December 2015

Library & Technology

December has been a busy month

@ the Hilltop Library Media Center!

3rd and 4th Graders have been busy researching. Students are using our district subscriptions for www.brainpopjr.com and www.brainpop.com to view informational videos, listen for details, note-take, and publish their notes in their Google Drive.  Students understand the importance of citing our sources, and will incorporate a formal citation for their informational video when they embark on their second research topic.

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Hilltop 4th graders participated in an HOUR OF CODE!  We joined in on the largest learning event in history: The Hour of Code, during Computer Science Education Week Dec. 7-13.  More than 100 million students worldwide have already tried an Hour of Code.  In the Hilltop Library Media Center 4th graders were introduced to the basic concept of coding. Students learned about and wrote basic algorithms on paper.  Students then proceeded to use Blockly, an introductory programming language in which students write code using visual blocks. Students were required to make sense of problems and persevere in solving them, reason abstractly and quantitatively, and attend to precision!  Watch out for Mrs. LeMay’s after school “CODING” enrichment class.

In honor of the winter holidays, students in grades 1-4 have been creating GEOMETRIC winter scenes in PowerPoint.  Using their imagination, creativity, design skills, and digital drawing tools, students have created some incredible scenes! Stay on the lookout for these fabulous creations!

All 3rd & 4th graders are STRONGLY ENCOURAGED to continue their home keyboarding practice!  Keyboard logs are due every technology class.

2nd Graders are deep into their state research projects. Students have used various digital and print sources to research their state, and are now beginning to put together a digital presentation.   

Physical Education: The classes have been focusing on their EYE-HAND coordination.  For most classes this means Basketball. I work on developing their eye-hand coordination with different activities. For 1st and 2nd activities like Dribble freeze is played.  For 3rd and 4th grade we play a dribble tag game. The younger children will shoot at a little tikes hoop using different size balls. The oldest classes will use the main baskets, and use a Jr. size ball.  We all continue to keep our bodies in shape by jogging around the gym and keeping an eye on our heart rate.     

November

Fourth graders have continued their recorder playing from the Spring and reviewed G A B and E finger positions.  They are able to read and play songs with the pitches in treble clef notation.  They have earned two recorder karate belts this Fall - white and yellow - for reading and playing: Gently Sleep (white) and French Song and Tommy Tiddlemouse (yellow).  Soon, they will play Doggie, Doggie or Star Light to earn their orange belts.  Our rhythm focus since September has been time signatures and note values.  Students recognize, read, describe, and perform music with time signatures of 4/4, 2 /4, and 3/ 4.  They can also write measures of rhythms with the correct number of beats when given one of the previously mentioned time signatures.  

All students in K-4 have begun preparing songs for our annual holiday concerts at Hilltop.  The theme this year is Holiday Time...the Most Wonderful Time.  Visit Hilltop Holiday Concerts 2015 for more information.

In the month of November, the children will be working on all different things.  My fourth graders will be working together with their class to come up with an exercise “brain break” that the children in the school can do in their classroom.  They will also be learning how to do the Virginia Reel. The 1st, 2nd, and 3rd grades will be learning many different dances like the Cotton Eye Joe, the Macarena and the Y M C A .

Ask your child if they have had an opportunity to do some JUST DANCE in their gym class, and then have them show you some moves. Children love to move their bodies to music. Enjoy your Turkey Day, don’t forget to take a nice walk after you eat.  It’s healthy for the whole family.  

  

Library & Technology:

In kindergarten and first grade we have been exploring literature and songs about gratitude. Students shared and wrote about the many things they are grateful for.  These young readers have also been listening for and identifying the problem, soltion, setting, and genre. They are becoming reading detective experts as they explain problems and solutions using text evidence. Our first graders extended their writing into the technology lab and created TERRIFIC THANKFUL SENTENCES.  Students have become quite efficient at using Microsoft Word, changing letter color, font and size, as well as inserting and resizing images. Second graders remain quite busy with our graphing unit.  They have collected bat and candy data, and have constructed both bar graphs and pie charts.  We will be embarking on our STATE RESEARCH UNIT at the end of the month, and will certainly incorporate some POPULATION graphing into our projects! In Fourth Grade we completed our review of the Dewey Decimal system, identifying genres, and locating books to meet our literary interests. Students used web 2.0 applications to create "Dewey Word Clouds" reflecting the subject matter that they found in their assigned Dewey section.

