News from the Hill
February 10. 2017
Principal's Message
Dear Families,
It has been another busy week at Hillside! Our teachers completed our SEL survey and the results are in. The two programs that teachers are recommending for consideration at Hillside are Open Circle and Second Step. We have met with our support staff to share the pros and cons of each program and gain additional insight. Next week, we will host three parent focus groups to provide input into each program's strengths and weaknesses. We hope to make a final decision by the end of February so that we can begin planning for a roll out in the 2017-2018 school year.
I would like to remind you that report cards will be accessible on our Parent Portal in March. If you have not yet set up an account, instructions can be accessed at http://www.hohschools.org/domain/968. We encourage you to utilize this online system to have 24/7 access to your child's information. We will also be using the Portal for placement communication at the end of the summer to alleviate the challenge of receiving mail when on vacation.
As you know, our PTSA is our partner in the education of our children. We would like to thank them for facilitating the scheduled lice check on April 24th. Also, we are excited to announce that the PTSA will be generously funding a special program for 4th grade in conjunction with their colonial life unit where students will be learning about building 2D and 3D colonial structures. It is sure to be a very worthwhile experience!
Tonight is Family Dance Night at Hillside at 6PM. Our students have been learning new dances in Physical Education and we look forward to this festive community event. We hope to see you there!
Warm regards,
Amy Cazes
Principal
Hillside Technology Night
Author/Illustrator Bob Shea to Visit Hillside on March 2nd!
Just a reminder that the very talented author/illustrator Bob Shea will be visiting Hillside on Thursday, March 2nd thanks to a generous grant from the Hastings Education Foundation. The PTSA will be selling a selection of his books, which, if purchased, can be inscribed for your child/family by Mr. Shea during his visit. We are collecting order forms through early next week (forms were backpacked last week), however if you need another, please view the link below. Thank you!
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1eZQJSQbpNKLpZp3iMwyOPZkMUq6XfEGTepyQuILfcsg/edit?usp=sharing
Classroom News
Kindergarten
In Kindergarten, the children are enjoying learning all about kings, queens and royal families around the world. In this unit, the children will also learn about the responsibilities, lifestyles and customs associated with royalty throughout history. Soon, we will start building castles in the classroom. Thank you to all the families for collecting materials for our castle making project. We are very excited to start building our castles soon.
We have started a new study for Writer’s Workshop called “Writing from the Heart.” We are exploring different emotions (happy, sad, disappointed, fearful, etc.) and using these emotions to remember stories in our life that have been triggered by these emotions. It is great to see all the happy writers in Kindergarten!
First Grade
First graders are growing leaps and bounds! As readers, our students continue to learn to use strategies for decoding, strengthen their comprehension and build stamina to read, read, read! Our writers continue to work on their personal narratives, revising and editing pieces to make them better. Students are learning to use temporal words, create powerful images and show strong emotions to make their writing more interesting.
Our current math unit focuses on measurement. Students are learning to compare one object to the length of two other objects, learning to order objects from shortest to longest, measure objects with similar units and to represent and interpret data. The students are using lots of different materials, such as paper clips, string, centimeter cubes and rulers to measure various objects. In honor of Black History Month, first graders are learning about the accomplishments of Ruby Bridges, Rosa Parks, George Washington Carver and Frederick Douglas. Students will use writing to create a “Certificate of Bravery.” We’d like to extend our best wishes for a relaxing winter break! Enjoy the time spent with your family and friends!
Second Grade
During the next two weeks, we will wrap up our fifth math unit. The unit extended our work with place value, work with the addition and subtraction algorithms and problem solving. During the next two weeks, we will cover checking work. Upon our return from the vacation, we will begin our sixth unit, which is an introduction to multiplication.
In Language Arts the students have completed their individual research regarding the life cycle of an organism. The students are currently writing their nonfiction books based upon their research which will incorporate the various features of nonfiction texts, including a table of contents, pictures with captions, a glossary and an index. After the vacation, we will extend our work with nonfiction texts to our guided reading instruction.
Communications Class K-2
We have been very busy so far this month!
As a whole class, we are participating in many hands-on activities that are both engaging and educational! Some of our favorites are cooking and making playdough. So far we have made 3 types of playdough, gak, and have recently cooked chocolate chip muffins—yum! Any donations of cooking supplies or supplies for making sensory-based activities are greatly welcomed! We can always use: flour, oil, Kool aide (small sugar free packets), etc.
