News from the Hill
February 3, 2020
Principal's Message
Dear Families,
There is love in the air...the love of learning! Hillside students are immersed in an array of literacy experiences ranging from analyzing text and creating literary essays to reading non-fiction and writing informational books! In addition, students continue to refine their social-emotional learning skills. This month, we look forward to celebrating Kindness Week from February 10th-14th to continue practicing all that we have learned.
We are busy at Hillside working collaboratively to do great things for our children! Our Building Leadership Team, comprised of teachers, students, parents and administrators, met on January 27th to discuss ways to incorporate the proposed construction into classroom learning. The ideas were plentiful, as they came from our Hillside third graders. Stay tuned for our team’s recommendations in the spring! This month, our Diverse Book Committee will be meeting to review possible programming to bring to Hillside. In addition, we will be creating a new Writing Committee to plan a special evening of writing at Hillside. We will be working with our PTSA to find parent volunteers for both of these committees that represent the K-2 grade band, 3-4 grade band and special education. If you are interested in participating on one of the teams that meets during the school day, please let our PTSA VPs know. Their email addresses can be found in our Parent/Student Handbook on page 23.
February will be a fun month at Hillside! We begin the month with World Read Aloud Day on February 5th where Ms. Nedwick will share our March Madness Library program. We cannot wait to see the newly selected books on the bracket! On this special day, in addition to our kick-off assembly, guest readers are invited into our classrooms ranging from District staff and administration to Board of Education members to our Hastings Children’s librarian. We know that it will be a festive day of literacy and learning!
On Friday, February 7th, we will have a Late Start for our students. As you know, bus transport and school start time will be exactly one hour later than typically scheduled. During this time, our Hillside faculty will engage in our 4th Annual Intervention Cafe, a morning of collaboration where our service providers and specialists share successful intervention strategies with all of our teachers and teaching assistants. The purpose of this special event is to share the wealth of knowledge that we have here at Hillside. It is always a favorite morning filled with new ideas, innovative practices and tools that support all of our students.
On the evening of February 7th, put on your dancing shoes and join us for our Family Dance Night in our Hillside All Purpose Room from 6-7:30 PM. This is an amazing evening facilitated by our talented physical education team where your students (and YOU!) will have the chance to dance the night away! We hope to see you there!
Warm regards,
Amy Cazes
Classroom News
Kindergarten
In ELA, we have been practicing our letter formations and sounds for lower case letters (vowels and consonants), building our phonemic awareness skills and learning sight words so that we can have a strong foundation for literacy. We have been paying special attention to segmenting the beginning, middle and end sounds in words (even multi-syllabic words). The Kindergarten classes have also worked hard on mastering rhyming words.
At writer’s workshop time, we are working on “Opinion Writing.” The children are learning how to state their opinions on how they feel about something and then give us reasons why they feel that way. The children are doing a wonderful job not only verbally sharing their reasons across their fingers, but writing them as well.
During math time, we have been continuing to work diligently on exploring measurable attributes of objects such as length, weight and volume in a very hands-on way. The children are really enjoying this unit!
We are very excited to celebrate our 100th day of school on Thursday, Feb. 13th at 8:45 a.m.(parents are invited to join us). Thank you to all the parents who have signed up to bring in all the goodies for our breakfast.The fantastic 100th day projects are being displayed in the hallways outside the Kindergarten classrooms. Please stop by to see them!
1st Grade
What an exciting month of learning we have had! As a culminating activity and tribute to Dr. King, first graders participated in a peaceful march through the halls of Hillside. They carried candles and sang, “We Shall Overcome”, “This Little Light of Mine” and “Light a Candle for Peace” as a source of inspiration. Powerful discussions and various activities were completed that helped anchor the children’s learning. We are VERY proud of our students!
In the next month, first graders will live in the world of nonfiction. As readers, first graders are beginning a new unit, “Reading to Learn About the World.” Here students will be immersed in non-fiction and will learn how to approach informational text, understand text features and begin to think beyond the words on a page.
