November Blog

Hello Room 9 Families. Since I have not had the chance to blog in a while and there is a lot to communicate, I am going to make this one all informational. Next week I will cover curriculum, because we have covered quite a bit there as well. However, this one needs to be just the facts since we have so much. Let's dive in - 

Illness:  If your child is showing any signs of illness (cough, runny nose, etc...) or has had a direct contact with someone who has tested positive for Covid please make sure they stay home! Please remember if your child has a fever they may not be at school, and they may not be medicated and sent into school. This school year it is extremely important that we remain vigilant in keeping ourselves and each other healthy. So many of you are already doing this and I cannot thank you enough! 

Masks:  We have been asked to reach out to parents and ask for you to please start sending your children to school with a couple of extra masks every day. This especially pertains to those who have students that wear disposable masks. It would be extremely helpful if they had back up masks in their backpacks. Currently we are going through at least a box of kid masks a day and it is quite the expense. I know I give out a minimum of 2 or 3 a day in our room.  If they each had a few of their own to use when theirs break, get wet, or lost after lunch it would be extremely helpful! Thank you!

Discount Cards Fundraiser:  This is the final week for selling discount cards. In fact, if your child has sold cards they may bring their sale sheet and money in and exchange it for the cards at the office. The latest they can do this is Friday. So many kiddos have been telling me they have been selling the $10 cards. Nice job Mustangs!

Native American Heritage Month:  November is Native American Heritage Month. In Honor of Native American Heritage Month we would like our Indigenous students to share a bit of their culture with us. Tomorrow (Tuesday) students may wear their moccasins to school. Wednesday students may wear their favorite Native shirt. Thursday is traditional dress day and Friday is wear Orange.  All students may take part in these days, and on Wednesday if you do not have a Native shirt all students can opt to wear their favorite Marshall shirt. On Thursday we will have a visit from our long time FUSD employee and a dear friend of mine, Deb Onsae. She will be reading "Turkey's Gift to the People" and doing a craft with our kiddos. I have had the pleasure of hearing her tell this story and she does an amazing job, I cannot wait!

Behaviors:  I cannot tell you how proud I am of our students. We have earned a pizza party (Thank you Zanot family for all you did to make this successful!) and the kiddos are well on their way to earning a stuffy party (they will get to bring their stuffed animal to school for the day). We also just had our monthly star chart drawing for prizes and the envelope was full of star charts. All this to say the class has really doing an amazing job with class and school expectations, and their growth has been awesome to see! So proud of them. 

As always, I feel like every time I go to blog I forget half of what I wanted to say. I will reach out via email if I remember anything I left out. If you have any questions or concerns please feel free to email me as well. Thank you. -Ms. Shaw

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

Pictures and No Shool

 Happy Fall room 9 families. At least it will be officially this Wednesday. I for one am ready for the fall weather, the leaves, and everything else Autumn. One of the best things about this time of year is the pace of our year. Routines have been established and the kiddos are settling in, or at least it felt that way last week. Hopefully this remains, right? I am sure it will. Part of the reason is that they seem to be enjoying the curriculum. Here is what we are up to:

Math:  Last week we began our unit on measurement and data. We began with learning how to measure with centimeters. This week we will move into meters. This has been a lot of fun and the kiddo are truly enjoying this module.

ELA:  This will be our last week of our first NatGeo unit on communities. Our spelling sound will be ck words. We will also begin our writing unit on people in our Marshall community. We will work in groups of three to interview, photograph, and write about members of our Marshall community that help us (from Principal Reasor, to our custodians, to our specials teachers, to Mr. Billy our crossing guard and Ms. Pat in our lunch room). This is quite the project and will take a couple of weeks to complete. 

Social Studies:  Last week we also began our unit on communities. We learned how communities are places we live, work, learn, play, and problem solve. In conjunction with our ELA we will continue to learn about people in our communities and tie it in with our writing project. 

Green Homework Folders:  Please make sure your child's green homework folders live in their backpacks. Whenever they do not complete the math practice set they will be putting it in the school side of the folder. This means they are to complete it for homework and return it to school so I can check it. There is no predicting what day they will be adding math homework to there folder, so it is important that it is in there backpack daily. I will also have the calendar that has the weekly and monthly calendar on either side. If you wish for this to stay in the folder so that we can use it for written communication, that will work for me as well. Thank you.

Fratellis Pizza:  Fratellis Pizza will be offering 20% back to Marshall, Knoles, and DeMiguel on all orders this Tuesday, September 21. That's right, you get to earn money for Marshall, eat pizza, and you do not have to cook dinner! That's what I call a win, win, win!!!

Picture Day:  Picture Day is back! We will be taking class pictures this Thursday, September 23rd. Picture packets did go home last week. If you are paying with cash or check you may return your packet envelope anytime between now and Thursday morning. I believe you may also order online. Just FYI, it is my understanding there will not be a class picture due to the mask mandates. 

