News from the Hill
March 2, 2020
Principal's Message
Dear Families,
As we head into spring, there are so many great things blossoming at Hillside! An array of committees have been meeting to continually enhance our student experience:
Our Outdoor Classroom Committee proposed a vision for our first Outdoor Classroom, and our Buildings and Grounds team is currently in the process of helping to make that dream a reality! As you walk past our bird garden windows, you will see the design posted and construction underway for this outdoor presentation space.
Our Building Leadership Team is currently developing a plan that will incorporate the bond construction into learning at Hillside. This team, consisting of all stakeholder voices, will be proposing a school-wide initiative for next year in which every student will have a role. Stay tuned!
The Diverse Books Committee is reviewing assembly opportunities to bring to Hillside that will enhance our students’ understanding of diversity both at Hillside and in the world. This team will be making recommendations to ensure that our diverse programming represents all and broadens students’ perspectives.
We are also in the process of assembling an Earth Day Committee which will be tasked with planning events for the week of April 20th in honor of Earth Day’s 50th anniversary! This week will include a very special school-wide experience that will focus our attention on protecting and restoring our planet.
We are looking forward to a wonderful month at Hillside. The month kicks off with our PTSA Used Book Fair beginning on Wednesday, March 4th. There is nothing more magical than seeing students joyfully select stacks of great books! We thank the PTSA for volunteering hours of time to sort books for this amazing event!
Author Dan Gutman will be visiting on March 20th! Our Dan Gutman books are flying off the library shelves as students devour his fun stories. More information on his visit will follow later this month!
Finally, this month, the New York State English Language Arts assessment will be administered to students in Grades 3 and 4 on Wednesday, March 25th and Thursday, March 26th. (The NYS Math Assessment will be administered on April 21-22.) All assessments will begin at approximately 9 AM and are untimed. Please note that students' schedules may be slightly altered on these days in order to accommodate both state test requirements and teacher contracts. Our teachers and students have prepared for these state tests in class through a rigorous, engaging curriculum. You can best support your children by ensuring that they get a good night’s sleep and eat a healthy breakfast in the morning.
Wishing you a wonderful start to March!
Amy Cazes
Classroom News
Kindergarten
Kindergartners will be very busy during Writer’s Workshop this month as we are beginning to work on telling stories. We are using mentor texts to discuss times in our lives when we have felt emotions like, anger, excitement, happiness, shyness etc. We will be completing a graphic organizer for each story and will use that to help us write stories. As the students move through the writing process, they will be learning about editing and revising and will be publishing a book!
In math we will be starting our unit on number bonds where we are composing and decomposing numbers to five. An example of this would be, 5 = 3 and 2, or 1 and 4 make 5. During math stations we will be playing memory games using picture representations to ten, addition and subtraction bingo, orally telling word problems to match number bonds and much more.
1st Grade
First graders are growing leaps and bounds! As readers, our students continue to learn about non-fiction. Students are learning to read with wonderings in mind and understand that these wonderings will push them forward to learn more. As we navigate our way through this genre, students are learning about text features, asking questions and learning to talk to partners about what they have learned. Our children LOVE learning facts!
As writers, our students’ continue their work in writing “How-To” manuals. In the upcoming weeks, we will look at our manuals and begin to find ways to revise our work by adding helpful hints, using adjectives, using transition words to convey time and so much more.
As our current math unit on measurement wraps up, students have learned to 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 to represent and interpret data.
Our students have begun a study of Astronomy. Children are excited to learn about the sun, moon, stars and the planets. This unit is enhanced by our work in the STEAM class.
2nd Grade
After completing a wonderful reading unit all about characters, we are now returning our focus to non-fiction. In our new reading unit, the students will be researching topics in which they use multiple resources. Students will move from reading easier to more complex texts on a specific topic. As they read, they will become familiar with topic specific vocabulary, allowing them to read more challenging books. We are excited to learn all about topics of interest
We will begin our study of Pollinators in science this month. In this unit, the students will learn that plants depend on animals for pollination, or to move their seeds around. They will learn about the interdependent relationships of plants and animals, as well as research different types of pollinators.
