News from the Hill
November 18, 2016
Principal's Message
Dear Parents/Guardians,
After our very special celebration of our veterans last week in honor of Veteran's Day and World Kindness Day last Sunday, we spent this week honoring members of our school community. Students, staff and parents shared kind words, gestures and notes. Classrooms were filled with conversations, role play scenarios and read alouds all wrapped around kindness. We even created our Hillside Wall of Kindness where we recognized each other for kindness shown. It was a very meaningful week for all of us and we hope to keep the momentum going! Mrs. Ratterree also shared the following link: https://www.buzzfeed.com/emeynardie/13-childrens-books-that-encourage-kindness-toward-26paw to access children's books at home that encourage kindness. Enjoy!
This week, our district participated in the Tri-State Review, a reflection process where teachers and administrators from neighboring districts provided feedback to us on student engagement. Our staff created grade level, special area and Teacher Resource Team presentations to showcase the great work that happens at Hillside each day. In addition, we ran Hillside focus groups of parents, teachers and students. Some sentiments that students shared included:
- "Lots of freedom to learn in creative ways"
- "Great teachers who make learning fun"
- "Choices for learning opportunities"
- "We feel safe here"
- "Everyone is different in their own special way"
- "You can be yourself here"
I walked away from the student focus group feeling very lucky to be a part of this unique community! Additionally, the Tri-State Team was extremely impressed with our school and district, noting the positive way that our students advocate for themselves in choosing their best way to learn. They also shared that students felt safe, comfortable and valued, which allowed for students to truly focus on their learning. Ultimately, my most heartwarming piece of feedback was that it was evident that "students and staff love coming to school here." There is no doubt that Hillside is a special place!
Reminders:
1) To ensure the safety of our students during dismissal, we ask that students who are leaving early be picked up before 2:35PM and to give the office at least 30 minutes notification. No pick-ups are allowed between 2:35-3:00PM due to our dismissal procedures. Thank you for your cooperation.
3) Our Hastings soccer players will be visiting Hillside on Monday to receive congratulations!
4) Our PTSA meeting is on Tuesday, November 22nd at 6:30 PM. We hope to see you there!
Enjoy the weekend with your families!
Warm regards,
Amy Cazes
Principal
Classroom News
Kindergarten
During the month of November, we will be focusing on writing numbers in the correct order, filling in missing numbers, matching numbers with objects and creating automaticity with one more or one less than a given number.
We went on a field trip to The Greenburgh Nature Center where we were fortunate enough to go on a guided seed hunt through the woods. The children learned about variety of different seeds and their adaptations. They all created a beautiful seed/plant collage and then enjoyed the wonderful Habitat Playground.
Kindergartners had a wonderful Thanksgiving feast today. Our children created beautiful vests depicting Native American symbols to honor the Native American culture. We hope you enjoyed this festive event!
We are collecting canned goods/non perishables for the Hastings Pantry. Please send in your items on November 18th. Don’t forget to check the expiration dates!
First Grade
First graders have completed their study of the human body. In addition to learning many amazing facts about how our body systems work, we have explored ways to keep our body healthy. To this end, our first graders are currently working on drafting “How-To” books. Some topics include, proper hand washing, brushing teeth, exercising, and making a healthy lunch, just to name a few. The boys and girls are learning to use temporal words (first, then, next, after that, finally) to write each step. Soon, we will move to revising/editing and finally publishing these wonderful masterpieces!
In math, our first graders have started to work on decomposition strategies for subtraction. They are learning to use pictures and simple math drawings to show their thinking. Our sprints now include subtraction, so keep practicing those facts at home!
Second Grade
We will shortly complete our current math unit involving an in-depth look at place value as well as additional problem solving strategies, including skip counting and the open number line. After Thanksgiving, we will begin work that will lead us to the traditional addition and subtraction algorithms.
We wrapped up our Citizenship and Community social studies unit as with the election. We will begin our first science unit, Properties of Matter, next week. The unit will run through the end of December.
This week we will begin our Tall Tales unit. It will follow a similar format to the earlier Fairy Tales unit. Students will be exposed to a number of tall tales and analyze them for character, setting and plot. In addition, the students will determine the reasons each story is considered a detail. This will be accomplished orally and in writing. As a conclusion, the students will write original tall tales.
Communications Class K-2
The Kindergarten students enjoyed a field trip to the Greenburgh Nature Center where they explored different plants and plant parts on a Nature Walk and in the Greenhouse. The students collaborated with students from another kindergarten class to create a nature collage. They also enjoyed a picnic and time to explore the nature playground! Kindergartners have been busily getting reading for our big Thanksgiving Feast on Friday, November 18th from 9:00-9:30 a.m. Our children have created beautiful vests depicting Native American symbols to honor the Native American culture. We hope you have an opportunity to marvel the hard work of our children and we are looking forward to seeing you then.
