August 7, 2025
Dear Brackett Community,
Happy Summer to all! I hope that you have been enjoying the gorgeous weather and a somewhat more relaxed schedule. With around 4 weeks remaining before we return (there's still time for loads of summer fun), I wanted to reach out and provide dates for future communication as well as my reflections on the 2024-2025 school year. It was an amazing year 2 for me, and I’m so excited about our return at the beginning of September.
Future Communication
- Class assignments will be posted to PowerSchool mid-August. Currently this is projected for August 15, but we are working with APS central office on final timing. I will send you an email when these are posted. Thank you for your understanding.
- Letters will be mailed to all families with welcome information in mid-August.
- These include a yellow calendar, green PTO letter, and letters from teachers.
- Fill out and turn in the PINK dismissal form on the first day of school.
- Regular Thursday afternoon emails will begin on August 21, 2025.
- Back to School Night is tentatively scheduled for the evening of Thursday, September 25.
Summer Reflections
My second year at Brackett included so many reasons to celebrate! We celebrated 66 fifth graders in a student-led moving up ceremony on our brand new basketball court. We worked together to create a beautiful mosaic, designed and constructed by our students, that will hang in the main hallway. In conjunction with the PTO, we made our already hugely popular family events more inclusive by providing quiet, sensory-supported spaces and a range of activities that allows all of our students to participate. While the list goes on and on, there are two areas that demonstrate the depth of the incredible work of our students and faculty.
Playground Construction
First and possibly most visible to families, we built two beautiful new playgrounds in what ended up a 18 month endeavor. We started the playground project in January 2024 when students, faculty, and families gave feedback on the design. Swings, the squishy surfaces, multiple levels of basketball hoops, areas by the trees for imaginative play, and the rainbow colors swirling around were all parts of these ideas.
The playground outside the Kindergarten classrooms was completed first. While the equipment is minimal, it includes space for imaginative play and exploration for smaller bodies. The main playground was constructed in two stages: the first ending in early December and the final in June. We not only replaced the aging equipment, but we reconfigured the space to allow for greater visibility, enhanced functionality, and better surfacing on our Cricket field.
While the designers at Warner Larson architects, the construction team at JNJ Sacca, and APS facilities were incredible in their collaboration and commitment to the project, the faculty and students of Brackett also deserve commendation for their efforts. For the entire fall and again briefly in the spring, classes had new routines during recess that took them over to the Robbins Farm Park field. They embraced the change in venue as an opportunity to try new ball games, run and run and run and run, and learn very important lessons about safety. Instead of complaining, they spoke proudly of what was happening. In June we had our grand opening, complete with giant scissors and ribbon and readings by fourth graders who had used the playground as their inspiration for their poetry. Thank you families for your support as well as your patience as we crowded together during line-up and dismissal.
We are so excited to use the playground from day 1 this year for learning of all kinds. Play is an important part of child development. It allows for collaboration, sportsmanship, taking turns, not getting your way and working through it, and trying new things. During play, children pretend and try out different ways of interacting with their world. We are committed to recess as a time for social-emotional learning for our students and feel so lucky that the town of Arlington supported this new, amazing space for our community.
The EL (Expeditionary Learning) Literacy Curriculum & Academic Discourse
All students at Brackett were instructed using the new district literacy curriculum this year. As I mentioned last year, our switch to using the EL curriculum was the result of a comprehensive review process that focused on how we would build deeper content knowledge for students. This runs parallel to the direct phonics instruction that students have been receiving for several years here in Arlington.
The learning of a new curriculum is a huge undertaking for teachers, and I want to take this space to commend them publicly for all of their hard work and brilliance in making this program a success at Brackett. Our teachers delved into the new resources, collaborating on planning and preparation of materials. Guided by the relentless support of our literacy coach, Brackett teachers developed new techniques and learned new content. They provided our students with lessons that encouraged academic discourse and allowed for higher quality writing and reading responses. Classroom teachers were supported by the work of our special education liaisons and reading interventionists who learned the new curriculum alongside them. These teams provided interventions and modifications that encouraged total participation from our students. It was truly a group effort.
We embraced the goal of increased academic discourse throughout the school in all subjects and in all grade levels. Students learned conversational cues and silent hand signals that increased their ability to participate in meaningful discussions with each other. Academic discourse is a key component of exemplary education and allows students to process information in dynamic and purposeful ways. We will continue with this goal during the next school year and plan to roll out a toolkit for families on how you can engage in academic discourse at home.
While I expect to see the impact of our new curriculum on our benchmark scores grow over the next few years, there were already some great results seen in the DIBELS scores that you receive three times a year. Across grade levels, our DIBELS scores are strong, demonstrating growth for students in decoding and phonemic awareness. We also saw a narrowing of the gap between the scores of our students on IEPs and students not on IEPs. This was most significant in our classrooms where teams of learning specialists and grade-level teachers collaborated daily. Again, I am so proud of their work together.
In conclusion, I am looking forward to beginning year three at Brackett and working with you all. I hope to see many of you at Popsicles with the Principals on Tuesday, August 26 at 4pm. In addition to eating popsicles, we will have chalk available for you to write welcome back messages for teachers and gloves at the ready for anyone who wants to give our custodians a hand and help tidy up the playground area.
Sincerely,
Dr. Gretchen Vice