News from the Hill
May 1, 2019
Principal's Message
Dear Families,
Happy May! Though this week’s temperatures may not feel like spring, beautiful weather is right around the corner! Our students and staff cannot wait to enjoy more outdoor time and thanks to our Outdoor Classroom Committees and the PTSA, that hope will become a reality! Our Outdoor Classroom Committees have been meeting all year to determine what outdoor learning spaces would be best for Hillside, as PTSA will be generously granting us monies toward these spaces. Currently, our Design Committee is putting together detailed plans to create two outdoor spaces- one in our bird garden and another on our back playground. Once the plans are complete, we look forward to sharing them with the community. Thank you to all the teachers and parents who have participated in this year-long process. It’s truly amazing what a team of dedicated, talented people can do for our kids.
May is a busy month. Both today and tomorrow, our third and fourth-grade students will participate in the NYS Math Assessment and later this month, our fourth graders will also begin a Performance-Based Science Test. The results from these state assessments provide us with additional information about how our students are progressing as learners. We use this information in conjunction with our Hillside assessments, classroom performance, teacher observations, and classroom assessments to inform our instructional practices and supports.
We are excited to share that this month, there will be two opportunities for parent learning at Hillside. On Tuesday, May 7th, our PTSA will be bringing a guest speaker from Wait Until 8th to advocate for delaying Smartphone usage by children until 8th grade. The presentation will begin at 6:30 PM. Then, on Wednesday, May 8th at 7 PM, our Inclusion Working Group will be supporting our Diverse Book Initiative with a workshop entitled, Fostering Racial Literacy through Children’s Literature with Dr. Detra Price-Dennis. We hope you can join us!
At the end of the month, we look forward to two special Hastings events. First, we will be welcoming our incoming kindergarten students to Hillside at our Kindergarten Orientation. Also, all of our HIllside students will be visiting the Multicultural Book Fair at HHS and meeting the authors. We cannot wait to add new titles to our literary collections!
We are looking forward to a great month!
Warm regards,
Amy Cazes
Classroom News
Kindergarten
Big news! Kindergarten is growing chicks. The chicks eggs arrived on Wednesday, April 24th! In the upcoming weeks, we will closely examine the eggs in our incubators and do some observational writing. Our wonderings about chicks will guide our learning in the classroom. There is such excitement in Kindergarten!
We have started a new unit on farms. We will be learning about all the animals that live on a farm as well as the crops that people grow on farms. In this unit, students will understand the importance of farms as a source of food and the other products people use.
In honor of Earth Day on Monday, April 22nd, Kindergarteners read a number of wonderful books and poems about taking care of the earth. These books and poems generated some great discussions on ways each of us can contribute to making the earth a beautiful place to live and build more awareness of respecting our amazing earth.
1st Grade
First graders have started a study of Animals and Habitats. During the next few weeks, they will take a closer look at the animals and plants of the arctic, desert, rainforest, temperate deciduous forest, ocean and freshwater habitats. Here, students will learn about the interdependency of all living things and will learn to recognize different plants and animals as being indigenous to specific habitats. Stay tuned for more information about upcoming science museums in our classrooms!
Our new reading unit, “Making Friends with Characters” is well underway. Here our readers are learning to think more deeply about what characters like, what they do and how they can change. Through jotting and talking, students are learning to support their thoughts with evidence.
As writers, our students are learning how to write persuasive pieces. During this study, students are learning the difference between fact and opinion and have been exposed to wonderful mentor texts such as, Red is Best, I Wanna Iguana, I Wanna New Room among others to help us learn the structure of this writing. Students are using their understanding to draft, revise and publish their own pieces.
2nd Grade
Our entomologists/readers have been reading informational books and using websites to learn about specific insects, jotting notes on subtopics related to their critters’ lives, and have now organized those notes for the writing task. Each entomologist is now penning a diary, assuming the role of the insect that he/she has studied, and narrating the life story, from egg to adult. A mix of humor, adventure, and factual information is such fun to write!
Mealworm-mania is still strong amongst the scientists. The children are excited to watch the larvae’s antics, the pupae’s stillness within their cases and then the silly wrigglings as their bodies metamorphosize into adults, with wings. It will be a sad day (for us) when these insects are shipped back to the lab in NC, so that other students across the country can have the same hands-on experiences.
Insect Day, on May 3, will be our grade-level, integrated celebration! We cannot wait to share our enthusiasm and knowledge with our families!