We prepared for Black History Month, by researching influential and important people. The students each wrote a mini-biography on the person of thier choice. The Kindergarten biographies are hanging in the main hallway by the front door. Together our projects make an amazing quilt! The 1st grade students also worked on this project, and their biographies are displayed in the classroom.
We have been preparing for the 100th day of school. We have been doing lots of counting. We are practicing counting by 1’s, 5’s, and 10’s each day during morning meeting and through other hands on activities. We have also done some excellent writing related to 100. My favorite is “Before I am 100 I will….”! The students’ expressed amazing hopes and dreams for their lives!! We have not yet fully finished this project, but we will proudly display our work in the classroom once it is complete.
Communications Class 3-5
In ELA, our students focused on Groundhog Day and watched Punxsutawney Phil see his shadow. Six more weeks of winter!!! We started reading Valentine’s Day books. All of the students practiced going on to Raz Kids on their free time this week and loved it.
In Math, we are continuing our unit on money and economics. This week we learned a little about goods and services. A good is something you can buy and a service is something someone does for you. The students are enjoying this unit.
In Social Studies, we are continuing our unit on explorers. We began with Christopher Columbus and continued with Ponce DeLeon, Magellan and Lewis and Clark. We are also making a mini explorers book documenting what each explorer did and where he/she went.
Integrated Learning Class 2-4
Students are working toward understanding and application of addition, subtraction, multiplication and division concepts and processes. We are writing, writing and writing some more, in personal narrative and nonfiction genres. From owls to China, from life cycles and living things to Christopher Columbus, students are busy learning across the globe!
Third Grade
Third graders took a field trip to the China Institute in New York City. They had a guided tour of the Institute’s Art Gallery. Next they worked with a docent to learn about art that depicts the history of China. A culminating activity was a hands-on art experience where students had the opportunity to try writing calligraphy on bamboo.
In ELA students have begun research about black people who have made a positive impact on society, as part of our month-long Black History unit. Students will be learning about Effa Manley, George Washington Carver, Maya Angelou, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. and Wangari Maathai. Ask your child to discuss what s/he has learned about each of our biography subjects. Students will build their knowledge listening to biographies, reading passages about the people, and writing about what characteristics the subjects possess that make them so influential.
In Social Studies we have begun an in-depth examination of our next country - Russia. Students began by completing various map and flag activities to help them be able to place where the country of Russia is in the world, as well as in relation to the United States and our first country of study - China.
Math work is continuing with our investigation of area - and the various ways that we can determine the area of rectangular figures. They are learning about how to measure area in both centimeters and inches, and in the process, discovering the area formula for a rectangle.
Fourth Grade
As always, 4th graders remain active learners.
In math, we are just about to wrap up our unit on Multiplication and Division. We are very proud of how well our students grasped the material, and now we are preparing to head into our next unit: Fractions!
In ELA, students are continuing to build their non-fiction reading and writing skills. Through group activities in class, independent work, and encouragement from their classroom teachers and school librarians, Ms. Nedwick and Ms. Ratt, students are learning to expand their book and genre selections. Now that it is Black History Month, we have offered the students an opportunity to put this knowledge of non-fiction to work. We are excited to see the information each child is gathering about his or her innovator or hero and we look forward to guiding all 4th graders in their creation of a “feature article” poster. We are also happy to partner with our technology expert, Amber. Amber will be visiting each classroom to help students learn how to use templates of newspaper articles to sharpen their organizational skills when writing in class.
4th grade is also working with Amber on understanding the power of “digital citizenship.” As our students prepare for the middle school, it is important for them to recognize the roles they will play as responsible, respectful members of our digital community. Our workshop with Amber is the beginning of this incredibly essential process.
We wish you all a Happy Valentine’s Day and a restful and safe winter break!
Art
Lots of fun projects happening in the Art Studio at Hillside. The fourth graders are creating pottery after studying Dave the Potter. The third grade students are creating painting based on a story after exploring the artwork of Faith Ringgold. The second graders will create prints of a neighborhood based on Romare Bearden’s “The Block.” Don’t forget to check out all the exciting projects at the Hillside Art Blog - http://www.hohschools.org/Page/1225 .
