February 2016

Kindergarten and First grade students have been learning all about Las Mascotas or Pets! Can your child tell you the names of the some pets the like, and perhaps their colors too? Second graders are having fun with Los Deportes or Sports. They have done surveys, games and other fun activities to practice sharing their interests and talking about what sports they play. Soon they will be presenting to the class as an athlete of their choice!

Third grade students have moved onto La Familia or Family in Spanish class. Since they learned immediate family member vocabulary in Second grade, they are now onto extended family vocabulary! Can your child tell you how many aunts, uncles or cousins they have? We are also having fun interpreting family trees and creating our own. Finally, fourth grade students have begun their unit that starts with La Ropa or Clothing! This is a fun unit because students can also practice body parts, seasons and weather as well. It will end with a fun fashion show project next month… stay tuned :)

This winter, second graders have reviewed rhythm patterns and identified, wrote, and read these rhythms in Meter in 2.  They have learned the following vocabulary: bar line, double bar line, and measure.  Our focus has switched, now, to melody.  Second graders are learning what the music staff is and how to write notes on it to create 2-pitch patterns from songs they know: Rain, Rain, Go Away; Cobbler, Cobbler; Snail, Snail; Here We Sit, etc.  Right now, we are using a 3 line-2 space staff.  We will be moving to full staff (5 Lines-4 Spaces) in the next month.

In the next few weeks, they will teach themselves how to play the melodic patterns that they are writing on the music staff on xylophones, keyboards, and piano.

February, Heart Month  The focus is on keeping your Heart Healthy.  The Third graders just did Jump rope for Heart.  They were excited to jump. All grades learned what the word pulse means, and how to take it. For kindergarten, just understanding that you can feel your heart beat with you hand on your heart when you do lots of exercises fast.  

The grades have enjoyed learning about Volleyball and the 3 key skills you need to know in order to play in a game of volleyball.  Ask your Son or Daughter, I bet they can show you what the skills look like.  

Stay Warm this February by speed walking down your street with your children.

Then hand in a Walked with a parent slip and maybe win a token.  

DON’T FORGET KIDS WEAR YOUR SNEAKERS ON GYM DAYS   

March is Youth Art Month!  As it’s done every year, a sampling of  artworks by Hilltop students will be exhibited at the Mendham Public Library for the month of March.  Come and show your support! Fourth grade classes will be showing their printmaking skills.  Third grade classes will be displaying their dragon works and some other artworks from the fall and winter months.  Second graders’ beautiful pastel works of birds will be exhibited.  First graders grayscale winter landscape will be presented.  And lastly, a selection from kindergarteners’ artworks will be presented.  

Because of the limited space, not every student’s artwork can be exhibited.  However, we will try to include all of the fourth grader’s artworks.  And some of the artworks will be switched during the month to include more students’ works.  

February has been a busy month! Students have been researching and learning about presidents, honoring African Americans in celebration of Black History Month, as well as discussing our character education pillar this month... COURAGE.

3rd and 4th Graders conducted mini presidential research using an assigned source. Students accessed information from non-fiction texts, www.whitehouse.gov, or our online subscription to Encyclopedia Brittanica. We then went on to explore various narrative nonfiction and historical fiction texts, including Henry’s Freedom Box, Dave the Potter:Artist, Poet, Slave, and Separate but Equal.  4th Graders interpreted many of Dave’s couplets, and then went on to write their own character-ed based couplet. In the technology lab students have continued to learn about the importance of being a great digital citizen, and have each created a page for our class book.

In 2nd Grade we have been honoring African Americans in celebration of Black History Month, as well as discussing our character education pillar this month... COURAGE. We have been reading various nonfiction and historical fiction books and discussing the meaning of equality. Students also spent time time reading nonfiction text passages in groups, recalling details and providing evidence from texts they have read to ensure understanding and further develop their reading and comprehension skills. In the technology lab students are extremely close to completing their very comprehensive State Research Project, and will soon be participating in a “Tech-Time Walk About” in order to celebrate their work.