Our mathematicians have been exploring data collection, using tallies and counts. The students have created pictographs and bar graphs to display the data and can interpret and analyze the information. We’re counting coins and bills now, and have learned how to use dollar signs and decimal points to write amounts.
In STEAM, the geographers weathered cornmeal plateaus with raindrops; crevices, canyons, cliffs, and rivers were created; runoff made oceans!
3rd Grade
In science, students have been researching extreme weather -focusing on thunderstorms, blizzards, tornadoes and hurricanes. As they read books and articles on the various storms, they are using their note-taking skills to gather information. This is coinciding with work in the STEAM lab, where students are learning about temperature and how to measure it in both Celsius and Fahrenheit units. Students continue writing in their Writer’s Notebooks. After they write, they often share their writing with a reading partner.
Third graders began their next social studies unit - a study of Brazil. We have begun with map work - placing Brazil both in the world, and on the continent of South America. They are learning about the design and history of the Brazilian flag. As we learn about the culture, art and economic systems in Brazil, we will be comparing and contrasting them with our previous studies of the United States, China and Russia. We also continue our current events monthly meetings with Claudia Heitler.
We have begun our last math unit for the year - Geometry and Measurement. Students are working with perimeter and area as they learn real-life applications for the use of them. They also continue to study their multiplication and division facts, which come in handy as they solve multi-step word problems.
We are looking forward to:
raising ladybugs, using our knowledge of animal life cycles to help us study them
traveling to the Paley Center in New York City to learn about Jim Henson as part of our upcoming Biography Unit
creating masks with our artist-in-residence, Alison Marra, as part of our study of art in Brazil
our current events assembly with 3rd and 4th graders to hear about local government from our new mayor - Mayor Armacost- as she answers questions we have sent to her
the upcoming Multicultural Book Fair at the High School
4th Grade
In math, we are just wrapping up our study of geometry and will begin our last unit of the year on decimals. Students will be introduced to terms such as tenths, hundredths, and thousandths and they will also learn to add and subtract numbers using decimal points.
In ELA, we have begun our last unit which focuses on realistic fiction and identifying universal themes in books. Students will be working with classmates in book clubs, making plans for their reading schedules and formulating questions to discuss in groups. We look forward to this exciting and collaborative work.
This month in social studies, we are so thrilled to begin our residency with ArchforKids. Thank you for all of the boxes that were donated. You will be amazed by their transformation into the neighborhoods of the Lower East Side of Manhattan. During the upcoming weeks, students will also create paper mache busts which will represent the many immigrants who came to this country to begin a new life. More information will follow soon.
In science, students have continued their work in STEAM creating various examples of simple machines. In the weeks ahead, 4th graders will be experimenting with magnetism and electricity. Students will learn to distinguish between conductors and insulators, and they will also be able to create their own working circuits.
The end of our year promises to be filled with many hands-on and engaging activities.
Communications 1-3
In our ELA unit, we are working on understanding characters in a book by talking about how characters think, act and feel. We are working on how the characters felt in the story using illustrations and character dialogue. We are reading series books that focus on one central character to study this unit.
In Math, we are continuing our unit on graphs and displaying data. We are interpreting data on bar graphs, pictographs and line graphs. We will be moving on to recognizing and counting coins and bills in the upcoming weeks.
In Social Studies, we wrapped up our unit on different landforms. Our third graders are beginning a unit on Brazil. They are studying the history, culture and geography of this country. Our younger students will be focusing on geography and habitats. In Science, we wrapped up our insect unit and are beginning a unit on plants.
Learning Lab 1-2
Learning Lab mathematicians are extending their knowledge of place value by representing tens and ones to 100! Learners add tens to a two-digit number, count on and make ten when adding across a ten, and interpret two-digit numbers as tens and ones, including cases with more than 9 ones. Friends are also problem-solving using place value and showing numbers in different ways. We are using place value to add and subtract in real-life situations (even during ELA) to make it more authentic! Friends have just about mastered counting by 10s to 100 and we will extend this skill to higher numbers. We are playing a game called “Buzz” daily to increase automaticity of counting by 10s. Each day, we try to beat our time from the day before. We are currently at 1 minute and 16 seconds!
Our second-grade learners are officially insect experts! Friends worked very diligently on their diary entry writing pieces, writing through the lens of a beetle or dragonfly. They are excited to show all that they’ve learned about insect life cycles on May 2nd during Insect Day!
