Hillis Hound Happenings

This school year, our Hillis staff and students have been learning about safety responses and practicing some ways to keep our school safe. Safety responses help our school clearly communicate with one another and provide all adults and students with a clear plan of how to respond. Recently, we practiced an "evacuation response" by conducting a planned fire drill. Later this fall, we will practice " shelter in place" with a planned tornado drill. These safety practices help our students know what to do in order to remain safe at school.

At the beginning of the year, teachers rolled out a set of common expectations for all common areas in the building. Additionally, each classroom has been working on establishing and practicing the expectations for their spaces. No matter if the expectations are for common areas or for individual spaces, they are all grouped under three main words: Respectful, Responsible and Safe.

Students caught making good choices are positively recognized. Each student has a small card and when the card is filled up, it gets entered into a drawing for a prize.

Here are our latest winners. Way to go, Hillis Hounds!

Hello from Kindergarten!

We have been busy with being safe, responsible and respectful! We have enjoyed getting to know each other in our morning meetings! Llama Llama and Nelly Gnu taught us how to share, include others, take care of our materials and be kind.

We are practicing counting and recognizing numbers to 10 and finding different ways to represent numbers!

We are so proud of each of them and their kind hearts!

Love,

Mrs. Belloma

Mrs. Davenport

Mrs. Hensley

First graders are hard at work learning about tools and how they help us do certain jobs. We have been using a variety of tools to help us complete challenges, where we must work together to solve problems. In math, we are working on counting collections and writing addition and subtraction expressions. We are off to a great start this year in first grade!

We've been working really hard on getting our routines down and building a positive classroom environment in Room 180! They do well when working together and we got to play some fun games to practice being on a team and working with each other!

Every minute and every day of school attendance makes a positive impact on a student’s future. As you see in the graphic below, students with good attendance (especially in kindergarten and first grade) are significantly more likely to be reading at or above grade level after third grade.

Students who miss 10% or more of school days are considered chronically absent. To help your student have good attendance, please remember:

-When students arrive late to school or leave early, those minutes can add up to chronic absenteeism.

-If your child feels unwell and you aren’t sure if they can attend school, please call our school nurse to discuss.

-If your student will miss school, please call the office to let us know.

-If you would like help with problem-solving barriers to attendance, please let us know. Ms. Taylor, SUCCESS Case Manager, can support students and families in many ways.

Right now, approximately 15% of Hillis students are chronically absent. Our goal is to have less than 10% of our students chronically absent. You can help us reach this goal – Every Day Matters!

Shout out to our fourth grade classes – so far this year they have had the best attendance in the building!

This year we are partnering with SchoolStore to raise funds to help purchase the essential tools our students and teachers need to succeed. Your child will receive a prize just for participating! Go to www.schoolstore.net and sign up. Find your Student's Prize Code in your confirmation email and write it on the form that will come home on September 30th! Teacher will collect the form and your child will receive a prize!

24th - Picture Day

30th - Fundraiser Information Comes Home

2nd - PTO meeting at 7:45 AM

8th - Conferences and Book Fair 3:45 PM to 7 PM

9th - NO SCHOOL For Students. Conferences 12:45 PM to 7 PM

10th - NO SCHOOL for students. Staff Professional Development.

11th - NO SCHOOL (Yom Kippur)

24th - Harvest Family Night (more information to come!)

31st - Fall Celebration during School Day

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