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, January 15, 2017

Week 22

Weekly Greetings!

We made it through the cold snap at the beginning of last week, though the room was much cooler than when we have warmer weather. Please make sure on very cold days that your child has an extra sweatshirt, or wears a long sleeved shirt to class. This was the second time the room was harder to heat during a cold spell. Forecasters are saying we could get colder temperatures again sometime this week.

Something out of our normal routine last Tuesday was our participation in an AK Teach Instant Challenge. Even though we had a small number of of students in class that day, there were three groups of two in each team for the competition. We signed in to the program with a number of schools around the state, and the students were given a challenge to build a tower with just two pieces of copy paper. This 4th grade group continues to amaze me on how well they work together and the ideas they generate when given a problem to solve. After hearing the challenge, they got busy and figured out ways to make to complete the challenge.
It was a timed event, and when the time was up we were able to hear about and share about everyone's building ideas.
Not only will we continue to connect with scientists in different fields though AK Teach, but also hopefully we can continue to fit in the Instant Challenge events as cooperative and problem solving activities.

On Tuesday this week, the class will be participating in the district wide Battle of the Books reading competition. I am not sure what time it will start, but I will tell the class when the time is set and they can pass on the information if you would like to attend. 

Also, I am still contacting families to set times for Parent/Teacher conferences next Monday. Trying to connect on the weekend was not the best idea, as some people were not available. I will send a reminder note with your time on it sometime during the week. Of coarse, please remember that there is no school next Monday, January 23.

I have just two more pieces important information before I close. First, book orders are due this Friday and second, I am sending home a permission slip for your child to participate in the 2018 Migratory Bird contest. Most students have worked on both a literature entry and a poster entry. 

I hope you have a wonderful week!

Kind Regards,

Julie Brown


Posted by at

No comments:

Post a Comment

Subscribe to: Post Comments (Atom)