News from the Hill
January 6, 2020
Principal's Message
Dear Families,
Happy 2020 and welcome back to Hillside! We hope that you enjoyed some time off with your families and created magical memories that will show up in your children’s Writer’s Workshop stories!
We are so excited for 2020 and all that it has in store for us! As you know, this month, we will continue with our new writing curriculum and introduce our students to new genres of writing. By the end of the school year, all Hillside writers will have had experience writing for different purposes with narrative, informational and opinion writing. Please click here to see our upcoming units of study! In addition, this month, our teachers will be reviewing our science curriculum, handwriting program and school scheduling working to further optimize the learning experience for your children. Exciting work!
As winter is officially upon us, we want to be sure that we are most prepared in the event of a school closing or early release. Please review your emergency contact information in eSchool Data and be sure that it is updated with adults who can pick up your child quickly. We recommend adding babysitters, family members, friends and relatives to your Emergency Contact list.
We would like to remind you of our District policy regarding outdoor play. Students go outside for morning recess, mid-day recess and after-school recess when the real-feel temperature is 27 degrees or higher and it is not precipitating. Students can be outside for periods of up to 40 minutes. Please be sure to dress your child appropriately for the weather each day including hats, gloves and scarves. At Hillside, we don't believe in bad weather, just bad clothing!
Please note that on January 10th, we will have a Late Start. As always, supervision will begin at 7:50 AM; however, school will not start until 9:30 AM, exactly one hour later than usual.
We also look forward to our 3rd and 4th grade Winter Chorus Recital on January 16th at 9:15 AM in our All Purpose Room. We hope that you will be able to join us for this special event!
We will close out the month with our Social Emotional Learning assembly on perseverance. We invite students to wear GREEN to show a growth mindset!
We know it's going to be a great year at Hillside!
Warmly,
Amy Cazes
Principal
Classroom News
Kindergarten
Happy New Year! We hope everyone enjoyed the Winter break and spent some time relaxing with family and friends. Kindergarten has started a new unit in math and will be working on exploring measurable attributes of objects such as length, weight and volume in a very hands-on way. We have been comparing a variety of objects to see which object has “more of” or “less of” the attribute and the children have been describing the difference. We have also been identifying whether the number of objects in one group is “greater than,” “less than,” or “equal to” the number of objects in another group by using matching and counting strategies. Wow, all this amazing math in Kindergarten!
We have finished exposing children to all lower case letters as well as their sounds. We will now be focusing greatly on blending and segmenting sounds to decode and encode words. We strongly believe in strengthening the foundational skills in reading, writing and mathematics early on in Kindergarten.
1st Grade
Welcome 2020! As we begin the New Year, our readers will continue to learn to use strategies for decoding, strengthen their comprehension skills and build stamina to read, read, read! Our new unit, “Reading to Learn About the World” will teach students to how to read informational text. Children will sort books into topics, notice the differences between fiction and non-fiction, and will learn to use all parts of the book to help read information. Children will study features such as, the table of contents, the heading, captions, and the index as ways to navigate their way through a non-fiction book. Our children LOVE learning facts!
As writers, our students are learning to create a personal narrative. Using various exemplar texts, our students are using true-life experiences to write a story in sequence. Later in the unit, the children will ask themselves, “What if…” and have the opportunity to add a “little trouble” to their stories. These versions will then become realistic fiction pieces. We cannot wait to see what our first graders can do with this unit!
In math, students continue to work on counting on or taking from ten to solve word problems. Students continue to use drawings and number bonds to show how to solve subtraction problems and how to write two-step solutions.
2nd Grade
Happy New Year!
Second graders will begin new units in ELA this month. Our next reading unit focuses on characters. It allows second graders to do more than pay attention to the plot. We fall in love with the characters as much as students do because they are often getting into some type of mischief, having some adventures, making us laugh out loud, or warming our hearts through their words. The unit gives kids a chance to read these books knowing they will have the chance to share their opinions about what they are reading-- such a natural thing we all do as readers.
In writing, second graders begin writing realistic fiction stories. In this unit, students will be creating believable fictional characters (about their age and similar to them) and writing about the tiny troubles they have. Students are also able to “step up” their narrative writing game, building on all they learned and practiced while writing one-scene stories earlier in the year.
Math continues to build upon addition and subtraction strategies, focusing on the vertical algorithm to compose and decompose larger numbers. We continue to build a strong foundation of place value understanding through a concrete to pictorial to abstract approach.
