News from the Hill
February 1, 2019
Principal's Message
Dear Families,
Happy February! We have been busy at Hillside working collaboratively to improve systems. After our plumbing Emergency Dismissal, we learned that additional protocols are necessary. Our Emergency Response Team has met several times to increase efficiency. Some things that we have discussed and begun plans for include assignments of specific roles for every staff member, increased technology access for specific staff members to improve sign-outs, drafted messaging to the community to improve communication and staging area locations and alternatives (just in case we have our inflatables inflated!) The inclement weather this week has delayed our roll out to staff; however, in the upcoming weeks, we will debrief both staff members and the community on the specifics of our plan to assure both safe and efficient emergency dismissal procedures. In the meantime, we encourage you to be sure that your emergency contacts are updated in our Parent Portal. Please include babysitters, family members, neighbors- anyone that would be permitted to pick up your child from school or the bus.
Our Building Leadership Team, comprised of teachers, students, parents, and administrators, has been working on creating surveys for each stakeholder group around homework. Please look out for the survey link in the upcoming days via email, as it is important for us to receive feedback from all members of our community.
We have many wonderful things happening at Hillside this month! First, our assembly on perseverance will be rescheduled for Thursday, February 7th. We invite your children to wear green to show perseverance.
On Friday, February 8th, we have a Late Start. During this time, we will be holding our third annual Intervention Café for teachers and teaching assistants. Our special education teachers, occupational therapists, speech and language pathologists, ENL teacher, psychologists, and reading specialists will be sharing strategies that benefit all students. We are extremely excited for this morning of learning and collaboration, as it is always a great success. Please note that school will begin exactly one hour later than usual at 9:30 AM. As always, supervision will begin at 7:50 AM for early drop-offs.
Also, on Friday, February 8th, we invite you to join us in the All Purpose Room at 6 PM for our Annual Family Dance Night. Our Physical Education teachers have been teaching your students everything from the YMCA to the bunny hop and we look forward to dancing together on this festive evening!
Kindergarten registration will take place the week of February 11th. If you know of any future Hillside kindergartners, please let their families know that registration is beginning. They can call the main office for more details.
We are looking forward to a great month! Wishing you and your families a cozy weekend!
Warmly,
Amy Cazes
World Read Aloud Day
Today Hillside celebrated World Read Aloud Day! It was a fantastic day filled with guest readers and sharing books. World Read Aloud day was celebrated today in 173 countries around the world. Today, people all around the globe read aloud together and shared stories to advocate for literacy as a human right that belongs to all people. We are so thrilled to have been a part of it. You can learn more about WRAD here: http://www.litworld.org/wrad/
*Some of our guest readers included local author Alyssa Capucilli, Hastings Public Library librarian Debbie Quinn, Farragut Middle School administrators Chris Keogh and Gail Kipper, FMS/HHS librarian Arianna Grassia, retired Hillside school psychologist Dr. Zuch, Hillside’s own Mr. DeKams, and many other teachers and support staff in the district who volunteered their time to celebrate and read to our students. Amazing!
Classroom News
Kindergarten
Kindergartners have been very busy working hard during Reading and Writing Workshop! They are becoming independent readers and practicing a variety of strategies like picture cues, what looks right, sounds right and reading through the whole word to identify it. We have been learning many sight words and are amazed by their growth. We have just finished assessing our children in reading abilities. We have matched all our children with “just right” books. The children are doing a great job using all the reading strategies we are teaching in our classrooms. Please continue to encourage reading at home. Thank you! Our students are also writing up a storm and drawing detailed illustrations to match their writing. We are continuously impressed with their progress!
In January, we worked diligently on exploring measurable attributes of objects such as length, weight and volume in a very hands-on way. The children really enjoyed this unit! Now, we are moving back into composing and decomposing larger numbers using number bonds!
The Kindergarteners are really looking forward to the 100th Day celebration on February 13th! They will be enjoying a grade level breakfast and will be traveling from classroom to classroom to participate in some amazing activities. To prepare for the special day we are counting by 1s and 10s to 100 and are playing many number identification games. We can’t wait to see the projects coming in and will be displaying them all outside our classroom for all to see!
1st Grade
What an exciting month of learning we’ve had! We were very excited to have Leigh Galanis, retired first grade Hillside teacher, come into our classrooms to discuss the important work of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. She visited each classroom sharing important contributions he made to our world and discussed his message of peace. These powerful discussions and stories helped anchor our students’ learning. As a culminating activity and tribute to Dr. King, first graders participated in a peace march through the halls of Hillside. They carried signs that sent peaceful messages and sung the songs, “We Shall Overcome” and “This Little Light of Mine” as a source of inspiration. We hope you caught the segment aired by Channel 12 News, as well as FIOS 1, The Journal News and the Enterprise! Their voices were heard and their messages were inspiring. We are VERY proud of our students!
In the next month, first graders will continue their work with non-fiction. Students will learn how to approach informational text, understand text features and begin to think beyond the words on a page. 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 graders continue to read fiction and are working to develop ideas about the characters in their stories. Partnerships are fostering accountable talk about the personalities, the choices, and the words and the actions of the characters in their texts. Opinions about characters are formed and substantiated with evidence from the text. The pairs are enjoying discussing their books.