Parent - Teacher Conferences: Conferences are right around the corner. We just received word that these will be held via zoom this year. I will be sending out an online sign-up form soon so please be on the look out for that. Conference day will be early release days. Monday and Tuesday (October 11th and 12th) will be the 12:25 release time and Wednesday October 13th will be an extra early release of 11:10. Just a heads up so you can plan for any child care needs accordingly. We will be closed the Thursday and Friday (October 14th and 15th) following for fall break.  

School Closed 9/20:  Just a reminder there will be no school tomorrow, September 20th for students. Teachers will be in the building for PD. Enjoy the extra day off! 

I hope everyone enjoy's their long weekend. Cannot wait to see the kiddos back on Tuesday. -Ms. Shaw

Labor Day

 Happy Labor Day. We are diving into math, ELA, and school really looking like what 2nd grade will look like for the year. Here is a look at what we have been doing in 2nd grade, as well as what is coming up-

Math:  We are working on fluency with addition and subtraction within 100. This is a big unit, which we started last week and will assess at the beginning of next. The Friday before last  I gave a practice assessment over some of the review, and it took a while for the kiddos to get through. I am hoping now that they know what a math assessment will look like, the real deal will go a little quicker. 

ELA:  Last week we began our first unit in our NatGeo Curriculum, Places and People, which we will continue this week as well. Last week we also introduced our first spelling unit which focused on short a and short i sounds. Each week we will have 18ish words. 10 which will follow our spelling pattern(s) and the rest which will be sight words. At the end of the week the test will be over the spelling pattern, and will not include the sight words. I will not be sending home a list of spelling words that need to be written weekly. Instead I will just send home the words with a spelling menu, which you can choose an activity from each day - if you wish. If you do not, you will still have access to the list to study for Friday's test, which I do suggest. This is not something I will collect back. This weeks words will be short o and VCCV words. We will also be working on the words everyday in class during Daily 5. Daily 5 

Social Studies:  In tandem with our ELA curriculum we will begin our social studies unit on communities this week.

Homework:  After much thought and consideration, here is what I think I want to do in regards for homework this year. As mentioned above, spelling will not be a list of words that your child will have to write everyday (we will do that in class, among other activities during Daily 5). Instead I will send home a spelling menu which you may choose to do any activity from daily (up to you which one, and if you cannot get to one, that is fine - it is up to each family how to make this work for them). I will also be sending home little books that go with our spelling rule, which is great for your child to read each night. There will be 1 or 2 of these weekly. Again, up to you on how to make these work best for you and your child. 1 per night? You read first and then your child reads? Echo reading? Up to you. Just please, read these every night. These are yours to keep. The only math homework will be anything on the practice set your child does not get done at school. I will have them place these in their red homework folders on the return to school side and they will finish it that night and bring back the next day so I can check. This should never be too much, just a few problems. As always, if your child is getting overwhelmed, please have them step away from any homework for the night. Part of why I am not assigning any regular homework for the most part is that I do not believe that families need the stress that homework can bring, and that your evenings should be yours. If you have questions please feel free to reach out.

Save the Date:  Couple of dates to mark on your calendar:

• Monday, September 20th - School Closed for students (Teachers will be attending a professional development day)
• Thursday, September 23 - School Picture Day (more details to come)

I hope everyone enjoyed their 3 day Labor Day weekend. I know I rested, spent time with loved ones, got things at home done, and am ready for our 4 day week ahead! Can't wait to see the kiddos tomorrow! -Ms. Shaw

2nd Full Week Updates

 Welcome to our second full week of school. Last week was full of learning more routines, with the addition of specials and more consistency to our schedule. This week we will become more consistent with math and ELA. Here is what we will be diving into in room 9 this week -

Math:  Last week we concentrated on Module 1 Topic A - making a ten and adding to a ten. This week we will stay there briefly to review number bonds. Then we will move into adding to a ten, review quick tens to add to a ten. We will also be practicing making the next ten and adding to a multiple of ten. In theory this is all done with mini games, but I am doing mini review lessons of these concepts from first grade before we get into the mini games, just to make sure we lay down the foundation properly before really diving into Module 1 Topic B towards the end of the week, which will be initiating fluency with addition and subtraction within 100. Go slow to go fast, at least here at the beginning of this year.

ELA:  As of now, I am planning to switch back and forth between two curriculums, our old Hartcourt curriculum and our new NatGeo curriculum. This is because I feel that we will cover more of our ELA standards if I utilize both curriculums. However, I will stay with the spelling from NatGeo on a weekly basis as of now for consistency. With that, I will be starting ELA this week with our story "The Mixed Up Chameleon" from our Hartcourt series. We will not be doing spelling until next week when we begin NatGeo. Last week we also began learning our Daily 5 routines, which we will continue this week as well. Daily 5/CAFE is a literacy framework that I use in conjunction with our  ELA curriculum to teach our children how to read. Daily 5 is a series of 5 choices your child will make everyday during part of our ELA time.  CAFE is the methods I will teach them to implement while they are reading during Daily 5.  Lat week we learned a part of how to read to self, which is broken into 3 parts - read the words, read the pictures, and retell the story.  This week we will practice building reading stamina during reading to self and read to someone. The students will also learn how to read to someone (which has very specific expectations and language), word work (to build on their spelling and writing skills), work on writing and listen to reading (which also has a writing component).