 

 

Spanish: Kindergarten students are learning all about colors and shapes! Can your child tell you what el circulo rojo (the red circle) means? First grade students are working on a “Yo Soy Especial/I am Special” rainbow activity using colors to show they are unique. Second graders are learning all about “Mi Familia/My Family” and talking about the size of their family, names of family members and more! Third and fourth grade students are having fun learning to describe themselves and others using adjectives and verbs… and physical descriptions too, such as hair and eye color. Please be sure to check the Spanish website for extra practice at home!

October, 2015

Kindergarteners have learned some “magical” skills through art.  They have learned to overlap things to create an illusion of space.  They have learned to cut on a fold to make a whole shape while drawing only a half the shape.  They have learned to mix colors to highlight and shade in painting.  Really, what they are exercising is the fine motor skills and getting accustomed to the procedures in the art room.  We are having a blast!

First graders have explored, experienced, and identified a variety of musical elements in the first marking period. They understand when music has a steady beat or does not have a steady beat.  They have identified tempo (speed of music) in Italian terms: adagio, moderato, allegro and dynamics (volume of music) in Italian terms: piano, mezzoforte, and forte.  They should understand the difference between pitch (highness/lowness of a tone) and dynamics/volume (how loud or quiet sound is).  They will continue to explore and understand pitch vocally and on pitched percussion instruments (xylophones).  First graders have also played plenty of non-pitched percussion instruments: triangles, sandblocks, drums, tambourines, maracas, woodblocks, cymbals, clatterpillars, whistle tubes, and thundertubes.  They are developing the ability to hold various mallets correctly in order to play xylophones and glockenspiels.  We’ve used our instruments to highlight text in songs/poems and to learn how to follow the conductor’s cues.  In case you don’t know what a clatterpillar or thundertube look like, here are pictures:

http://www.sweetwater.com/store/detail/ThunderTub

  http://toysdiscovery.com/Products?category=49

For a free on-line game high/low pitch:

https://www.musick8kids.com/html/musicgame.php

For a game about steady beat sound/no steady beat sounds:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/northernireland/schools/4_11/music/mm/sound01.shtml

It’s October,time to see what kind of shape we are all in.  The children in grades 1st thru 4th will be evaluated in the following area’s: 1 mile run (24 laps in the gym) for 4th and 3rd graders, ½ mile 3 laps around the big field outside,for 2 graders, and for 1st grade, two laps on the big field.  The children are timed and the time is recorded.   

All grades do a shuttle run, sit-ups for 1 minute, and a sit and reach to test their flexibility.  These area’s will be revisited in May at this time their should be some improvement. We will also be enjoying some Happy Halloween activities.      

Fourth Graders have been exploring and learning about important reference books, including the thesaurus and the dictionary. We learned about Noah Webster and the first American dictionary, and Peter Roget and his thesaurus. Students practiced using these resources both online and in print.

Third and Fourth graders have begun keyboarding practice, and will spend 2-3 classes practicing the correct technique.  Students will then be encouraged to apply this technique to all computer activities and homework that is completed in school and at home, and are strongly encouraged to complete 30 minutes of weekly home keyboard practice.

Students in grades K-1 are having fun learning and talking about “Colores!” or Colors. First graders even completed a fun survey with their classmates to find out if they liked certain colors or not. Can your child tell you some colors they like (Me gusta!) or don’t like (No me gusta!)? Second graders have also been surveying their “amigos” to find out their Spanish name, age and birthday month! Can your child do the monthly macarena for you or tell you how old they are? Third and fourth graders are learning adjectives to describe themselves… and fourth graders are learning how to describe their friends as well! We are doing a lot of acting out and moving around to learn the new vocabulary. Can your child tell you about themselves using adjectives (Yo soy…/No soy...)? Please be sure to check the Spanish website for ways you can practice together at home! Gracias :)