Word study has focused on open syllables, adjectives, and prefixes and suffixes.
The writers continue to write narratives and opinion pieces that are embellished with finer details, as revisions and editing skills are practiced.
The mathematicians are becoming experts at adding and subtracting two and three digit numbers. The sums to and differences from will now include the thousands place! Hold on to those place value mats!!!
Our Community Environment social studies unit is wrapping up. Our second grade architects and their families are constructing models of buildings in Hastings. We’ll be mapping them onto Main Street and Warburton Avenue for our school community to enjoy. The students have learned about land use and will have the opportunity to weigh in on what the village should plan for the Hastings waterfront development; they write persuasive pieces to perhaps influence the important decisions.
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, and comparing fractions using unit wholes. Weekly division quizzes continue. We encourage families to practice both multiplication and division fact practice to keep this skill sharp.
We are in the process of wrapping up our Grade Level Book Clubs. Students have been communicating with each other across the grade through google classrooms set up for each book read. Our final get togethers will occur in classrooms across the grade (and in the library) where each book group will meet and have in-person discussions about the books read. Also in ELA, students are learning about theme in fiction stories to help them become stronger readers. They ask themselves: How did the main character grow or change throughout the story? What life lesson can the reader take away from the story?
Our next Social Studies unit is a study of Russia. We will begin with an analysis of the Russian flag and map. We will also compare them with the flags of the United States and China. Looking at geographical features of Russia help students see how “WHERE you live affects HOW you live.’
In science we are studying habitats and how they affect the animals and plants living there. We are coordinating a non-fiction research unit in class with our science work that Mrs. Farrell is conducting in STEAM. Work will include readings, research and hands-on activities.
Second Step work has included work on a growth mindset - that when something is hard we acknowledge that and find a way to positively address it. We talk of the power of “yet”: adding the word to ends of sentences such as, “I can’t do that … yet.”
4th Grade
4th graders are continuing to work with fractions in math. Students are now learning to compare fractions both less than and greater than the whole. They are placing these fractions on number lines by using benchmarks, such as ½, ¼ and ¾ as guides, and by renaming them using equivalency. As we move forward, students will be adding and subtracting fractions with like denominators, and converting fractions into like units.
In ELA, students are continuing our non-fiction unit. They are learning to identify main ideas and the details that support them. Children are also recognizing the importance of non-fiction text features, and how their inclusion on a page is essential for further understanding of a topic. As we continue our study, we will be using Infographic on Google Classroom to organize information and create our own unique non-fiction presentations.
In Science, students continue to learn about the physical world around us. In STEAM, they have been rotating in activity stations to learn and experience how sound travels through vibrations. In class, students have learned about the four different types of clouds, the water cycle and erosion, and they have used art to demonstrate their understanding of these concepts.
In Social Studies, we are just about ready to take all of our notes on New Amsterdam and turn them into some incredible narrative writing. It has been so much fun teaching 4th graders what life was like in New Amsterdam; homes, businesses and schools were so very different than they are today. Electricity, running water, a warm and comfortable bed, and a school full of wonderful books and materials are all things we take for granted. However, after learning about the difficult and sometimes harsh conditions 400 years ago, students are much more appreciative of all that we have in 2019.
One last but important note about 4th grade involves yearbooks. As many of you know, yearbooks sell out quickly at the end of the year. It is important that 4th graders send in their orders now so that we are sure to have enough for everyone. If you need another order form, they are available in the office. Orders are due by 2/15.
Learning Lab 1-2
Learning Lab friends have had a great start to 2019! As we rang in the New Year, we’ve had several conversations and activities regarding our personal and classroom goals. After reflecting on how to make our learning environment more successful, we decided to work on achieving two very important classroom goals: to be a calm classroom and to practice kindness every day. Students learned the difference between what it means to have our minds and bodies in “high gear”, “low gear” and “just right gear”, and when it is appropriate to be in each. We even invited Ms. Snyder to our classroom as an expert guest to speak more about strategies to calm our bodies. We’ve practiced yoga, meditation, breathing exercises and calming music during work, just to name a few.
We have also been working to achieve our second goal (practice kindness every day). Students enjoyed the “Act of Kindness Challenge”, where students completed one act of kindness each week for the month of January to reinforce our goal. Students particularly enjoyed writing kind letters to one another and delivering them.
Students are working on several strategies to solve subtraction equations. Some include counters/tens frames, drawings, counting backwards, and other manipulatives. Students are utilizing key vocabulary as a means for determining which operation to use. Students enjoy when we embed reading in our Math instruction, using books that reinforce subtraction. They continue to practice addition and subtraction fluency daily.
Friends are working on word families during our ELA time together. They practice words in isolation, then in context through short stories. Students are immersed in books in order to make meaning using previously taught phonics skills. Students are finishing up our study on the “bonus letter” rule and moving to glued sounds. Friends are applying strategies of great readers, such as saying the first sounds, looking at the picture, chunking the words, skipping a word and then rereading, thinking about the story, rereading, and stretching out words.
