HELLO! I am Mr. Schaefer! I teach 2^nd grade here at Alvarado Elementary School. Actually, I have had the fortunate opportunity to spend my entire fifteen-year teaching career here at Alvarado. Hey, why leave a great place when you know you have a good thing? LOL!

This is my sixth year teaching 2^nd grade. During previous school years, I have also taught nine wonderful groups of third graders. I have a particular love for science and math, but I love teaching elementary school because it enables me to teach all subjects to such an enthusiastic age group of young learners.

During my free time, I also love to read, study history, travel, ride my bike, hike, camp, play board games, as well as visit museums and attend sporting events.

Thank you for taking the time to learn just a little more about me:-)

Newsletters

At the start of each week, I always send home a weekly newsletter in each student's nightly homework folder. I use my weekly newsletters as a way to provide parents, students, and guardians a quick, up-to-date outline of the each week’s classroom activities, such as: possible homework school-wide updates, weekly in-class curriculum news, as well as any pertinent information about assignments, tests, and special events.

Curriculum

LANGUAGE ARTS

This year we will once again use Benchmark Advanced as our core reading, writing, and spelling curriculum. During our daily lessons, we will work on comprehension, fluency, writing, grammar, listening, and speaking. The majority of our Social Studies curriculum will be delivered during the various Benchmark units and their respective daily lessons within those units. For example, civics and government will be covered in-depth in Unit 1 of Benchmark, and cultural traditions will be covered in-depth in Unit 2, etc.

For phonics instruction, we will utilize the Fundations phonics curriculum to develop word decoding skills such as the following: learning to read and write one-, two-, and multisyllabic words with long and short vowel sounds.

MATH

This school year we will also start to use the I-Ready Math Program as our main curriculum for Math. I-Ready Math was built on the Common Core State Standards and there are 5 units.

We will be using daily I-Ready Math lessons to cover the main components of the Common Core 2nd grade math curriculum, which are Number Sense, Addition, Subtraction, Geometry, and Measurement. Daily lessons will entail a mix of both class-participation-based activities as will as independent student practice in each student's own Stepping Stones workbook.

Science

Additionally, this school year we will also have the exciting opportunity to explore a brand new science curriculum! Mystery Science is the name of the newly adopted APS science curriculum, and it entails a mix of both online and hands-on activities. Thus, this year we will now be using this new standards-based science curriculum to explore the three main branches of science (i.e., Earth Science, Life Science, and Chemical science.