Clayville Elementary School
December 2023 Newsletter
Happy New Year, Clayville!
These few days between the rush of December and the beginning of January are among my favorite. This year, I've had a chance to look back on my first semester at Clayville with appreciation.
I arrived at Clayville in time to celebrate the National Blue Ribbon announcement and award with a team of educators who have remarkable longevity, stability, and success in their careers. They've seen Clayville pre-pandemic, in the depths of COVID, and now, post-pandemic, as we continue to plot out a direction for the school that is founded upon both strong academic instruction and a commitment to community. My goal for Clayville is for the choices we make to be informed by and grounded in an accurate picture of students' needs.
If you'd like to learn more about this, please join us at the School Committee Meeting on Tuesday, January 2nd, which will take place at Clayville and include a Clayville update and tour of the school. The meeting begins at 6pm. The regular session will begin at 6:30pm. The School Committee Agenda is linked as an attachment below.
We're excited to host the meeting at Clayville, both because it is a wonderful place to spend time and because this move to hosting School Committee meetings in different schools is reflective of our returning to many of the pre-pandemic traditions that strengthened and enlivened the community. Inevitably, COVID slowed down many in-person, out-of-school educational events over the past few years, but the fall of 2023 brought students and families back together at the elementary level for afterschool STEAM club, chorus events, holiday celebrations, student council speeches, Feinstein events and school-wide assemblies. I'm excited to nurture and expand these in-person experiences going forward because they are crucial to students' motivation, families' sense of belonging, and a school-wide feeling of community.
Over the past few months, we've seen parent volunteers in classrooms again (if you're interested, please email sarah.hess@scituateschoolsri.net) as well as visits from high school student readers, helpers, and the School Resource Officer.
Looking forward to all that is to come at Clayville in 2024!
Best,
Sarah Hess
Principal, Clayville Elementary School
Questions that Get Clayville Students Talking:
Questions you can ask about specific Clayville experiences/details that will hopeful get your kids to open up more about school:
1. Where are you with steps? Do you need any help building reading routines at home?
2. What are you most looking forward to in 2024? Have you (or your class) set any goals?
3. I hear you have a Calm Corner in your classroom now. Can you tell me about it? What do you use it for? (Psst -- this is a big push for us this year as we name and develop students' emotional self-regulation. For more info, see Second Step parent resources!)
Spotlight on Second Grade
Mrs. Forgue and her second graders have been incredibly busy this year! Here they are practicing their red card words from Heggerty with snow writing! Red card words are not decodable, unlike most English words. Instead, they're words that students need to develop automatic sight word recognition for, which they do by looking at irregular spelling patterns and phoneme-graphing mapping each word. In Mrs. Forgue's class, the focus is on literacy, but students' build knowledge quickly with sensory-based activities like shaving cream writing.