As writers, we will also look at how to create a nonfiction piece and learn how to use writing to teach others. They will generate ideas for “How-To” manuals by thinking about topics they know a lot about. We look forward to this unit and know the students will approach their learning with much eagerness.
In the next few weeks, our new math unit, “Ordering and Comparing Length Measurement as Numbers” will begin. In this hands-on unit, students will compare the measurement of one object to the length of two other objects, order objects from shortest to longest, measure objects with similar units and represent and interpret data.
2nd Grade
Second grade students have been hard at work learning and growing!
They are continuing their fiction reading unit entitled, “Developing Ideas About Characters: Thinking and Talking About Books in Partnerships.” In the second half of this unit, we are focusing on ways to share our reading with partners. Students will read books containing the same characters, and share their thinking/ideas about these characters. Students will develop ideas about characters, and look for supporting evidence in the text.
Our second grade authors are continuing to write realistic fiction picture books. They have been enthusiastically 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.
In math, the children started module 5. In Module 4, students developed addition and subtraction fluency within 100 and began developing conceptual understanding of the standard algorithm via place value strategies. In Module 5, students build upon their mastery of renaming place value units and extend their work with conceptual understanding of addition and subtraction algorithms to numbers within 1,000, always with the option of modeling with materials or drawings. Throughout the module, students continue to focus on strengthening and deepening conceptual understanding and fluency.
In science, the children are learning about Earth Systemswith a focus on landforms. The students learned about landforms and waterforms (i.e. mountains, valleys, plateaus,plains, oceans, rivers, lakes, etc.) They created 3D models of an island using salt dough. They painted their landform creations and wrote postcards to someone as if they were on vacation, describing all of the wonderful things they were seeing and doing. Next, the children will study slow and fast changes, wind and weather erosion.
Communications Class K-2
The students in our classroom are working so hard!!!! In ELA, we are reading some of our favorite books multiple times to get a deeper understanding of the book. We are sequencing and answering comprehension questions related to the story. We are also working on writing “How-To” books on topics such as cooking and making crafts.
In Math, our K and 1st grade friends continue to learn about measurement. We have worked on the concepts of heavy vs. light, more vs. less and longer vs. shorter. Our 2nd grade friends continue to work on 2 and 3 digit addition and subtraction without regrouping within 100.
3rd Grade
In Math, we are entering our next unit of study: fractions! We begin with partitioning wholes into parts, learning about unit wholes and their relationship to the whole, comparing fractions using unit wholes, creating fractions on a number line, and finding equivalent fractions. Weekly division quizzes continue. We encourage families to practice both multiplication and division facts at home.
In reading, we are in the process of wrapping up our Book Clubs. Students are focusing on finding character traits and supporting evidence to prove the character’s traits. This deep thinking about characters, as well as thinking about the choices authors make to develop characters, is directly related to our writing unit. Book Clubs have collaborated with students within each class and have also had the opportunity to communicate with other students reading the same book across the grade through the use of google classrooms. The technology component has been set up for each book during library sessions.
Third graders are currently writing their first literary essay! Students are making a claim about a character they know well from our classroom readings. They are generating ideas about their characters, finding reasons and evidence to support their thinking, and summarizing their thoughts in a closing statement. Students will work through the writing process of generating ideas, drafting, revising, editing, publishing, and reflecting to complete their literary essays.
Our next Social Studies unit is a study of Russia. We will begin with analyzing the Russian flag and map. We will also compare the Russian flag to the flags of the United States and China. Looking at geographical features of Russia will help students see how “WHERE you live affects HOW you live.”
4th Grade
4th graders had an awesome trip mid January to Purchase College to see Dr. Kaboom. Dr. Kaboom taught the students about electricity and how it is conducted through a series of fun experiments. This engaging program will set up future science lessons in which students will learn how to build a working circuit. In the meantime, 4th graders will begin learning about weather, the water cycle and human interactions with our environment.
In math, students will be learning how to decompose and compose fractions. They will also be learning to create equivalent fractions and later, how to add and subtract them.