In the Learning Lab, we continue to grow as readers. Friends are paying close attention to the thoughts, feelings, and actions of characters as they read, as well as when they listen to texts read aloud. Students answer inferential questions about characters, taking careful note of how they change over the course of a story.
During FUNdations, students are introduced to the concept of a base word and suffix. Suffixes are added to the words studied in previous units. Friends learn that when the suffix –s is added to a word, it sometimes says /s/ or it sometimes says /z/. They are also introduced to the concept of plurals, learning that when they add the suffix –s, it means more than one. They recognize that some words with a suffix –s added are not plurals, but action words (described as something that is happening now). In addition to this new concept, friends are continuing to practice digraphs, glued sounds, and nasal sounds both in isolation and in context.
Learning Lab 3-4
In the Learning Lab, we have been growing as readers by engaging with reading partners. In our partnerships, we are reading the same book together and having meaningful conversations.
Our 3rd graders are reviewing math concepts such as multi-digit addition and subtraction and multiplication and division facts. We will soon begin our last math unit for the year - Geometry and Measurement. Students are working with perimeter and area as they learn real-life applications for the use of them. They also continue to study their multiplication and division facts, which come in handy as they solve multi-step word problems.
Our fourth graders are wrapping up our study of geometry and will begin our last unit of the year on decimals. Students will be introduced to terms such as tenths, hundredths, and thousandths and they will also learn to add and subtract numbers using decimal points.
Art
The HIllside Art Department is excited to announce a change in the format of the Hillside Grade Level Art Shows. Due to logistical challenges, the Art Dept. is unable to mount five evening art shows in the month of May. So, we plan to have a massive display around the entire Hillside facility during the month of June. Beginning on June 8, students & parents will see the hallways filled with displays of student artwork - these exhibitions will also be on display during the end-of-the-year celebrations. More information to follow!
Music
Kindergarteners have been practicing keeping a steady beat while singing, moving and playing instruments. They are also beginning to work on simple circle and line dances. First-grade students have been working on their aural skills by identifying beat patterns and various instruments (including instruments found in Latin music). Second-grade students started our unit on stories and music from around the world. They have and will continue to explore music, instruments, and customs from different cultures. Third-grade students are working on rondo form where there are different sections in a piece of music but the original theme or “A Section” always comes back. They were able to identify this when listening to music and even created their own rondo form rhythm composition. Fourth graders enjoyed our sea shanty unit where they learned the history of sea shanties, sang and performed traditional shanties, and played bass lines and improvised on classroom instruments.
Physical Education
April has come and gone and with that we said goodbye to our Bopper Hockey unit and the second round of the Obstacle Course. As always the obstacle course was great success. After a week of transition games, we are now getting ready for our Volleyball unit. This is probably our most intensive unit from K-4 because we take the time to teach each skill involved in the sport of volleyball. We start with the basics, bump, set, serve, and volleying and move towards game play. This unit will probably last about 3 and a half to 4 weeks. In addition to traditional volleyball games we include 2 9 Square courts in the gym to help students practice their set and bump. This gives the students an opportunity to practice volleyball in a more relaxed setting. We are all looking forward to this unit.
Believe it or not, Field Day is right around the corner. If you would like to volunteer, please email us at bassmanna@learn.hohschools.org for more information and to express interest. Thank you in advance for all of your help to make this day special for all of our students!
FLES
April has flown by, and I’ve enjoyed hearing about some of my students’ vacations to Spanish-speaking countries over spring vacation! Kindergarteners are continuing their learning of the nuclear members of the family through several songs as well as interactive games on the SMART Board. First graders are wrapping up our unit about clothing and are preparing to share their student-created ‘clothing magazines’ with the class! Second graders are also wrapping up our unit about Puerto Rico, and have focused on some of the popular landmarks, animals, the festival Carnival, and Hurricane Maria. They will be bringing home their student-created books about Puerto Rico and will be starting a review ‘mini unit’ about the clothing in Spanish in a couple of weeks.
Third graders are enjoying our new unit about Peru, especially learning about the incredible UNESCO World Heritage Site of Machu Picchu. Please note that the interactive website which students accessed in class one day to further explore Machu Picchu can be found on my FLES website under “Online Excursions” on the Hillside website. Feel free to explore Machu Picchu further with your child! Fourth graders researched questions of their choice that they had about the Dominican Republic using a variety of databases and Internet resources. Fourth graders are eager to begin our new unit about the culture of Mexico!