Homework:  Homework will not be starting this week. 

Water Bottles:  Please remember that our rooms get warm, and the students do as well. Especially as they come in from recess or when they are at PE. Please send them with a reusable water bottle for the week, labeled with their name on it. Thank you

Supplies:  Thank you for everyone who donated Kleenex! We are set. We also have headphones for every child, so if you have not sent in headphones for your child we have you covered! Yay :)

Going Home:  Thank you to everyone who is either emailing me or calling the office when there is a change in how your child is going home that deviated from the norm, or when your child has a schedule that changed often. This communication has been helpful and imperative in getting your child home safely the correct way. You all are rocking this communication and I appreciate it so much!

Save the Date:  Monday, September 6th School will be closed for Labor Day. 

I cannot begin to tell you all what a great bunch of kiddos we have in this class! I knew our old friends were the nicest bunch, but it has been so great to get to know all of our new friends who have been just as amazing. It really has set the tone for an amazing year, and I am so excited to rock second grade together! -Ms. Shaw

2021 Welcome

Welcome to the second grade, and to in-person learning for the 2021-2022 school year! I am super excited to be back in the building with our students this year. I am especially excited for the opportunity to be teaching second grade, an opportunity I have been looking forward to for some time now. I must admit, having to make the transition with this group of kids makes it even more exciting for me! I cannot wait for the new year to begin. We will spend the first few days learning school and classroom expectations, as well as spend some time getting to know each other, especially our new friends. I will start updating the blog with what we are learning as soon as we start diving into curriculum.  In the meantime, let's get into all the beginning of the year details you may be looking for.

Drop Off:  At this time adults are still not allowed in the building without prior arrangement with the office. This does include the first day of school. Luckily, most of our kiddos know where our room (Room 9) is at. On the first day of school students who are eating lunch may be dropped off at 8:20 so that they may go straight to the cafeteria for breakfast. 8:20 will always be the earliest students may arrive at school, those not eating breakfast will go straight outside every day. On the first day of school only students will not have morning recess. This is so that students may make their way to their classrooms where their teachers will be waiting for them when they arrive. 

Meet the Teacher/Drive Through Stations 2nd-5th Grades:  There are a few things the school needs to collect before school starts so we have decided to do so with some drive through stations on Tuesday, August 10th. There will be 3 drive through stations. Station 1 your will turn in Tech User Agreement and Proof of Residency if you have not sent it in electronically already. At station 2 you will be paying an iPad fee of $25 dollars (online, credit card, check, or cash), and station 3 will be a meet the teacher. 2nd grade will be outside from 10-10:30 am, and we would love if you could make it during that half hour so that the kiddos can see our faces before the first day of school. If you cannot make it during our grade level window the front office is available to help daily from 8am-4pm.  

Updated Marshall Mitigation Plan:  I highly encourage everyone to take time to read our updated Marshall Mitigation Plan by clicking on the link. It will provide many of your answers for pretty much everything you may be wondering about this year (more about pick up and drop off, masks, lunches (free again to all, same for breakfast), transportation, specials, transportation, and so much more). 

School Supplies:  Just about everything your child will personally need has been purchased by the school or myself. The only thing we we need from our families are Kleenex (always Kleenex, LOL), a personal reusable water bottle and headphones. Please make sure to label the headphones and the water bottle with your child's name. If we ever need anything for the classroom I will let you know here in the blog, but my guess is it will just be Kleenex most of the time, and that probably will not happen often depending on how many we end up with at the beginning of the year. 

Snail Mail:  I have sent out a letter via good old regular mail, so please be on the look out for that. In it you will find the back to school letter, some general information for our room, and the above information about school supplies. This is for those who check there mail more regularly than they do their email. I will be attaching those forms to this email as well, for those of you who are the opposite 🙋.  The one form I did not include is our Family Information Page. I have sent that out as a Google Form so that we do not need to send anything back in this year. For those of you who missed it, or who have not filled it out yet - here is the link to that again. - Family Information Form Link.  Please, please, please fill this out before the first day of school. It has the single most important piece of information I need - how your child gets home at the end of the day. This is most especially important for my bus riders! If you have already filled this out, thank you - there is no need for you to do so again.

Masks:  In our Marshall Mitigation Plan it states that "masks are highly recommended, encouraged, and supported" at this time but not required. If this changes I will let you all know.

If I have left out anything you might be wondering about I highly recommend reading the Marshall mitigation plan to see if your question is answered there. If it is not, or if it is but you still have questions and need clarification please feel free to reach out to me via email so that I can help answer any questions or concerns you may have. I am happy that this year is starting off with some normalcy of being back in building, but I also know that there are concerns and unknowns with Covid still being out there. I know we will get through this with two things - open and clear communication and parent and teacher collaboration every step of the way. I look forward to partnering with each and every one of you. I really look forward to seeing our kiddos on August 11th! 💙 -Ms. Shaw