February 2023 Hillcrest Newsletter

We are excited to have our new sign installed!

Mrs. Tapscott and Mr. Lopez are learning how to create personalized messages.

Be on the lookout for new displays soon!

The 5Essential Survey is designed to generate a detailed picture of the inner workings of your child’s school. As a parent, this opportunity will allow you to share your thoughts on the important elements of school effectiveness in a survey about your child’s school. Your participation in the parent portion of the survey will help us understand the conditions at your child’s school and guide improvement. Your identity and survey responses will be kept completely confidential and will never be connected to you or your child. To take the survey, please go to http://survey.5-essentials.org/illinois/survey/parent/. The survey will be open until March 29th. Thank you for your participation!

My name is Ms. Blair! I am the librarian at Hillcrest Elementary School! In the library, we have access to many wonderful books. We also learn about the different genres (types of books) available. This includes fiction, non-fiction, biographies, poetry, fairy tales, and graphic novels. The library encourages and supports a school culture of reading for enjoyment. Libraries are a way to spread knowledge. We learn how to research and find important information. We also work on Chromebooks to improve keyboarding and learn how to be positive digital citizens online. If you want to know how to get an East Moline Public Library Card, please ask me how! It is also helpful if children read at least 20 minutes a day- reading practice is the best helper!

On February 15th the Mississippi Valley Blues Society is bringing Katherine Davis to our school. She is known as a treasure and ambassador to the sounds of Chicago Blues Music. Miss Davis has performed all over the world. For the past 20 plus years she has worked with the Blues for Youth project as a teaching artist. We are very excited to welcome her to Hillcrest Elementary School!

On February 29th, the 4th Graders will be continuing their work on performance standards by attending Symphony Day at the Adler Theatre. In preparation, they are working on several songs to sing with the Quad City Symphony. They will even learn to sing a song in Latin!

Hello Hillcrest Families! This month we have really been working on our basketball skills at

Hillcrest Elementary School. 2nd-4th grade have been practicing a lot of different skills: dribbling, passing, and shooting the basketball. We have practiced dribbling and passing drills as well. K-1st grade students have been working on dribbling. They have learned what part of their hand to

dribble the ball with as well as how low to dribble the basketball. If you could work on one skill at home, I would suggest working with your child on dribbling while moving in different directions, especially if they have an interest in basketball. It has been really fun to watch the students participate in our activities.

During the third quarter, kindergarten thru fourth grade has been working on Coding Literacy in

science. Kindergarten through 2nd Grade are using Scratch Jr on the iPads and 3rd and 4th Graders are using Scratch on their Chromebooks. Students are learning how to turn illustrations into animations and/or games. Their creativity has been shing. They collaborate using pair programming and can differentiate between a code and a program. I am so impressed with their drive and perseverance during this unit of study.

March 6- First Grade goes on a field trip to the East Moline Library. Classroom teachers will be sending more information home.

March 8- Early Dismissal at 11:30am

March 11 through 15- SPRING BREAK!

March 22- End of 3rd Quarter

March 29- No School

Our students had a blast dancing the afternoon away celebrating meeting their KYHFOOTY goal. A shout out to DJ TJ Peeps for providing the entertainment. The students enjoyed dancing with glow sticks surrounded by blacklights.

If you do not follow Hillcrest Elementary School on social media, please do! On our social media pages you will find important reminders as well as posts about what your child is experiencing at school! This week there was a post about Mrs. Tapscott being duct taped to the wall. This was an incentive for students who met their MAP growth goals on their reading and/or math tests. Follow us for more fun posts!

Thank you to our PTO for the purchase of the new rugs in the front entrance at Hillcrest.