Second graders become scientists this month while exploring Earth Systems . They will be learning about landforms, bodies of water and slow and fast changes. Our young scientists will be creating landforms using salt dough and experimenting with a sand table to learn about erosion.
3rd Grade
Happy New Year and welcome back! This year is going to be filled with lots of learning and new experiences for our third grade learners.
In ELA, we have finished our interactive read aloud, Peter Pan, and will dive into procedures and protocols of participating in a Book Club. Just as adults join book clubs to hear others’ perspectives on the author’s purpose and analysis of characters’ motivations and relationships, our third graders will learn strategies to have these types of conversations based on their Book Club book. Students will use their reader’s notebooks to take notes on character traits, motivations, and relationships by using the text as their source of evidence. This work will assist students to develop meaningful conversations about the characters in their books.
In writing, third graders will write their first literary essay. This writing work aligns directly with our reading unit. Students will have the opportunity to develop a writing piece based on a character they have met through their own reading or our reading as a class. This could be the reading we did together in Peter Pan, a short story where we learned about a character’s traits and motivations, or one of their book club characters. Students will generate ideas about different characters and “try on” a claim about that character. Then, they will develop supporting details to prove their claim using specific examples from the text as evidence. In the end, students will create a literary essay discussing their ideas about the character they have chosen.
Our new math unit is our “Multiplication and Area” module. This unit will continue our work with multiplication, as students explore area as an attribute of two-dimensional figures and relate it to their prior understandings of multiplication. Students will develop an understanding of square inches and square centimeters and progress from using square tiles as manipulatives to drawing their own area models. Students will continue building their multiplication and division skills with mixed operations fluency quizzes. We encourage families to continue to practice multiplication and division facts with their children at home.
In Social Studies, we will continue our learning about China and its culture. Students will learn about what life is like for children in China who are of a similar age. We will also focus on the traditions of Chinese New Year and the Chinese Zodiac (Year of the Rat) through various picture books and Chinese folktales.
4th Grade
As always, 4th graders have been working hard. In math, students are almost finished with our unit on multiplication and division. Next up in the new year will be fractions! We look forward to delving into wholes, parts, numerators and denominators and everything in between.
In ELA, we have begun our unit on literary response. Students have been practicing how to read a text closely as well as annotate their thinking. The notes they write will then help them to construct thoughtful, detailed responses that include claims, thesis statements and evidence taken directly from the text. This is important, rewarding work, and we know our students are ready for the challenge.
Learning Lab 2-4
We are so excited to jump into a New Year full of exciting learning and growth!
In ELA we are working on a variety of strategies to build our reading stamina and fluency. We are working with reading partners to dive deeper into books and share our wonderings and feelings about the story together. We are also enjoying a variety of shared reading experiences in which we listen, read along, and reread interesting stories. We will be digger deeper into characters as we read books from our favorite series!.
In Math we have been reviewing addition and subtraction with borrowing and regrouping. As we practice more and more, these skills are becoming solidified. Our third and fourth graders will be building a strong foundation in multiplication and division. Our second graders will continue to use place value strategies for multi-digit addition and subtraction. Soon we will be applying these skills in word problems!
Communications K-2
We are so excited to begin the New Year!!!! In ELA, we continue to read some of our favorite winter books to target out goals. We will be exploring characters and their traits more deeply in the upcoming weeks. The students are going to differentiate between physical and character traits during this unit. We will talk about characters’ personalities, feelings and actions to come up with character traits.
In Math, our K and 1st grade friends are beginning a unit on length, weight and volume. We will focus on the concepts of heavy vs. light and more and less. Our 2nd grade friends are working on a variety of strategies to solve two digit addition and subtraction problems.
In Social Studies, the students are beginning a unit on landforms. The students will learn about bodies of water and different landmasses. The unit will culminate with a project.
Communications 3-5
Art
Music
Physical Education
Hello Everyone. We have wrapped up both units that involve our mats, gymnastics and the obstacle course, which means sneakers are now required for P.E. We will be starting our dance unit that leads up to Family Dance Night. During this unit we teach the students various group dances including Cha-Cha Slide, Macarena, Electric Slide, Cotton Eye Joe, Cupid Shuffle, and more. We will be trying something new this year at the end of the unit. Our 3rd and 4th graders will be introduced to multiple styles of dance from various cultures. They will be able to use everything they have learned from this unit and create their own routines in a group and be given the opportunity to perform in front of their peers during class. This is always a fun unit that gives the freedom for students to express themselves.
We hope everyone has an enjoyable holiday filled with plenty of relaxation!