In first grade finished learning/reviewing our letters and sounds. We are now beginning to explore phonemic awareness skills such as sound manipulation, blending, segmenting and reading three sound short vowel sounds and lastly story retelling in detail and sequence. We will be introducing temporal words such as (first, next, last). We will also begin learning sight-words.
Communications Class 3-5
The students continued reading the Mercy Watson series by Kate DeCamillo. They are making predictions when reading these stories. We are continuing our unit on measurement and talking about weight and the concept of heavy and light. We also began talking about capacity and length. We learned about measuring liquid using cups, pints, quarts and gallons. We are looking forward to our Thanksgiving tasting next week.
Integrated Learning Class Grades 2-4
2nd graders are continuing to look at place value as well as learning about addition and subtraction The Citizenship and Community social studies unit was wrapped up and students are beginning the first science unit, Properties of Matter. In ELA, 2nd grade will be reading and discussing Tall Tales with a continued focus on character, setting and plot.
3rd graders are beginning a new social studies unit: a study of China. In writing, students are developing their skills in the art of paragraph writing. Math currently is immersed in measurement in addition to foundational skills of addition, subtraction and early multiplication and division concepts.
4th graders are also refining their skills in paragraph writing as a basis for the kinds of writing they will be asked to produce as they progress through the upper grades. The big focus in Math is Multiplication and Division and learning of strategies for retrieval of basic facts and problem solving. Social Studies is wrapping up the focus on Native Americans, with fabulous models of longhouses on display in the 4th grade hallways and instruction will be moving on to Science.
Third Grade
Third graders were active participants in Hillside’s Veterans Day celebration. They created cards and wrote letters to veterans, thanking them for their service and telling them about what they feel makes America a great country. They were so proud to be part of this event!
Students began a new ELA/Science unit on frogs. The unit began with a “carousel”, where students viewed photographs of various frogs and their habitats. They filled out charts telling what they noticed and wondered. They read quotes from a book all third graders will read, Bullfrog at Magnolia Circle. After that, they put clues together to discover that our next unit of study was about frogs.
Our new social studies unit also has begun. We will be immersed in a study of China for the next two months or so. This begins with research about the country’s flag and its history. Next up will be a review of political and physical maps of China. This will help students build their knowledge of our overarching social studies theme of “how does WHERE you live affect HOW you live?” Geography skills recently learned will help students in this investigation.
In writing, students are developing their storyteller’s voice. They practice by writing in their writer’s notebooks. They are learning about seed ideas, and how to craft narratives, to uncover the stories of their lives. They are learning that a story is much more interesting when the writer “shows” instead of “tells”. Their writer’s notebook provides a place for students to experiment with various writing techniques during writer’s workshop.
Fourth Grade
We would like to commend all 4th grade students who participated in the 4th Grade play, “Getting to Know You”. Whether on stage or behind the scenes, they were AMAZING! It is always a pleasure to see our students extend their learning and love of school in new and exciting ways.
We would also like to congratulate our children on the wonderful presentation they did for our Veteran’s Day assembly. All 4th graders wrote heartwarming messages to the visiting veterans, sang a beautiful and patriotic song, and contributed ideas for what makes our country so great.
In our classrooms, we have been very busy learning. We have just finished our first math unit and are ready to tackle Multiplication and Division! In ELA, we are continuing to read in our book clubs and write thoughtful responses to literature.
As part of our Character Education program, Mr. Johnson met with 4th graders to read the book, ONE by Kathryn Otoshi and to discuss how students can show others that everyone matters, After this, students worked in breakout groups with mixed classes to create PSAs (Public Service Announcements) using technology and./or posters to convey their messages.
Finally, we are grateful to Lawrence Forcella, for visiting each 4th grade to discuss the Wequaskeek tribe, who settled around our school and woods. It was fun to walk in their footsteps and learn how they used natural resources to make the things they needed to survive. We’re not sure if we could do this today!
Art
Check out the Hillside Art Blog - http://www.hohschools.org/Page/1225 . The students in K-2 have begun creating clay pots, while the third graders have begun creating collages based on the artwork of Wangechi Mutu.
Music
Hillside 2nd, 3rd, and 4th graders did a fabulous job singing “My Country ‘Tis of Thee” during the Veteran’s Day assembly. We are very proud of their dedication to singing and understanding why our veterans’ sacrifices are important to our country.
