Dear Families,       

 I hope you had a great summer! My name is Shannon Corbin and I will be your educator for the 2021-22 school year.Since I will be working with you and your child, I wanted to take some time to introduce myself.  I graduated from Arizona State University with my Bachelor of Arts in Early Childhood Education and Early Childhood Special Education.  I am currently in my Masters program for Applied Behavioral Analytics. I will be using my education to help further the development and education of all students that I work with. I recently got married and this summer I spent a week in beautiful Maine hiding from the heat and exploring a very differnt side of our amazing country.  The state is absolutely beautiful and extremely patriotic! I took a lot of landscaping photos and it is a hobby of mine. I have two children of my own at home ages 19 and 15, one girl and one boy. This is my second career and the career that I have wanted since I was a child, playing school with my friends!

  My children attended Desert Vista, and I worked here as a para as well as in the cafeteria before receiving my degree. I live in the community and feel that Apache Junction is a great place to live.  I look forward to working with you and your child!  Third Grade is an exciting, fun and challenging year.  Your child will be learning all sorts of new concepts and applying them in avenues beyond the classroom. We are starting a new Reading/writing curriculum that will help your child grow and flourish. Third grade has a lot of changes and opportunites for advancement in learning. We will be doing a lot of writing, this year.  

Establishing a positive classroom  environment is very important to me, as is having the ability to have some fun. You will often find me in my room or walking around campus wearing silly hats just to bring a smile to everyones face.  As a class, we will spend the first few weeks of school learning about classroom expectations and behaviors.  I firmly believe that children should strive to reach their highest potential; therefore my goal is to create a safe environment in which my students feel comfortable enough to take risks.  In addition to creating this safe environment, as a class we will work as a team to meet behavior goals as well as independent work goals.  I will be implementing a alternative seating environment where the students will have different options of seating throughout the day when they are working independently. I feel that students work better when they are able to move around and sit however is comfortable and conducive to their learning environment. We will also be using a lot of hands-on center based activities as well as some worksheets or writing assignments. 

I love science and plan to incorporate as much as I can into a cross-curricular environment, meaning that I want to try and incorporate science into reading, math, social studies and writing whenever possible! Science is a subject that so many students enjoy but do not get to really dig into a whole lot, I am hoping to change all of that in my room this year. 

I am dedicated to helping your child succeed and would appreciate your support. I strongly believe that communicating regularly will help us to strengthen our partnership.  Please be sure to read all communication that I send home in your child’s Data  binder that we will be implementing this year. This binder will have the students accountingfor their own grading and notes as well as parent teacher communications. It is easiest to reach me via class dojo and I am huge into parent communication both in and out of the classroom.  If you have any questions or concerns, please feel free to contact me on the Class Dojo or email me at srice@goaj.org. Thank you for your time!  

Teaching is my life’s passion and I look forward to working with your child!