In ELA, students continue to work on selecting texts to use when writing literary essays. Students have been reading various stories closely and analyzing not only characters and their role in the stories, but text structures, themes and vocabulary. After February break, students will become immersed in non-fiction as we enter our new unit.
In Social Studies, students have learned about some of the explorers who arrived from European countries to settle in the New World. As we move ahead, we will focus more on the Dutch influence in New York and students will discover how important their role was in creating the New York we know today.
4th grade teachers wish you all a restful and enjoyable mid winter break!
Learning Lab 2-4
In the Learning Lab we are continuing our great work or growing as readers during ELA. We are focusing on characters and how the author helps us learn about characters. We are learning strategies for smooth and expressive reading. We grow as readers by rereading a text and thinking while we read.
Our second graders have begun a new math module our students build upon their mastery of renaming place value units and extend their work with conceptual understanding of addition and subtraction algorithms to numbers within 1,000, always with the option of modeling with materials or drawings.
Our third graders are explaining their understanding of Multiplication by using the algorithm to find the area of a rectangle. We are challenging ourselves by using our multiplication facts to determine the length of an unknown side when given on side length and the total area.
Our fourth graders are embarking on a module on fractions! We are learning about parts of a whole and using unit fractions. We are even learning how to write and decompose fractions greater than one (improper fractions).
Communications Class 3-5
Art
Music
Kindergarten students have been listening to Camille Saint-Saens’ Carnival of the Animals. They are learning how music can have different moods and characters. First graders are learning about musical characteristics and how music can be used to tell a story. Ms. Concra’s first graders are learning about how instruments can be used to illustrate various characteristics in music. Students are also improvising three note melodies for their students to echo. Here is a students in Ms. O’Sullivan’s class leading their classmates. Mr. Campbell’s second grade students have been studying tempo and when it is appropriate for a piece of music to be fast or slow. See if your child can tell you if the tempo of a piece of music is Largo, Adagio, Andante, Moderato, Allegro, Vivace or Presto! They have also been working on singing rounds in two and three parts. Ms. Concra’s second grade students have also been reading, composing, and identifying simple melodies using MI, SOL, and LA and creating and conducting their own pieces with various tempos including largo, allegro, and presto. Mr. Campbell’s third graders have been learning about classical period composers including Vivaldi, Bach, and Haydn. Some of the music we have studied are Vivaldi’s The Four Seasons, Bach’s Toccata and Fugue for Organ, and Haydn’s Surprise Symphony and Farewell Symphony. They have also been identifying and composing with dynamics. Taking inspiration from contemporary composer John Adams, Ms. Concra’s third graders are beginning a unit on minimalist music. They have created their own two and three part vocal/instrumental ostinatos. The next steps will include making minute changes using pattern manipulation and dynamics. Mr. Campbell’s fourth graders have been learning how to improvise to familiar tunes on the xylophones. Using solfege they have been learning the difference between a tonic and dominant note in major, which then helps them to determine what note to choose when improvising. Ms. Concra’s fourth graders are wrapping up a unit on Felix Mendelssohn’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream. Students identified how Mendelssohn used different orchestration techniques to accompany characters and events, and invoke various moods depending on the plot. Moving forward, students will identify Mendelssohn’s signature compositional techniques and create their own pieces based on Mendelssohn’s model.
Physical Education
FLES
Students in 1st grade are just finishing up their unit on parts of the body. They have learned how to express which body parts hurt them and are now able to convey this in Spanish when asking to see the school nurse!
Second graders are finishing up their family projects and will bring them home soon. They have been practicing reading and writing in Spanish and have created some unique versions of their family tree.
Third graders have finished their study of Chile and have moved on to the country of Argentina. They are currently learning about “las Pampas” and the importance of this region to the people of Argentina. Have you heard of “el gaucho”? Students will soon be able to tell you all about this person and their role in the culture of Argentina.
Fourth graders have wrapped up their study of the country of Spain and are now learning transportation vocabulary that they will use in connection with their study of “travelling” to various Spanish-speaking countries this year.
Be on the look-out for new vocabulary sheets that will be sent home very soon for each grade-level.