December

Happy Holidays! The children of Hilltop school will be learning the basics of basketball.  Many activities will be played incorporating those skills.  

 Your children maybe coming home and telling you that they climbed a wall today. Thanks to the HSA the children will have an opportunity to experience climbing in gym.  We will start with many of the basic steps and Rules that are needed to make the rock wall experience a success.

Enjoy your Holiday and your time off with your children.

Mrs. Morales

 3^rd & 4^th Graders participated in an HOUR of CODE!

We live in a world surrounded by technology. We know that whatever field our students choose to go into as adults, their ability to succeed will increasingly depend on understanding how technology works.

In an effort to continue our exploration of how technology works, our 3^rd and 4^th grade technology classes experienced an HOUR OF CODE with Mrs. LeMay.

We spent time discussing algorithms, the importance of attending to details, debugging, using models and simlulation to explore complex systems, perseverance, and collaboration.  All of these elements are not only critical copmonents of computer programming, but are applicable to all areas of learning. Students started out by working together to devlop the lines of code necessary to get Mrs. LeMay to her shoe! Students then went on to read and write code on paper (paper programming), and finallly students wrote code using the www.code.org platform.

Check out the great SketchNote by Sylvia Duckworth called “10 Reasons to Teach Coding.” She put the infographic together based on information from Brian Aspinall. Stay on the lookout for our own 3^rd and 4^th grade SKETCHNOTES! For more information about the Hour of Code, go to https://hourofcode.com/us.

Citations, Citations, Citations….

2^nd, 3^rd and 4^th graders are involved in research projects that require students to locate and access several print and digital resources.  We have discussed the importance citing their sources, and grades 3-4 have heard Mrs. LeMay’s Lovely Lollipop Story – The Importance of Giving Credit Where Credit Is Due!  In grades 3-4 we have gone into great detail discussing citation format and creating citations for our recent BrainPop mini research projects.  

The 4^th Grade Mannequin Challenge Videos and Scavenger Hunt are online! 

Our 4th graders recently worked together to complete Hilltop Library Mannequin Challenge videos. Students came up with a pose that could clearly illustrate the wonderful tools, resources, and space we have at the Hilltop Library -- where our students grow as readers, researchers and learners!

In an effort to engage ALL Hilltop learners, I have created the Hilltop Library Mannequin Challenge Scavenger Hunt. All students are welcome to complete one scavenger hunt form and return it to the Hilltop Library at any time this year to receive a prize. The Mannequin Challenge Scavenger Hunt form can be found on the Hilltop Library website.  Students can watch all 3 mannequin videos, but only need to complete one scavenger hunt form. The videos can be found on the password protected portion of our website. Questions?? email lemay@mendhamboroschools.org

1^st Graders Researchers are blossoming…Students have been learning about the Internet, the Chrome browser and how to navigate to the PebbleGO database at www.pebblego.com.   We discussed the importance of keeping our school login information private, and all students have had extensive practice logging in to the database. The Mendham Borough School District subscribes to this database, and students can access it from school or home. This informational research database is geared towards younger, emerging readers, giving them access to relevant, current information about research topics in a multimodal literacy environment that supports them at every level. Students searched, located, and accessed various informational texts and topics. They then went on to gather and record information, and will soon be locating the citation for a given informational article!

 

All Hilltop students are working on selections to share at the holiday concerts on Wednesday, December 21, 2016 in Hilltop’s Gym.  

Our theme this year is “Holiday Magic, Holiday Wonder.”

Holiday concert times are:

Grades 1 and 2 at 9:00 a.m.

Grades 3 and 4 at 10:15 a.m.

Kindergarten at 2:30 p.m.

Snow date for the concerts is Thursday, December 22, 2016. Concert times for the snow date would be the same as listed above.

Please have students dress neatly/nicely (no sports jerseys or shirts with logos) and not to warmly as performing on risers under lights makes the children warm.