Beginning of the Year 2023

Hello Room 9 families and welcome to the first blog of the year. My goal is to send out bi-weekly blogs in order to keep you updated with everything classroom and school wide related. We have a lot coming up, so please read on for all the information.

Math:  We started the year reviewing foundations for adding and subtracting within 20 with number bonds and ten frames. We are now using strategies for adding and subtracting within 100. If you want to help your child at home you can help them skip count by 2's, 5's, and 10's. This is a skill that we will be using all year in math and it will help them be successful if they can orally count by tens. If your child can skip count then have them practice writing their numbers by 2's, 5's, and 10's. If they really need a challenge they can do all this by 3's. 

ELA:  We have been learning about character and other story elements through our NatGeo curriculum with stories such as "Taxi Dog" and "Quinito's Neighborhood." We have also used "Quinitos Neighborhood to introduce nouns and verbs and use them to begin making simple noun-verb sentences. Next week in Grammar we will continue to learn about nouns and verbs, as well as articles. We also began an intro to phonics be teaching how to use our phonics sound mapping mats and word chains with a short vowel review. This week we will begin our Science of Reading aligned Phonics program. Week 1 we will review initial blends, consonant digraphs, and the floss rule. 

Science/Social Studies:  The beginning of the year is always heavy in social studies. We started the year learning about ourselves and families, and now are extending it to our school's and communities. We read "Me on the Map" and used that to launch our geography unit. We will take a walk on Wednesday across the street to look at the Mosaic bridge, visit the duck pond and discuss what is happening with it, as well as see and discuss the new build site for Marshall. All of this as part of our community unit. When we return to school the students will have an opportunity to make their own mosaic art pieces. 

Open House:  You are invited to Marshall's Open House this Thursday night from 5:00 - 6:30 PM. This is informal, come in when you can, just a quick meet and greet. I hope to see you there!

Permission Slips:  Be on the lookout for a walking permission slip to go out on Monday for our Wednesday outing. Will need it back by Wednesday at the very latest. I will keep it for all walking field trips around the neighborhood the rest of the year (tree park, duck pond, etc).

No Toys At School:  Just a reminder that toys at home are not allowed at school. This includes notepads, writing utensils and stuffed animals. Unless students have a learning plan allowing them fidgets they may not bring them to school either. Make sure backpacks only have lunches, water bottles, weather related clothing (no umbrellas - not necessary). Again, they do not need school supplies as those have been provided. As of Friday, all Pokemon cards have been banned at Marshall. There have been a lot of issues surrounding the taking of cards. This should not be an issue for our class, being as these types of things are not allowed. Also, no cellphones (including wrist phones) allowed. If your child has one for some reason it must be in their backpack and on SILENT! Please make sure alarms are disabled. Thank you for your cooperation on this matter.

Change in Dismissal:  If your child will be having a change in dismissal for the day please make sure to call the front office or email me and let us know. Do not tell your child to tell me. For safety reasons I do not and cannot take the word of second graders, and if they say their dismissal routine is going to be different I will have to contact the office to make a phone call to their adult. Thank you for helping me get your child home safely on a daily basis.

Take Home Folders:  I will be sending home take home folders on a weekly basis. These will have a weekly and monthly calendar in them. This will be another place where you can write me a note if needed. Please look for it starting this week. If your child ever has math work that need completing it will go in there as well. 

Supplies:  Thank you to everyone who has donated snacks, kleenex, hand sanitizer, and headphones for your students. We are set on all of it for a while. When we are in need of anything I will reach out and let you know. You all rock!!

Upcoming Dates to Remember:

• Thursday, August 31st - Marshall Open House 5-6:30 PM
• Monday, September 4th - School Closed - Labor Day
• Monday, September 18th - No School for Students - In Service Day

If you have any questions please feel free to reach out to me via email at ashaw@fusd1.org. Enjoy the rest of your weekend, I'll see the kiddos tomorrow at 9:00 am :) 

May 2023 Updates

 Happy Spring! So glad if finally feels like spring weather. Hard to believe we are into the last month of second grade. Here is what we have been working on in room 9:

Math: We wrapped up our unit on displaying measurement data and wrapped up our unit on money. We are now into our unit on geometry and fractions.

