Mid February Blog

 Happy middle of February. The weeks have been short due to snow, but we are still packing in the learning, and sprinkling in some fun and celebrations of our students. Lots of information, so please read on...

Math:  We have wrapped up our unit on strategies for composing and decomposing tens and hundreds. Now we will move into problem solving with categorical data (basically graphing and using data from graphs to solve problems).

ELA:  Due to snow days we did not get to complete last weeks phonics lesson, so we will continue it this week. We are learning about vowel -r phongrams air/are, ear/ere, and oar/ore. This is a lot in one week, but our second graders are doing great with it! Next week will be a review week of vowel -r (ar, or, w+ar, w+or, er, ur, and ir) and vowel -r phonograms, followed by the end of unit test on all of it. 

Science/Social Studies:  We are continuing our unit on landforms learning about fast and slow changes to the earth (think erosion and natural disasters). We are also continuing our Black History month unit with learning about different inventors (think Garrett Morgan, George Crum, Patricia Bath and others) and learning about Raye Montague, the girl who loved math.

Weather:  Not gonna lie, part of me is like "What is going on with all this snow?" while the Flagstaff native in me is loving every single bit of it. The teacher in me is siding with the later, and it is currently rumored that we have more snow on the way starting Tuesday night. Not sure how this will all play out for school closures. Up until now we had enough instructional minutes that students were not affected by snow day closures. That may change if we have any more. What will this mean for make up? No communication has been sent out yet (probably because of the next anticipated storm) but as soon as we see if we have any more snow days, and figure out just how many days students will need to make up and how I will let you all know. 

Dates to Remember: 

• Tuesday, March 6th - Friday, March 10th Scholastic Book Fair (Flyers, Links, Grandparents Day, and more information to come)
• Wednesday, March 8th - Friday, March 10th - Parent/Teacher Conferences (I will be sending out an online sign up soon. Conferences will be 20 minutes)
• Monday, March 13th - Friday, March 17th Spring Break

Spelling Bee:  Congratulations to Murphy for making it to the third round in the Coconino County Spelling Bee! See did amazing, and we are all so proud of her!!

Valentines:  Two days late thanks to the snow, but the students thoroughly enjoyed our valentines exchange on Thursday. Check out pics of our little lovebugs:

Think Assembly:  Friday was our third THINK assembly of the year, we celebrated students who were honored with certificated for the letter I, for innovative. Here are some pictures of those students from our class that were recognized for being innovative thinkers:

Hope you all have a great three day weekend!

 -Ms. Shaw

Beginning 2023 Post

 Happy 2023! We have been busy in second grade. Let me catch you up on all the exciting things that have been going on in Room 9 and at Marshall this past month.

Math:  We have worked steadily on strategies for composing and desomposing tens and tens and hundreds in a math problem and writing and solving these problems vertically. The students have worked hard on understanding these concepts but have really shown an understanding of how to solve with making groups of ten or ten tens, or breaking apart ten or ten tens. 

ELA:  We have dove right back into our phonics program, and I am loving seeing the application of what we are learning in phonics to our reading. We just wrapped up our 7 week unit on unpredictable vowel teams with a big unit assessment, which they did amazing on.  Last week we started learning about vowel r, with ar, or, war, and wor. This week is er, ir, and ur, which is tricky because they make the same sound but the difference is in the spelling (with er being the most common).  In January we did our lit unit on Snowflake Bentley which helped us learn about how snowflakes are formed. 

Science/Social Studies:  We have had a great combination of science and social studies this semester. We have learned about Dr. Martin Luther King Jr, and this month we are headed into our unit on Black History Month. We talked briefly about the groundhog in honor of Groundhogs day, and learned more about the origins of the holiday. We are also graphing the weather this month to help us transition into our data and graphing unit in math. We also had a discussion about how the weather and seasons play into the weather predictions and will be ending our science unit on solids, liquids, and gases with the water cycle and learning a little about clouds. We have also begun our unit on landforms and how they are created. 

Spelling Bee:  In January our very own Murphy won our school wide spelling bee (for the second year in a row)!! She will be competing in the county spelling bee this weekend at FHS at 10 am. It will also be live streamed on Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/CCESA.ID/live_videos/. Here are some pictures of her from the Marshall School Spelling Bee. Way to go Murphy, we are cheering you on!!

Valentines:  We will be doing a valentines exchange this year. I am attaching a list of names in case your child would like to write names on their cards. To be honest, it is a lot easier on you and us if your child only writes their name on their cards. We will not be doing a sign up for snacks, but if you would like to send in a sealed, pre-packaged treat to be shared in class that day we will enjoy whatever treats that are sent in. Healthy snacks are always welcomed, like fruit and veggie trays. The kids really do love those. Class Valentines List.

Snacks:  Speaking of pre packaged treats, we are in need of snacks. We made it all the way through the beginning of February with the last round of donations, which is so awesome. We are officially out as of today. If you are able to donate snacks for 19 hungry second graders we would greatly appreciate it. Again, I do have a mini fridge for any cold items purchased. Thank you in advance!

Mark Your Calendar:  Dates to remember - 

• Monday, February 20th- School Closed 

• Wednesday, March 8th - Friday, March 10th - Parent/Teacher Conferences

• Monday, March 13th - Friday, March 17th - Spring Break

I truly cannot believe how quickly January flew by, and how February seems to be doing the same. We are seeing so much growth in the students, which is exciting and amazing. I will send more information about conferences as the time draws near. As for now, if you have any questions please feel free to reach out. -💜Ms. Shaw