Learning Lab 3-4
In Math our third graders are finishing our unit on measuring area and 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, and comparing fractions using unit wholes. Weekly multiplication quizzes will continue. We encourage families to practice both multiplication and division fact practice to keep this skill sharp.
Our 4th graders are continuing to work with fractions in math. Students are now learning to compare fractions both less than and greater than the whole. They are placing these fractions on number lines by using benchmarks, such as ½ and ¼. As we move forward, students will be adding and subtracting fractions with like denominators. We are also continuing to work on solving word problems using the RDW process. This means we read the word problem twice, draw a picture, and write our answer as a statement.
Communications Class 1-3
We continue to work hard this year!!!
In ELA, we sequenced the events in some of our favorite books about winter. Some of these books included The Mitten by Jan Brett and The Jacket I Wear in the Snow by Shirley Neitzel. We are now reading picture books and small chapter books to identify story elements (Character, setting and plot). In writing, we are working on personal narratives, creating a small book about a special day.
In Math, our first and second graders continue to work on addition. We are beginning to work on basic addition word problems using visuals. Our third graders continue to work on area. They are learning two ways to figure out area. The first is counting the square units in the shape and the second is multiplying the sides (length x width). We have increased the number of square units and learning to figure out the area of bigger shapes.
In Social Studies we continue to work on a project about the town we live in. We began making a small building replica out of a shoebox. Our third graders will begin a unit on Russia soon. In Science, we began a unit on forces and will soon explore simple machines and magnets in depth.
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 also learning about musical characteristics and how music can be used to tell a story. 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 identify if a piece of music is Largo, Adagio, Andante, Moderato, Allegro, Vivace or Presto! Third graders have been learning about the composers Antonio Vivaldi, Johann Sebastian Bach, and Joseph 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. 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 second graders have been working on singing rounds and identifying Do, Mi, Sol, and La in simple melodies. Third graders are identifying and composing dynamics. Fourth graders are wrapping up a unit on Felix Mendelssohn’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream. Students identified how Mendelssohn used different orchestrations to identify character themes and identified Mendelssohn’s signature compositional techniques.
Physical Education
Hello Everyone! I hope everyone is having a nice warm winter. Here in the world of Physical Education we are wrapping up our Dance Unit, and cannot wait to celebrate FAMILY DANCE NIGHT with our Hillside Families. Family Dance night this year is on February 8th and will start at 6 and go until 7:15. It is a chance for families to get together and dance all of the group dances we have taught our students over the past four weeks. These dances include, The Bunny Hop, The Chicken Dance, Macarena, YMCA, Cupid Shuffle, Cha-Cha Slide, The Sid Shuffle, Cotton Eye Joe, The Bikers Shuffle, and The Electric Slide. We cannot wait to see you there.
Once we wrap up our dance unit we will move onto fitness and team games. After that we have a big surprise for all of our students once March rolls around!
FLES
Kindergarteners are learning the colors in Spanish through a variety of interactive activities and songs. One of their favorites is a game we play on the carpet with color tiles called “Pisa el color…” where students have to step on the color that they hear me say. First grade is finishing our unit about the weather and seasons in Spanish and will be bringing home books they made that include several songs about different times of the year. Second graders are learning how to express information about their family in Spanish and are linking this information to the previous unit about adjectives as they are beginning to describe their family members in Spanish.
Third graders and fourth graders wrapped up their units about Chile and Spain respectively. Third graders have enjoyed learning more about animals that are native to Chile, such as the chinchilla, while fourth graders have been amazed at the many festivals that Spain offers the world. Third grade will begin a new country study of Argentina in the next month while fourth grade will explore the Dominican Republic in our upcoming unit.
Library
Today Hillside celebrated World Read Aloud Day! It was a fantastic day filled with guest readers and sharing books. World Read Aloud Day was celebrated in 173 countries around the world. We are so thrilled to have been a part of it. You can read more about WRAD here: http://www.litworld.org/wrad/
Kindergarteners are exploring the wonderful writing and illustrating of author Ezra Jack Keats. Many of the children are very familiar with his most recognizable (and Caldecott winning) book, The Snowy Day, and main character Peter. They have been very excited to learn about his other characters, ones he created after observing all of the diverse children in his neighborhood in Brooklyn in the 1950’s and 1960’s, and read his other works featuring them. First graders have been immersed in non-fiction. We have explored traditional non-fiction - informational texts with features such as table of contents, glossary, index, photographs, as well as narrative non-fiction and “mash-ups” (a blend of fictional characters presenting factual information). Second graders are wrapping up a mini-research project on endangered species and the effect it has on humans, specifically looking at bees. We will be reflecting on our work using the presentation tool, FlipGrid. Third grade is coming to the end of book clubs. They have done a wonderful job using Google Classroom to share their ideas across the entire grade level and I am looking forward to hosting a final book club discussion in the library next week. Fourth grade is gearing up for their own research project on Colonial Trades. All students have been actively checking out books and reading, reading, reading!