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.

Saturday, March 18, 2017

Week 31


 Weekly Greetings!

I hope you have all had a pleasant break and ready for the last leg of our school year to be completed. Friday will be the end of the third quarter, and the fourth quarter always flies by. There are some important details to cover in this letter, and I will start with the field trip I have planned for Thursday. Please fill out both forms attached to the letter going home and return them as soon as possible. We will travel to Frank Etsminger's home off the Tok Cutoff to look at his waterfowl collection. Stephen Rudolph, with the Tetlin Refuge, will be driving us and discussing the up coming return of birds to Alaska. Later this spring, we hope to follow up with a day trip to Moon Lake. After this week the class will be starting the district writing assessment, and then they will move into a number of days testing with the new Alaska proficiency assessment. I thought it might be nice to do an outing before pressing through the assessments that are scheduled in the next few weeks.

The next two weeks we will also be doing a novel unit in reading to focus on and hone some reading strategies we have worked on this year so far. There will still be homework sent home, but no spelling list this week. Additionally in Social Studies we will be starting to focus on cultural groups in Alaska, and in Science we will start a new unit on the rocks and minerals.

Now for a few highlights from the week before Spring Break. In Social Studies the class completed the geography and regions portion of our study of Alaska by placing small cards with land forms on a larger Alaska map. There were a number of volcanoes that I had never heard of, even though I have been in Alaska for forty years! The students really work well together on group activities.  
On Thursday, the class participated in another "Instant Challenge" through the AK Teach program. They have no idea what the challenge will be until the presenter tells them. Then they work in small groups using the engineer's wheel to design something to meet the challenge. Everyone participating in all the schools logged on have the same materials and a time limit to create.
The challenge was to build a Puffmobile using a piece of paper, 12 inches of tape, 4 lifesavers, scissors, and 3 straws.
Once the Puffmobiles were finished, they tested them by blowing air to move them and recorded what worked and what did not work. Then they made modifications and tested again. One group in our class had the farthest distance at 41 inches. Every school had an opportunity to share what worked and what they created.
With more daylight, it is really beginning to feel like spring is here! Enjoy the nice weather and have a great week!

Kind Regards,

Julie Brown
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