We will begin March by completing our realistic fiction unit. The students have done an incredible job writing their realistic fiction stories, and have produced creative, descriptive, engaging pieces! In our next unit, we will return to expository writing. We will transfer our content area learning to research and write about pollinators. The students will create a mashup of non-fiction and fiction. Students will create informational books with a fictional character who comments on the story. We will use books such as Diary of a Worm, Fly Guy, Magic School Bus, etc. as our mentor texts.
A long anticipated concept in math begins this month: Multiplication! Our second graders are eagerly waiting to learn all about this topic! Module 6 lays the conceptual foundation for multiplication and division in Grade 3 and for the idea that numbers other than 1, 10, and 100 can serve as units. Topics in this module include: Formation of Equal Groups, Arrays and Equal Groups, Rectangular Arrays as a Foundation for Multiplication and Division, and The Meaning of Even and Odd Numbers. Students will be partaking in repeated addition and working with rows and columns to form different arrays.
3rd Grade
In math, third graders are continuing with an in-depth study of fractions. This includes comparing unit fractions and specifying the whole, using fractions on a number line, identifying equivalent fractions, and interpreting comparison, order and size of fractions. Students are also working on multi-step word problems related to fractions.
In reading, students are learning about the theme or “message” of a story. What lesson does the author want us to learn from this story? Why did the author make the choices he/she made in telling this story? Students are also reading closely and using inferring strategies to better understand the deeper meaning of the story. Students are encouraged to look back in the text to find evidence to support their thinking about specific questions related to the text.
In writing, students are focused on answering questions based on the text. They are closely reading passages and looking for text evidence to support their ideas about their reading. Students will use skills they learned during our literary essay unit to develop ideas about a text, make a claim, and support their claim using text evidence. Students will also write “long and strong” to answer questions about the text and its characters.
Third grade’s study of Russia continues. Students are studying the landscape of Russia, including the Steppes and Siberia. Students are learning about art in Russia, including both Faberge Eggs - their historical significance and how they were created, as well as Russian artist, Wassily Kandinsky. Students will also learn about Russian architecture, specifically onion domes.
4th Grade
In math, 4th graders continue to build upon their knowledge of fractions. Adding and subtracting fractions, renaming fractions, plotting fractions on a number line - we are doing it all!
In ELA, students have put the finishing touches on our Literary Essay unit, and now will be moving into our first non-fiction unit. Students will be examining text features such as captions, subtitles, and photos and learning how they support and enhance passages for optimal comprehension. 4th graders will be using their new found knowledge and skills and will apply them to our work in social studies. As we continue to learn about the Dutch contribution to present day New York City, we will write research papers to share this information.
In science, students will be moving into physical sciences and learning about simple machines, magnetism, electricity and matter. March will be filled with activity!
Learning Lab 2-4
In the Learning Lab, our second graders are becoming experts in adding and subtracting with regrouping using a variety of place value strategies. We are getting ready to move on to... Multiplication! Our second graders are eagerly waiting to learn all about this topic! Module 6 lays the conceptual foundation for multiplication and division in Grade 3. Topics in this module include: Formation of Equal Groups, Arrays and Equal Groups, Rectangular Arrays as a Foundation for Multiplication and Division, and The Meaning of Even and Odd Numbers. Students will be partaking in repeated addition and working with rows and columns to form different arrays.
In math, third and fourth graders in the Learning Lab are continuing with an in-depth study of fractions. This includes comparing unit fractions and specifying the whole, using fractions on a number line, identifying equivalent fractions, and interpreting comparison, order and size of fractions. Students are also working on multi-step word problems related to fractions.
As readers, we have been continuing to work on building fluency and comprehension. We are continuing to build on inference skills. We use shared reading experiences to learn together and listen to a story many times. We dig deeper and deeper each time we read the text.
