This post is for anyone who received and wanted to follow up using the link I sent as an update for the class this past week, ending 10/6/17. 4S kids took home their Friday Folders with a brief memo/update. You can view (and download, perhaps?) that document here. Please note: I have edited the memo a bit; it's slightly different from the paper copy I sent home -- with haste, unfortunately -- on which there were a couple spelling errors ;( -- sorry! In future blog posts, I hope to continue to share further information and specific details on some of the quick notes I share with you via the Friday Folder Memo. While I cannot promise that the frequency of such correspondence will be weekly, I am hopeful that I can at least share these types of posts with you on a monthly basis.
Links to info I mentioned I'd make available to you:
Open House information we gave in our talks this past Tuesday was focused on classroom routines, grade-wide learning objectives, and primary curriculum topics. I hope you can access the District Curriculum Overview for grade 4 by clicking on the link below. If it works the way it should, you'll be able to view the document that we were encouraged to share with all families, and which we used to guide our talk in the classroom and in the library. Please let me know if you need a hard copy or if the link doesn't allow you to view the document for any reason. This is my first time working with file uploads in this interface, so I am not sure yet if it will all work the way I intend.
The Public Schools of Brookline
GRADE FOUR CURRICULUM OVERVIEW
School Pictures on Friday morning, 10/13. This link should bring you to the online order location:
<www.coffeepond.com/prepay_enter_order.aspx?school=174&md=add>
Columbus Day? Indigenous Peoples Day? There is a campaign to rename or at least recognize simultaneously the 2nd Monday in October, which we observe in Brookline with a day off from school, and which is a state holiday. In reading about the effort here in Brookline to reconsider the day's meaning, I am compelled to share some information with you that reflects what made me kind of reconsider discussing it at length with the students before our day off. While Columbus Day (such as it is) has rarely been something we have found enough time and context to teach about at this early stage of the school year, later in the year we do have a social studies focus on the Age of (European) Explorers which pretty much begins with Columbus' 1492 arrival in the western hemisphere. This gives us a great opportunity to examine the different historical perspectives around this time period and the peoples that were affected. For those of you interested in finding out more about the upcoming resolution that is going to be considered in Brookline, you might find the following links to be starting points:
Resolution filed in August to be considered in November 2017 in Brookline, MA
http://www.indigenouspeoplesdayma.org/brookline/
Boston Globe article about other MA / US communities celebrating Indigenous Peoples Day
Finally, some pictures!
If you have made it this far, maybe you'd like to see some photos from the classroom that I had a chance to take over the past couple weeks.