¡Hola a todos!

  
 
I hope everyone enjoyed the beautiful weekend with loved ones. We have lots of fun 
sprinkled throughout this week including “Baseball Spirit Day” on Tuesday, some 
indoor planting on Thursday and a visit with our third grade buddies on Friday.  
 
La contraseña secreta (secret password) to come into the classroom this week will 
be ​ ​“gracias por venir” (thank you for coming).  
 
A peek at our  In ​Spanish Language Arts​, we will be reading and creating 
week  slightly more complex sentences using our “a” and “e” 
syllable words i.e. “Ella sale a jugar.” “Pepe llega a la casa.” 
 
In ​Math​, we are wrapping up our 2D and 3D shape unit - 
students have blossomed into shape experts!  
 
In ​Social Emotional learning​, as part of our Open Circle 
curriculum, we will continue to self-reflect on how we are 
doing with our classroom rules: 
1. Respetar a tus amigos y a las maestras (respect your 
friends and the teachers) 
2. Cuidarse (take care of yourself)  
3. Cuidar las cosas del salón (take care of classroom and 
everything in it!) 
We will revise or add rules as necessary.  

Friendly  Please mark your calendars for Friday, May 3rd for our next 
Reminders  classroom open house 8:15-8:45 AM. 

Action items  Many students already have personal headphones at school 

but not all. I was able to borrow a few pairs from our tech lab 
but do not have enough for the students who do not have 
their own. If you could check with your child and please send 
in headphones for them to use, it would be greatly 
appreciated!  

Conference  *These are very involved topics and I’m just offering a few quick 
wisdom!   suggestions*   
 
Reading in English with your child at home: 
 1. Reading to and with them nightly and asking them 
comprehension questions as you go (i.e. How is the 
character feeling? Why? What might happen next? 
Why? What was your favorite part? Why?).  
2. Take a trip to the library to find “good fit” books for 
your child to try and read themselves or with your 
support. Encourage them to use picture clues, 
letter/sound recognition, and help them to problem 
solve when they struggle with a word.  
3. English phonics app: Lexia. Login and password are 
your child’s four digit student ID number.  
 
Reading in Spanish with your child at home: 
1. If you do not speak Spanish yourself, choose books 
that you are already familiar with in English so that you 
will understand the plot and characters well enough to 
ask your child questions. Searching the books on 
youtube to hear how they are read aloud in Spanish is 
also an option.  
2. (Almost) every week we read a Let’s Find Out 
(Scholastic) magazie in class together that goes home 
with your child. Take advantage of the resources 
online to talk about it more using class password: 
claypithill2019 h
​ ttps://letsfindout.scholastic.com/ 
3. The app, Raz-kids has a “reading room” with books in 
Spanish that you can listen to with your child and then 
read together!  
 
Handwriting (pencil grip and hand strength)  
1. Many students are working on handwriting and part of 
this is related developing fine motor skills. I reached 
out to our occupational therapist for some tips and will 
include them in an attachment in tonight’s email.  
 
Being a flexible thinker and having a growth mindset 
1. Even at this young age, many students can develop 
“fixed” mindsets when it comes to learning. They get 
frustrated when they can’t figured something out the 
first time and think that they a “good” at some things, 
“bad” and others and that this will never change. Be 
patient with them and encourage their efforts more 
than their successes (“wow you were working really 
hard to stretch out all the sounds in that word, you 
almost got it!”). Model making mistakes yourself, and 
point out that making mistakes and “failing” is often 
the path to learning and success. ​ *Our guidance 
counselor will be sharing more specific resources 
 with me soon!  
 

Incorporating  Many card and board games can easily be adapted to be 
more Spanish at  played in Spanish. Some classroom favorites are: Uno, 
home  Monopoly, and Go Fish (a pescar).  
 
Encourage students to use the past “contraseñas secretas” 
with you at home! Previous contraseñas: Gracias, por favor, 
buenos días, puedo ir al baño, puedo tomar agua, permiso, 
buenas tardes, me gusta, no me gusta, feliz año nuevo, yo 
tengo hambre, tengo sed, hace frío, hace calor, día del amor y 
la amistad, día del presidente, lectura por toda América, 
buena suerte, hola primavera  
 
Palabras con poder (high frequency words)  
 
Week 1: quiero, él, en, ir, tiene 
Week 2: quiere, voy, sé, gusta, ella 
Week 3: eres, una, hay, el, está 
Week 4: veo, allí, tengo, un, esa