Music
Ms. Concra’s Classes: Kindergarteners are continuing to listen and move to “Carnival of the Animals” by Saint-Saens. 1st graders are enjoying creative movement activities and music games to practice singing simple melodies and coordination. 2nd graders have been introduced to Sassy Half and Sassy Half’s hat from the Note Neighborhood series. Next up we will practice adding half notes and rests to quarter notes, quarter rests, and eighth notes. 3rd graders are exploring rhythms of simple poems and creating their own multipart percussion accompaniments. Students are writing and performing their compositions. 4th graders are wrapping up our “Midsummer Night’s Dream” unit.
Mr. Campbell’s Class: Kindergarten students are using their singing and speaking voices to act out a fun story about a group of dragons. They are also learning how to have musical conversations by improvising short rhythmic phrases. First grade students are learning how music can be used to tell stories. They are beginning to listen to and identify characters from Prokofiev’s Peter and the Wolf. In addition the first graders are using musical instruments to act out simple stories. It has been a very exciting two weeks in second grade music! Second graders are beginning to play the xylophone, metallophone, and glockenspiel. They are learning how the different materials of the bars (wood and metal) make different sounds. Third grade students are continuing their composer unit and have most recently studied Ludwig van Beethoven. They are also singing and performing a piece of music about the Chinese Lantern Festival, which takes place shortly after the Chinese New Year. Fourth Grade students are still working on improvisation and are also beginning a unit on composers. So far they have learned about Peter Ilyich Tchaikovsky and Antonín Dvorak. The fourth graders had a lot of fun learning to play one of Dvorak’s themes from the New World Symphony on the xylophone.
Physical Education
FAMILY DANCE NIGHT IS THIS FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 10th AT 6PM!!!!!! All are welcome! Hope to see you there.
FLES
Kindergarten is busily learning how to represent quantities on bar graph! They have been identifying shapes and the quantity of those shapes in a picture and graphing their findings. First and second graders continue their numbers unit and have been working on activities such as Counting on Peace, which reinforce their number sense in Spanish while celebrating the life of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Meanwhile third graders are participating in their first task card activity, putting their knowledge of Spanish greetings and farewells as they work in groups and race against the clock to finish all their task cards. In fourth grade students are working collaboratively in partnerships to generate conversations which really get to know the other person!
As a friendly reminder, please visit our class website, Nunez-fles.weebly.com to find more information about current topics of study and access a wealth of resources for extra practice at home!
From the Library
It’s Black History Month in the library and the 4th graders are doing research on famous black people, from beloved trumpeter and singer Louis Armstrong to Lonnie Johnson, a NASA scientist whose crowning work was the invention of the Super Soaker. Third Grade is looking at themes including courage, loyalty, honesty and has read Violet the Pilot for a story about courage; The Library Lion, a creature who is so loyal that he breaks the rules to save his librarian and so honest he punishes himself for breaking the rules and leaves the library. Second Grade is studying life cycles, so we’ve read Egg, a book about every kind of eggs laid by every kind of creature. Did you know that at one point the alligator and chicken embryos are indistinguishable? First Grade is looking at fossils, and we read Boy, Were we Wrong About Dinosaurs—the Chinese thought they were the bones of dragons; for a long time scientists thought dinosaurs were all gray; and it was believed dinosaur mothers abandoned their eggs as soon as they were laid like lizards and turtles, until well-cared for nests of eggs and baby dinosaurs were discovered. Kindergarten and Mrs. Gamble’s class have had a great time with King Bidgood’s in the Bat (and he won’t get out) and then coloring an empty bathtub with the activities the stubborn King might do. Mrs. DeVarie’s class has been doing a mini-author study of Robert Munsch’s hilariously silly books, including and Pigs and Stephanie’s Ponytail. We are looking forward to March is Reading Month, with author visits and Parents as Reading Partners and Parents as Writing Parents and books, books, books.
From the MakerSpace
Dash, Dash, Dash in MakerSpace this cycle. All students in grades K-4 have had the opportunity to experience the excitement of the Dash Robots. K-1 has explored Dash using Wonder Workshop’s Go app, while 2-4 has tried their hand at coding challenges using Blockly. As the challenges in Blockly got harder, collaboration, problem-solving skills, and certainly perseverance were in full-effect. Classes that had explored with Dash already have moved on to creating with recyclables - the designs and end products have been nothing short of incredible. There is something to be said about kids, cardboard and tape - endless imagination! Follow me on Twitter @hohjned for all things library and MakerSpace. For more information on the Dash Robot visit www.makewonder.com
Hillside Elementary School
Website: www.hohschools.org
Location: 120 Lefurgy Avenue, Hastings-on-Hudson, NY, United States
Phone: 914-478-6270