Last Week of October 2021

 Happy end of October. Thank you to everyone who attended conferences. We did have an 81% conference turn out. The highest I have had in years! I loved talking and meeting with families, especially in this time when volunteers cannot yet come into the building. Thank you for conferencing and continuing to partner with us to help ensure the success of your child's education. Here is what the week ahead looks like.

Math:  We have dived into place value. Last week we started bundling and counting ones, tens, and hundreds up to 1,000. We will wrap that up this week and begin counting up and down between 100 and 200 using ones and tens, and then counting up and down between 90 and 1,000 using ones and tens and hundreds. There has to be a lot of understanding of number sense in these lessons, and skip counting (especially by 10's and after that by 100's) is a good skill for them to be practicing for these lessons.  

ELA:  This weeks spelling will be ph and sh words. We will also be learning about nouns and contractions in grammar, as well as the ed ending. 

Science:  This week we will get into spiders, learning all about them with the help of Gail Gibbons story "Spiders."  We will turn our findings into a writing project.

Red Ribbon Week:  This week is Red Ribbon Week. With it will be different spirit days. They are as follow-

Monday - Pajama Day
Tuesday - Creative Hair Day
Wednesday - Fancy Foot Wear
Thursday - Marshall T-Shirt or Marshall Blue
Friday - School Appropriate Costume - SEE GUIDELINES BELOW

Costumes Guidelines:  Every year I try NOT to have costumes in the classroom and every year I am inadvertently overruled by Red Ribbon Week. With Covid, I am even more hesitant and I am going to stress that these guidelines are even more important that they are followed. I absolutely expect families and students to adhere to the following guidelines in order for the students to be allowed to wear costumes in the classroom on Friday. 

• No costume masks or face paint at all.  Costumes must allow for regular masks to be worn as per our Covid protocols. 

• No weapons of any kind at all.

• Make sure costumes are easy for students to remove/unbutton/unzip independently for bathroom purposes.

• Costumes may not impede students ability to move safely and quickly out of the building in event of an alarm.

• Students must still wear weather appropriate footwear and jacket for recess.

• Absolutely NO scary/violent/gory costumes - keep it second grade appropriate or I will call you to bring a change of clothes for your child to change into.

Keeping with the no food from home policy, we will not be doing any snacks or sign up for treats. We are not allowed to eat in the classroom, so this is fine. 

Pizza Party:  The students have earned a pizza party so I will be providing pizza for them on Friday, which is a great alternative for no food on costume day!  Felix should be so happy that we are finally getting our pizza!! I need a volunteer to pick up pizza and drop it off to us on Friday.  It will already be paid for, I just need someone to be my pizza delivery person. If you can help with this task please email me and let me know. 

We have a very busy November ahead. Looking forward to ending October strong. Feel free to reach out if you have any needs or questions.  - 💜Ms. Shaw

Field Trip and Conferences

 Welcome to a very different, but very busy two weeks ahead! We have a field trip, conferences, early releases, and fall break to look forward to, but first - here is what we are learning in second grade.

Math:  This week we will be finishing up our Module on Measurement and Data. We have learned about measuring with centimeters and meters, and we have been working hard with incorporating measurement with word problems.

ELA:  This week will be our second week of unit 2 in our NatGeo Curriculum, which focuses on Animal Adaptations. We will be incorporating this into our science when we return from break. This week will be our last week of spelling until we return from break. This weeks words will focus on final blends. Thank you families who are choosing activities every night from the spelling choice boards sent home on Monday's. The response from the students has been positive. Please make sure you are assembling the stories that go with our spelling and taking time for your students to read these nightly. This helps with the spelling sound as well as reading skills. 

Field Trip:  Our very first field trip has finally received bus approval. We will be going to Llamar Haines for a hike, along with the other two second grade classes. The field trip is this Thursday!! Please be on the lookout for permission slips to go home tomorrow. We apologize for the last minute notice, but we were truly waiting on bus approval to go through, and did not get that approval until Friday afternoon. I know the next question is parent volunteers. Here is what we have been told. Because it is an outdoor field trip parent/guardian helpers are allowed. Siblings and other friends/family members are not. Also, the bus is already full with 3 classes aboard. If you are interested in meeting us at the trail you will have to provide your own transportation there. Students must go on the buses with their classes. Again, we know that more parents would have been able to join us if there had been more notice, we apologize that we were not able to give this until we had bus approval. We are just super excited it went through and we are getting the kiddos out of the building! Please make sure your student has a warm jacket, proper hiking shoes, a lunch (permission slip will have a place to let us know if a sack lunch from the cafeteria will be needed),  a water bottle or two, and their backpack to lug their stuff on their own!! 

Parent/Teacher Conferences:  Conferences are next week. These will be held from Monday, October 11th - Wednesday, October 13th. I have made the sign up on Google Forms. The form is supposed to be eliminating options when they are chosen. I am not sure this is happening, but I am able to see who chooses first, therefore if unbeknownst to you, you happen to pick a time that is already spoken for I will reach out to you and have you pick a new time. I will also send out a paper sign up towards the end of the week so that you have a hard copy of your conference time. We are really looking for 100% participation this year. I think this is important being that we have not had the chance to have parents in the building like we have in previous years. For many this will be our first face to face contact, which is so unusual. Any class that has 100% participation will earn a class prize (I have not told this to the kiddos, and will not unless we actually get participation - although I have a feeling it might get mentioned in the announcements) and I heard a rumor that if the school has 100% participation there will be a school wide celebration of some sorts from Principal Reasor. I am hoping to make conference attendance as easy as possible by offering it in a number of formats (zoom, in person, over the phone). All you have to do is pick the one that works best for you in the sign up. If you choose Zoom I will send you that link next week. If you wish to attend in person it will be limited to just the parent/guardians attending, no siblings or other family members. Masks will be required to be worn during the conference as well. I truly look forward to speaking to everyone about our second graders next week! Here is the link for conference sign up. 

https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSdwr3ul48d5Zhyc24KTfW2iGnJ_lNc89uvdYqzuiFhMds4--w/viewform?usp=sf_link

Conference Week Schedule:  During conference week Monday - Wednesday will be early release at 12:25 for all three days, so please plan for pick-up and childcare accordingly. Thursday and Friday (October 14th and 15th) school will be closed for Fall Break. I hope you enjoy the great outdoors and fresh fall air!

Canvas:  For those of you that had me last year, you know that I utilized Google Classroom last year. This year the district has required all teachers to switch to Canvas (insert sad face emoji). All of this to say that I will have a classroom Canvas page up and running by the end of fall break. The purpose of this will be for students to access work and perhaps a schedule and zoom link if for any reason we should have to shut down our class room for any reason. This notification is not being sent in order to prepare for anything, or in anticipation of anything. I am simply letting you know that Canvas is how we will be accessing work and schedules. Our class is doing a great job with hand washing and sanitizing. Just wanted to inform everyone about Canvas being the platform that will be used. 

If you have any question or concerns about anything please feel free to reach out to me. I really do hope to see everyone during conferences. 💛-Ms. Shaw