In 1st Grade we have been learning about courage and equality, and what better individual to illustrate courage than RUBY BRIDGES!  Students learned about Ruby Bridges, discussed the meaning of equality, and then went on to write about and illustrate what equality looks like to them. Students have spent time reading nonfiction text passages, recalling details and providing evidence from texts they have read to ensure understanding and further develop their reading and comprehension skills. In the technology lab students completed their biographical research. Students accessed our online subscription to PebbleGo, located an online article about a famous individual, and located and printed a photo and citation for their project. Students also participated in a “Tech-Time Walk About” giving them the opportunity to celebrate their learning, and practice reading and speaking for an authentic audience.

January 2016

From the Gym at Hilltop School:  Happy New Year!!  I have lots in store for all of your children this month.  We are focusing on Setting a fitness goal in the gym.  Can you Jog without walking for 3 minutes in your first 4 gym classes this year? We will see  We will begin our fitness stations.  Sit ups, Jump roping, Shuttling, zoom ball, and even balance boards.  Our January unit focuses on the Sport of Volleyball.  In about two weeks, ask your child how to Set a Volleyball, I bet they can show you

JUST A REMINDER:

DON’T FORGET TO WEAR OR BRING YOUR SNEAKERS ON GYM DAYS

DON’T FORGET TO WALK WITH A PARENT AND BRING IN YOUR SLIPS TO WIN A TOKEN.  A WALK ON A BRISK DAY IS HEALTHY   

Art: Winter is here in the art room!  We have the fourth graders painting the winter wonderland reviewing many of the concepts that deal with creating 3-D forms. Third graders have just finished their winter birch tree scenes, through which they have learned to create visual rhythm. Second graders are delving into learning about the next element of art -- space.  Their pine tree paintings utilize several space techniques to show distance and a vast area.  First graders are busy with trying out different folk art around the world, but will be painting their winter landscape soon enough.  Kindergarteners are endlessly creating winter scenes using lines, shapes and texture.  Look out for these artworks to come home at the end of the month, as the second marking period ends!

Music: Third graders have learned about the composer Antonio Vivaldi and have listened to excerpts from “Autumn” and “Winter” from Vivaldi’s well-known composition The Four Seasons.  They are working on describing music in writing and using appropriate musical terms: pitch, melody, rhythm, beat, timbre, and dynamics.  They will listen to and describe excerepts from “Spring” and “Summer” from Vivaldi’sThe Four Seasons before the school year ends.  For a great site on classical music for children, visit: http://www.classicsforkids.com/. For the radio show about Vivaldi’s life that third graders listened to, visit this site:  Audio of Vivaldi Biography.  Third graders have now turned their attention to learning how to group known rhythmic values into groups of 4 (Meter in 4 or 4/4 time) by adding bar lines and double bar lines to make measures.  In the next few weeks, they will add the whole note and dotted half note to their vocabulary of rhythmic values in 4/4 time.  Lastly, third graders received a form letter to give to their parents/guardians about our upcoming recorder unit.  This form is due on Friday, January 22, 2016.  If you need a copy of that recorder form letter, you can visit this link: Third Grade 2016 Recorder Form Letter.

LIBRARY MEDIA CENTER/TECHNOLOGY

In the Library Media Center…

3rd and 4th Graders have been learning about and identifying primary and secondary sources. Through our exploration of various narrative nonfiction texts students have been referring to details and examples from our texts to help them write about our reading and support their thoughts and ideas with textual evidence. Here are a few of the nonfiction texts we have enjoyed this month.

** Mr. Ferris and His Wheel **

**Winne: The True Story of the Bear Who Inspired Winnie the Pooh **

**Pop! The Invention of Bubble Gum **

**Gingerbread for Liberty!**

**Earmuffs for Everyone!**

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1st Graders have been busy reading and listening to informational text through various print and online articles.  Students recently completed a biographical research project and understand the importance of citing their sources! Ask them to share Mrs. LeMay’s “Lollipop Story” which highlights an important reason for including a citation in our research.

2nd Graders continue to work on their state research projects and have learned how to add digital recordings, slide transitions and custom animations to their presentation.  We spent a great deal of time discussing the importance of warming up our mouths, practicing our fluency and reading prior to recording our voices, as well as the importance of articulating our words.  Students will be presenting their work to their peers through a “Tech-Time Walk About” in which all students rotate around the computer lab to view and listen to their classmates’ state presentations.

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!