like they really enjoyed participating.
This week we only have three days of school, as there will be teacher in-servicing taking place on Thursday and Friday. We will be completing a reading unit this week also, and the Spelling test will be Wednesday on the words covered these last two week.

With the snow on Sunday, it looks like winter is finally arriving!

Have a great week!

Kind Regards,

Julie Brown
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