Our first week!

Hola padres! What a fun first week we've had! It has been very enjoyable getting to know the classes and getting started with them in Spanish. They have done a great job transitioning to me being their teacher and I am so grateful for their acceptance and willingness to accept this change so readily. I look at it as a good sign for the rest of the year!

To begin the week, I had them take their numbers quiz and then we began talking about class expectations. I told them that I expect my Kinders and first graders to pay attention, follow directions and respect everyone in class, so that this is what I expect of them as well. I let them know that if they followed these three rules, that they would do just fine in Spanish. There is one way I thought we would be able to manage behavior in class and that is with a system where I write the word "juego" (meaning "game") on the board. Each letter in the word "juego" stands for one minute. Whenever I have someone not paying attention, shouting out, not following directions, one letter will be erased. At the end of class (or about 5 minutes to the end) I will stop and we can play a fun game of "en todo el mundo" or around the world to test their vocabulary and to reward them for their hard work at paying attention. If all five letters are still up, we can play for five minutes. If they have three letters, we will play for three minutes. It is up to them to get the full five minutes or not. They have been very eager so far to play, so I think it will be a good way to motivate them.

For my Wednesday lesson with Ms. Uphoff's class, we learned about Venezuela. What an exciting and beautiful country! We talked about the fact that it has the highest waterfall in the world, Angel's Falls and watched a breathtaking video about it. We talked about its location on the map and about its capital, learned about its flag and that their national flower is the beautiful orchid. Ask them what else they learned!

Today we started on prepositions and were able to learn "the hokey pokey" in Spanish to help us remember up, down, inside and outside. Ms. Iacuelli's class did so well with this and I was so glad they did. It is so nice to do fun things like this with them to help them remember concepts.

One other thing I want to do with them each day is to work with them on the date. This incorporates many Spanish concepts and vocabulary: days of the week, months of the year, numbers and the year. We will continue this each day and get them a little bit of practice on all of these concepts.

Lastly, I let the scholars know that paying attention is so important in class. One way they can show me their attention is simply by keeping their hands on top of their desk and their eyes on me. I find many scholars to be playing with various items in their desk and I let them know that this is not ok and that I may very well confiscate these items. If they'd like to keep their favorite things, they need to not play with them in class. If you could emphasize this with them at home, I would appreciate it. Thank you all so much for your already kind words and encouragement. I look forward to a great year!

Sra. Hamilton