ELA:  We just finished a couple of weeks of comparing and contrasting various story elements in different versions of the story "Stone Soup." In phonics we have completed all of our 2nd grade lessons for the year which included silent letters, hard and soft c and g, and complex consonant letters. We are now into introducing third grade concepts by leveling up on some second grade concepts such as reviewing all the syllable types. We have been reading different stories and exploring different points of view of characters in the story. 

Science/Social Studies:  In social studies we have discussed Earth Day and did an really cool unit on economics. The students dug deep on goods and services, producers and consumers, global economy and trade. We read "How to Make an Apple Pie and Travel the World" and each student connected how each country produces different resources that contributes to a global community and then they participated in a trade activity to acquire the good needed to make an apple pie. Then students were paid 5 cents a day for their classroom jobs to understand spending and savings. From there they decided what product they wanted to make and had to use their wages to purchase funds to do so. After they make their products we had a day where they were able to shop at each others stores and become consumers, picking what products they wanted to purchase and how they wanted to spend their money. It was a great really fun student lead unit!

In Science we completed our unit on fast and slow changes to the earth and have begun our life science unit on plants. We are growing alfalfa and rye grass lawns, potatoes, and will be propagating stem cuttings. We will be taking our plants and putting them in our Terrariums to create an ecosystem later this week. 

Illness:  We have been hit with lots of different illness over the last few weeks. Please remember if your child is not feeling well keep them home until they are fever free for 24 hours without medication. The same is true if they have diarrhea or vomiting. Let's work together to help keep each other healthy. 

Spring Attire:  Now that we have nicer weather please be aware of appropriate dress wear. No flip flops please (open toes such as Chacos are fine). This helps us with foot safety, no twisted ankles and such.  Please also make sure skirts have shorts under them and that shorts and skirts are the appropriate length. We have had some issues with excess skin and underwear being exposed and this is not second grade appropriate. 

May Dates to Remember:   I will be sending out field trip forms at one time to get them signed and done. I will indicate the field trip we will need parent volunteers for. If you would like to join us please email me and let me know. Here is how may is shaping up:

• May 8th- 12th - Teacher Appreciation Week
• May 10th - School Nurse Appreciation Day
• May 11th - Heritage Square Suzuki Violin Performance at Noon - we will need parent volunteers to walk to and from the square with us.
• May 12th - Field Trip to Library to learn about the summer reading program - we will need parent volunteers to walk with us
• May 17th - Field Trip to Brightside Book Shop and the Juice Pub - we will need parent volunteers to walk with us
• May 17th - School Carnival 4-6 - All students must be accompanied by an adult - this is not a drop off event!! See attached flyer

• May 19th - 12:25 Release Friday
• May 25th - Last Day of School - Field Trip to Thorpe Park - 12:25 Release

We have really been so busy, the kids have been working hard. Please make sure they have the chance to play hard over the weekends! With these long Friday's we have been nonstop and they deserve the break. We are not letting up, we will continue to squeeze every bit of learning out of this final month. In the meantime, make your weekends are restful and fun. See you back on Monday! -Ms. Shaw 

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

2022 Gingerbread and Holiday Extravaganza!!

 What a week we had before break.
Four short days but we packed in the good times! Tuesday was specials, Wednesday was our field trip, Thursday we built our gingerbread houses and made our parent gifts, and Friday we made our latkes and played the dreidel game. In between it all we read so many different versions of the gingerbread man story while we compared and contrasted characters, settings, plot, problems and solutions in the various books. It was a week of smiles, laughter, memories, and fun! Check out the pictures of our week below.

I have to say, the City of Flagstaff really went all out to make the experience of getting our gingerbread building permits approved such a magical event. The time and effort they spent talking to each and every individual student, looking at their plans they had made, and checking new ideas off on a list that they had printed in color was so awesome and above and beyond. Also, thank you to each and every volunteer during this week. The extra help trudging through our first snow of the season was great, and the walk that day was beautiful. I truly loved getting to bring back our craft day and making Latkes to celebrate Hanukkah, something that hasn't happened since Covid. The learning that takes place when the students get to make latkes, play the dreidel game, and just be hands on is irreplaceable. I cannot make this magical week happen without my helpers. That includes everyone who sent in supplies to make the fun happen. You all are amazing! Thank you all! 💙-Ms. Shaw