¡Bienvenidos de nuevo!

 
 
I hope everyone had a wonderful April vacation with their loved ones. As you may 
have heard from your children, I was able to go to Florida to meet my niece Mia 
Katherine for the first time! My sister y cuñado are raising her bilingually so it was so 
special to share some books with her that we have read to the class this year!  
 
This week we will be celebrating el Día de la tierra (Earth Day) and get ready for our 
next Science unit which is all about animals. Next week some exciting little critters 
will arrive for us to care for and study!  
 
La contraseña secreta (secret password) to come into the classroom this week will 
be ​ ​“feliz día la tierra” (Happy Earth Day!).  
 
A peek at our  In ​Spanish Language Arts​, we will introduce and practice 
week  syllables with vowel “i” as well as build on our prior 
knowledge of words and sentences with vowels “a” and “e.”  
 
Palabras con poder: este, es, estoy, con, del  
 
In ​Math​, we will be getting a head start on our next unit 
reviewing and diving deeper into addition and subtraction 
concepts.  
 
In ​Social Emotional learning​, as part of our Open Circle 
curriculum, we will be talking about having a “growth 
mindset.”  

Friendly  Please mark your calendars for Friday, May 3rd for our next 
Reminders  classroom open house 8:15-8:45 AM. We look forward to 
hosting you!  
 
Permission slips for our upcoming field trip to Mass 
Audubon's Broadmoor Wildlife Sanctuary will go home 
tomorrow! Although the payment must be completed online, 
the paper permission slip still needs to be signed and 
 returned, por favor! I will also include an attachment of the 
permission slip in my email this evening to make clicking on 
the link to pay easier.  

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  
Week 5: este, es, estoy, con, del