Hillcrest Happenings

Friday is the last day of the 1st 6 weeks. Please encourage your child to complete any missing work. You can check your child's grades and attendance through Parent Portal. We will have another attendance challenge this week. If we can have an average of 96% or better Monday - Thursday, we will have "1st Letter of your Name" day on Friday. Students will be able to dress as the first letter of their name. For example, if your name is Carter, you could dress as a cook. Let's be Hillcrest Best: Be here and on time!

A few reminders:

1. Our first PTA Music Performance is Sept 27th for 3rd grade. Please mark your calendars and plan for your 3rd grader to attend. They have worked hard on the music and we want to see everyone perform!

2. A+ cards fundraiser is still going! I hope you are selling your discount cards. The money raised will go directly back to the students by funding field trips and special events.

3. Parents/guardians: You may drop off a lunch from a restaurant/fast food for your child at his/her lunch time. We cannot allow visitors to stay for lunch due to limited seating. We know how special it can be for a child to receive a special lunch so we want to make that available.

Thank you for sharing your children with us. It is going to be a great year at Hillcrest PDS!

Haley Dean, Principal

#elevAte

This month’s focus is Respect for our SEL program, Character Strong. One way to think about Respect is “seeing value in all people and things & treating them with care.” Many people feel Respected in different ways and we hope this month inspires discussions with your family about what Respect means to you and how you can practice it together! Respect is 1 of 3 traits we will focus on throughout the year that helps students Be Kind. Throughout the school, students will be developing skills like perspective-taking, conflict resolution, and leadership.

Have some fun connecting as a family this month while practicing Respect.

Review Respect as a family! Remember that in our lessons we are teaching that Respect means to see value in people and things and treat them with care. Agree as a family to set aside a certain time each day this week to unplug from devices and plug into family time. It shows Respect to practice being present in the moment without the distractions that can come from technology. Debrief and discuss this challenge afterward and commit to this practice at least 1 day each week!

Our theme for the next four weeks is My Family and Friends. This week we are focusing on our family.

Wonderful Word of the Week: fabulous

Letters of the Week: Ff, Gg, Mm

Math: Measurable Attributes - We will use language to to describe attributes related to measurement. We will compare size, length, and height.

Phonological Awareness: Sentence segmentation

This week we will begin out Beginning of the Year assessment. This week and next week we will be assessing math, science, social studies, social-emotional, and physical development.

If you haven’t already, please join your students class on Remind:

Mrs. Martinez: @hpdsmtz

Mrs. Campbell: @4663b9

Please let us know if you have any questions!

Mrs. Martinez - Rachel.Martinez@wacoisd.org

Mrs. Campbell - Rosalie.Campbell@wacoisd.org

This week in Kindergarten:

We will begin administering the Kindergarten state assessment Tx-KEA. This assessment is required by the district and is given 3 times a year. The assessment is administered individually and has many components. The assessment window is Sept. 19-Oct. 21

Reading Workshop- We will respond to a story read aloud using words and pictures.

Word Study- We will identify an uppercase letter and a lowercase letter.

Sight Words- an, in, the

Writer’s Workshop- We will plan a writing piece by generating ideas as a class and write a sentence using a sentence stem.

Math- We will correctly form and write numbers 0-5.

Social Studies- We will put events in chronological order.

Science-We will identify the different ways objects move.

Please check take home folders and return them daily.

Stay connected by adding yourself to our classroom Remind 101.

Rabine (Remind): @rabine22

kendal.rabine@wacoisd.org

Whatley (Remind): @whatley22

mary.whatley@wacoisd.org

Whitley (Remind): @24kh7d

patrecia.whitley@wacoisd.org

Reading: This week we will do an author study of Mo Willems. Such a fun author to read! We will have lots of opportunities to connect text to personal experiences. Don’t Let Pigeon Drive the Bus, Knuffle Bunny and Elephants Cannot Dance are some of the books we will explore.

Spelling: pig, wig, dig, zip, lip, will, hill (short i words)

High frequency words: and, you, have

Bonus word: fall

Math: Our main focus will be number sense and and understanding addition. We are learning to write equations from pictures and getting really good at it! Keep on the lookout for a math homework page.

Social Studies: Our Baylor teachers will continue looking at families this week in Social Studies as they work with large and small groups.

Science: We will continue our topic of ENERGY. We will study LIGHT energy this week and discover how light travels and we will use the terms transparent, translucent and opaque.

Look in your child's blue folder daily for notes and info. Thank you!

This Week in 2nd Grade:

RLA - [Phonics] We will be focusing on short vowel words and will be learning how to put a list of words in ABC order [Reading] We will learn about what being a fluent reader means and practicing our fluency while reading. [Writing] We will be learning about pronouns and antecedents and will practice using them in our writing.

Spelling Words:

*Sight Words

1. mask

2. flat

3. glad

4. list

5. rest

6. spot

7. help

8. *of

9. *also

10. *animal

11. *another

12. *ask

Bonus Word: natural

Math - We will learn to find numbers that are 10/100 more/less than a given number.

Science - We will take our first TCA in science this week over Earth Materials and Natural Resources.

Social Studies - We will be learning about Queen Elizabeth and practicing how to read/use a timeline.