Ms. Concra’s General Music: Kindergarteners are starting to explore motor skills in relation to music. The are incorporating hand movements and body movements with music, chants, and stories. 1st graders are expanding pitch matching to include Kodaly’s solfege syllables (mi, sol, la). 2nd graders are expanding their repertoire of simple songs to eventually incorporate solfege syllables. They have also been playing a game that helps them focus listening and identify directional differences. 3rd graders are writing, sight reading, and aurally identifying different rhythms in 4/4 time including quarter notes and rests, eighth notes, sixteenth notes, and half notes. 4th grade is wrapping up the dynamics unit. The unit culminates in a listening activity where they must identify dynamics in standard repertoire excerpts.
Mr. Campbell’s General Music Classes: Kindergarten and first grade students have been using their singing and speaking voices to sing a variety of Thanksgiving songs and chants. Ask them to sing you “Looking for Turkeys!” Second graders are beginning to learn solfege syllables and how they can be used in familiar music. Third graders have been studying verse/chorus form and are beginning to realize just how common it is in music we listen to. They have also been studying sixteenth notes and are using them to compose rhythms in both duple and triple meter. Fourth grade students have been learning about changes in tempo called accelerando and ritardando.
Physical Education
Hello! Last week we wrapped up our soccer unit and we were very proud of how much the students learned and progressed from last year. In the upcoming weeks in Phys. Edu we will begin our fitness unit. We will be setting up various stations that change week to week in order to teach students how to exercise different muscles in the body. Some of the stations include, abdominal rolls with scooters, agility ladders, jump ropes, spooner boards, and hurdles. As the unit progresses we will be talking specifically about various muscle groups, the importance of exercise, and how easy it can be to do it on your own. This is one of our favorite units so we are excited to get started!
FLES
We have had such a busy couple of weeks in FLES! Kindergarten has started a new unit on Numbers! We have started learning how to say the numbers 1-10.
First grade students are coming to the end of their unit on feelings and have been working on their feelings flipbook.
Second graders culminated their unit by learning a song to describe different feelings they’ve learned and activities they want to do. For example, I am tired and would like to sleep (Yo estoy cansado (a) y quiero dormir)
Third and fourth graders are sharpening their conversation skills by putting together conversations and practicing acting them out.
In celebration of World Kindness Day students have listened to the story “Have You Filled a Bucket Today?” by Carol McCloud in both English and Spanish. Each class has had a conversation about how to be a bucket filler (llenador de cubeta). Ask your children at home how they can personally be a bucket filler.
Don’t forget to visit the FLES wesbite at http://nunez-fles.weebly.com/ for activities to do at home to continue enriching your child’s Spanish experience.
Library
The Kindergarten has been reading a new book recommended by Elephant and Piggie called We Are Growing by Laurie Keller where blades of grass, who are growing, are also deciding if they are the dandiest or curliest or tallest, etc. Children works on their own to decide with feathers, buttons, glue etc. to decide what characteristic they are the ___iest. See some choices below. First grade has been reading and comparing the “Hat” trilogy by Jon Klassen: I Lost My Hat, This is Not My Hat, and We Found a Hat. Although apparently very simple in text and illustration, we discovered together that there is much more there than meets the eye. Second Grade, following up on their work on Story Elements, has followed setting and plot by looking at character, specifically that of the Princess in The Paper Bag Princess, listening to author Robert Munsch read it on Tumblebooks and then analysing her character by looking at both text and illustration. Next week we will follow up with how character drives the plot and then take a look at voice. Third Grade and Fourth Grade are continuing work on the Dewey Decimal System. The Third Grade, working in teams of four, choses a Dewey labeled card, search for it on the shelf and note the author and title. The Fourth Grade, using IPads, searches specific titles, noting author and Dewey Number and then locates them on the shelves.
Maker Space
K-1 classes have been building circuits, circuits, circuits with littleBits module pieces. They explored the different functions of the module pieces and figured out how each piece works. Other classes have continued to invent with the littleBits Gizmos and Gadgets kits, creating wireless bitBot remote control vehicles, a wireless remote controlled RotoLamp (aka disco lamp) and some of original inventions as well. We are very excited to report that the PTSA has awarded MakerSpace a grant for Ozobots, which will be introduced to the kids after Thanksgiving. Ozobots are a fantastic way to introduce coding, using colored markers to write code that the Ozobot will follow. Fourth graders in MakerClub have been having a blast with Dash and Dot robots. We are entered in the Wonder Workshop Robotics Challenge and are navigating the five coding challenges we have been presented with. For all things MakerSpace and Library, follow me on Twitter @hohjned.
Hillside Elementary School
Website: www.hohschools.org
Location: 120 Lefurgy Avenue, Hastings-on-Hudson, NY, United States
Phone: 914-478-6270