Hillis Hound Happenings

As the second semester begins, please update your family and emergency contact information in Infinite Campus, if necessary. Schools need to have updated contact information for all students. This is especially important for emergency contacts in case you cannot answer school calls or pick up your child from school. It is also important that the emergency contacts know that they are listed and can respond if you are not available. We ask that all students have one or more emergency contacts who are not the parent or guardian listed in Infinite Campus. If you have questions about how to update this information, please contact the Hillis office.

At Hillis Elementary, Every Day Matters…and Every Minute Counts!

As we enter second semester, our goal is to improve building attendance, and every student must do their part! This means coming to school on time, every day.

Students are considered:

Excessively absent when they miss 5% of the semester (approximately 4.5 days)

Chronically absent when they miss 10% of the semester (approximately 9 days)

If students miss 20% of the semester (approximately 18 days), parents/guardians may be referred to truancy court.

At the end of first semester, approximately 14% of Hillis students were chronically absent. Our goal is to have less than 10% of our students chronically absent.

To reach that goal, we need all students to have excellent attendance! Here are some tips to make this happen:

- Arrive on time; tardies can add up to chronic absenteeism! Students who arrive after 7:40 are marked tardy.

- Provide doctor notes for any illnesses. If you aren’t sure if your student is well enough to attend, please talk to our school nurse, Holland Seiberling.

- Plan vacations during school breaks, and do your best to schedule appointments on no school days or after school hours.

- Reach out to Tiffany Taylor, SUCCESS Case Manager, with any concerns about your student’s attendance. She can be reached at 515-401-5020 or tiffany.taylor@dmschools.org

Thank you for your commitment to attendance at Hillis Elementary!

Kindergarten students have just finished a Weather Wonders Unit in Literacy. We are now play experts and weather experts. During our weather unit students learned about weather facts and weather around the world. They are able to state weather facts, describe activities you can do, and how to dress for the weather. Students then created a character, chose a weather type, and wrote a weather story. 2nd grade students then visited all kindergarten classrooms to hear our stories read to them by the students. Continue to practice reading and writing sight words at home with your student.

In Math we just finished our unit on Addition and Subtraction. Students are beginning to develop an understanding of addition and subtraction and how they are represented in story problems and expressions. We are continuing to build on our counting skills and how to represent quantities with numbers, objects and drawings. Please continue to practice counting to 100 and writing numbers in order to 31 at home.

Looking forward to seeing you all at Conference on February 10th & 11th. Thank you all for your support in our learning!

The Kindergarten Team

First graders have just finished up their study on the sun, moon and stars. We will be going to the Science Center to learn about our Iowa Skies at Night. Our next unit of study is all about Birds! Ask your student: what makes a bird, a bird? We have been learning how to count large collections and use Base 10 blocks to add and subtract.

Math- 5th Graders started a new unit: Place Value Patterns and Decimal Operations. During this unit, students will deepen their understanding of place values in terms of whole numbers and decimals. Student will also be comparing, ordering, adding, subtracting, multiplying and dividing decimals.

EL: Our 5th Graders have been working hard to wrap up our Module 2 Unit: The Rainforest. Here students learned about the diversity of the rainforest and how the rainforest helps out the rest of the world. Students worked on creating a first-person narrative and also learned about interjections, prepositions, and conjunctions. The next unit students will be working on is Athlete Leaders of Social Change. In this unit, students will learn about Jackie Robinson and other fellow athletes that faced difficult challenges during a time when equality was not present.

Hillis Elementary and Clothes Bin have partnered to collect and recycle old clothing, shoes, and textiles.

You can place the items in the green recycling bin located near the bus lane on 56th street. Every pound of recycled items supports Hillis!

Below is a list of items that can be placed into our bin:

Clothing: pants, jeans, skirts, dresses, suits, shorts, tees, tank tops.

Footwear: shoes, boots, heels, sneakers, sandals, socks, tights.

Accessories: hats, belts, ties, scarves, headbands.

Handbags: wallets, totes, luggage, backpacks, briefcases.

Linens: towels, sheets, comforters, blankets, tablecloths.

January

31st - Hillis PTO Bingo night (6 - 7 PM)

February

4th PTO meeting at 6 pm

10th and 11th Conferences and Book Fair

11th State of the Schools Address (see above)

14th Friendship Party at school

27th Hillis Music Concert