Stay Connected! Please add yourself to our messaging platforms:

Holt (Remind): @Holt22-23 or email emily.holt@wacoisd.org

Ronnenberg (Remind): @missronne or email alexandra.ronnenberg@wacoisd.org

Whyburn (Class Dojo): link here or email ashley.lenhardt@wacoisd.org

Here we GOOOOOO! Star Ren last week gave us A LOT of data! We will use what we learned to create groups that specifically focus parts of instruction on each child. You and the students will notice changes in difficulty and ease within their learning. Our students are also working on their Music Program, and will be bringing home flyers, scripts, and possibly music to practice.

Calendar Events

September 22- Science District Test #1

September 27- PTA Meeting and Music Program

What’s going on in the classroom?

Math: We are on the Addition and Subtraction unit, but don’t be surprised when you hear about number lines, rounding, and some operations when you ask your students what they did at school. If you want to get extra practice in with your students, we would love for you to work on addition and subtraction fluency. This means asking them addition and subtraction problems that are simple one digit by one digit problems (i.e 2-2, 8+6). The faster they can answer you the better. Schools define fluency as answering in less than 5 seconds. We also ask that they move away from using their fingers. Ask them about Touch Math…

Reading: We are continuing our work on Author’s Purpose and craft. If you’re asking your students about what they’re learning or reading please have them give you text evidence. Have them give you specific examples from their day.

Writing: It’s here! We are going to start the first steps of our Wax Museum Projects!! Here at the beginning, we will just be focused on learning about varieties of people. Your students will be picking their top 3 picks by the end of this week.

Social Studies: We are going to learn the basics to research. Some of our friends already have the basic idea, but have they researched independently?

Science: TCA #1 (But it is a Social Studies week!)

We are super proud of our 4th graders and all of the amazing work they have completed so far this year. Students took beginning of the year STAR REN tests in reading and math, giving us some great data for planning. They have learned new procedures, concepts and skills and are applying them each and every day!

This week we will work on our Book Talks and listen to some examples from special guests. Our Book Talks will be on September 29th. We will also begin our unit on multiplication so brush up on those facts! This week we will have Unit tests in Science and Math. End of the 6 weeks is this Friday, please encourage your student to finish strong!

Units of Study in 4th grade :

ELAR: Author’s Craft

Math: Multiplication

Science: Investigating Natural Resources

Social Studies: Thinking like a Geographer and Historian

Make sure you have signed up for Remind notifications by texting your class code to 81010.

Mrs. Braswell @gd7662a

Mrs. Hall @bhall4

Ms. Reeves @he9b73

This is the final week of the first six weeks! This is a busy week as we will be finishing and fixing a lot of the work we’ve done over the past six weeks to give students the greatest opportunity to be successful.

This week:

Math: We are continuing order of operations and going into algebraic reasoning. We are introducing computations of equations with variables.

Science: We are taking our Beginning Of Year (BOY) Science placement test. We will also be reviewing for and taking our District Unit Test over forms of energy, circuits, and light.

Reading: We are focusing on summarizing and retelling what we have read.

Social Studies: We are reading about the 13 colonies.

Please read 20 minutes every night!

Please make sure to send a water bottle. We do not have access to water fountains during the day and students get very thirsty! We do have the ability to fill the bottles.

Feel free to contact us through remind or email us!

~The fabulous fifth grade team~

Mrs. Land holly.land@wacoisd.org

Mr. Dossey lenard.dossey@wacoisd.org

Ms. Hardin tracey.hardin@wacoisd.org

From PE

What a great start to the 2022-2023 school year we have had in PE.

Our Pre-K-2nd graders have been doing all things Bean Bags! We have worked on individual tossing and catching, tricks, partner tossing and catching, we have created our own games using bean bags and this week we have done stations incorporating all of the skills we have worked on plus a few other things, just for fun! Please try to make sure your students wear tennis shoes to school EVERYDAY. Even if it is a music day your student wants to run around and play safely at recess.

Our 3rd-5th grade students started the year playing one of their favorites, Matball. Matball is an indoor kickball game that is played using mats instead of bases. Matball is different than kickball because there is no limit to how many people can be on the bases at one time and there is no limit to how many times the students can round the bases during their team’s at bat. 3rd-5th grade students have also spent a few days assessing their Fitnessgram sit ups, push ups and Pacer skills so that we can see how much progress they can make this year.

Coach Stephens & Coach Arnold

If your student is in 4th or 5th grade and is interested in being a part of Showtime Company's musical performance of Willy Wonka Junior please scan the QR code that will take you to a form that allows you register for the preview day and parent meeting.

Parents:

The PTA has created a Google Form that allows you to sign up for membership from home. Please click on the link below and fill out the membership form if you are interested in joining the HPDS PTA. If you have already filled out a paper form to join this school year, there is no need to complete this online form.

Thanks!

https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSfG9FG-7QV2bY87-SIcMPTsA0JwSjxQjVZ4iUd2R_JvPD4CaQ/viewform?usp=sf_link

Lunches are free to all students, however if you would like for your student to have money on their accounts for ice cream ($1.00) or chips ($0.75) on Friday's or for extra helpings, please see the schoolcafe app information below. From this app, you can manage your student's balance, as well as see menus and nutritional information.