Communications Class K-2
In ELA, we are beginning our nonfiction unit. We will learn about different text features in books, in addition to studying topics of interest. The students will become experts on their favorite topics and create a small book to culminate their research.
Communications Class 3-5
In ELA in Communications 3-5 we have been continuing to work on answering text based questions and beginning inference skills as we use the text and our own knowledge to form reasonable responses. In math students are beginning to work with multiplication and division. We are exploring the relationships between mathematical operations for conceptual understanding. In science we are finishing up patterns in nature as they relate to Earth and space. Next we will be moving on to forces of motion with a focus on gravity.
Art
The Art Department is excited to announce that the Art Room will be open from 8-8:30am during the week of March 9-13 for students to work on submissions for the Multicultural Book Fair. Students are welcome to show up to the Art Room and use the 2-dimensional materials (drawing supplies and collage material) to complete a project for the Race Matters Committee Art Competition. Details for the competition are below:
Artwork must be 2-Dimensional and completed on 9’ x 12” paper.
Please hand in work to Mr. Morgan at Hillside, Farragut, or HHS with your first and last name, grade, and school written on the back.
Grand Prize winning Artwork will be featured in the advertisements for the 4th Annual Multicultural Book Fair and Festival.
Additional winners will be selected from each school.
Deadline for all entries is Friday, March 13th.
As always, check out the Hillside Art Blog for regular updates from the Art Studio - https://www.hohschools.org/Page/1225 .
Music
Welcome back from break! Kindergarten and first graders are wrapping up the Carnival of the Animals unit. They’ve experienced a wide range of instruments, had fun learning how orchestration affects the mood and characteristics of music. They’ve been exploring movement and vocal expression using Saint-Saens’s music, animal songs, and singing games. Second graders are exploring the classroom xylophones and glockenspiels. They’ve learned proper mallet technique, moving mallets between bars, and keeping a steady rhythm with open and broken chords. They have also been working on singing two part rounds and listening for the harmonies that are created as the melodies intersect. Third grade students are working on a jazz unit. We learned about Ella Fitzgerald, Louis Armstrong, scatting, and dixieland jazz. Before break, fourth grade started a unit on hip-hop. They learned about the origins of hip-hop, DJ Kool Herc, Grandmaster Flash, breakdancing, and scratching. They experimented with creating their own looping beat patterns using an online drum machine. Students also learned how to put together lyrics when writing their own raps. We looked at how syntax, rhythm, and word choice can affect the flow of their rap. Stay tuned for finished projects! If you would like to find out more about what is going on in Ms. Concra’s music classes, please check out her updated website.
Physical Education
Hello Everyone! I hope everyone was able to enjoy the February break! We have some exciting things going on in the world of Phys Edu. We have officially begun our Traverse Wall unit. To start the unit, all students were given a tutorial on the rules and how to use the wall. Now students have begun to use the wall and become familiar with the skill, technique, and tactics that go into rock climbing. This is an awesome opportunity that was made possible by the generosity of our Hastings Education Foundation who gave us a grant for this wall. Students are excited to get started!
Our next unit that we will start in about 2 weeks will be Hockey. We will be teaching students how to properly hold a hockey stick, the technique of using a stick to move a puck (or in our case a ball) around, the rules of hockey, and different strategies used within the game.
As always please make sure sneakers are worn on P.E. days! Thank you.
FLES
Hola! Here’s a snapshot of what we’ve been working on in our lessons:
First graders have been busy learning the weather expressions and discussing typical climates in various Spanish-speaking countries.
Second graders are continuing their study of the pets and are discussing which pets they have and/or want.
Third graders are wrapping up their study of Argentina and will soon be writing what they have learned about this country by creating a postcard.
Fourth graders are continuing to practice transportation words and are now talking about places they will visit and the activities they will do there, in addition to how they will get there!