Continuous (as in ongoing) Improvement (as in refinement)

At East Hill, continuous improvement is our goal. To that end, our Shared Decision Making Committee has designed a multiple choice survey for parents. We would appreciate your input. To access this survey, simply click on this link. Thank you in advance for your time and feedback. The results will be used to guide our future planning.

Our Vocabulary Parade is shaping up to be a big success! We have 40 words that will be showcased on February 3, 2016 at 10:00. If your child is in the parade, please feel free to join us! We will be practicing this Wednesday afternoon. Costumes do not need to be ready by Wednesday, but students should be prepared to read their word descriptions.

Students in Mrs. Tynan's room explore vocabulary words.

"Dialogue with the Superintendent" has been moved to tomorrow night, Tuesday, January 26, 2016, at 7:00 p.m. in the WGHS LGI. This is a great opportunity to ask questions of Dr. Brown and hear about the state of the District. I am looking forward to Enrichment Day which will be held this Saturday from 9:00 - 11:30. Thank you to the volunteers who make this day possible.

Last Friday our January character education assembly was held. Mrs. McConnell's flute players and Mrs. Mercer's violin players taught the school about perseverance, which is January's trait.

This week's words of the day are: denominator (M), compromise (T), advantage (W), melody (Th) and afraid (F).

Please remember that Friday is a half day. Students who are being picked up will be dismissed at 11:20. Buses will be dismissed at 11:30.

One last reminder: If you drop your child off in the morning, please remember that they cannot enter the building prior to 9:00 unless they are having breakfast. This is in the interests of safety as there is no supervision for students until 9:00, and it is too cold for them to have to stand outside. I appreciation your cooperation in this matter.

Have a great rest of the week!

- Lisa

Construction Begins!

Exciting changes are happening at East Hill! As many of you have seen, the playground was taken down in December. The new one will be up in the spring. The gazebo has also been removed as well as a couple of large trees.The gazebo and trees were removed to make room for the new library and new classroom. A storage trailer has been placed at the rear of the faculty parking lot to store items during the capital project renovation. If things go as planned, and they have thus far, we should have a new library by the time school starts next fall and should be able to use the new cafeteria by November!

Changes are happening inside the building as well, most of which we can't see. Workers are completing electrical, heating, air conditioning and plumbing work in the basement during the day. Because work will soon begin on the new classroom and new library, Mrs. Wangsness' classroom will move to the computer lab this week. All of the computers were moved to the library over the holiday break where Mrs. Holzwarth is putting them to good use. It's hard to believe it's finally happening!

As a reminder, the PTA meeting has been moved to tomorrow night, Wednesday, January 13, 2016 at 6:00 p.m. in the WGHS LGI. Immediately following the meeting, Dr. Brown will have his annual, "Dialogue with the Superintendent" at 7:00. This is a great opportunity to hear from Dr. Brown and ask him questions about the state of the district.

As I mentioned in my blog last week, students in grades 2-5 are invited to take part in the vocabulary parade that will take place the first week in February. Students were given information about the parade to take home. They were asked to pick a partner, choose three possible words, and hand in their application by tomorrow. Please encourage your child to do this, it should be a lot of fun!

Olivia "parades" metacognition. 

This week's words of the day are numerator (M), voice (T), fiction (W), revolution (Th), and surprised (F).

Have a great rest of the week!

- Lisa

Happy New Year!

I hope you were all able to enjoy some quality time with family and friends over the holiday break and are ready to face the new year!

While the last week in December was only three days long, we certainly kept busy at East Hill. In the pictures below, you will see parent Jon Glass teaching our fourth graders coding using Scratch. They loved it!

In the library, students were challenged to build straw towers working in groups. Each grade level had a different challenge. In the picture below, third graders had to build a free-standing tower that would hold a lacrosse ball for five seconds. Some groups did it!

Parents also challenged students during the classroom parties. In the picture below, third graders are shown trying to see who could come up with the best toilet paper snowman!

The weather was so nice that our physical education teacher, Molly O'Keefe, and our music teacher, Leah Causer, paired up to take students carolling around the neighborhood and around the school.

Also in December second graders in Mrs. Thome's class worked on research projects with Mrs. Menges who volunteered her time to work with the students. They not only learned how to do research, they also learned how to present their research to their class.

On the last day before the holiday break, our Student Council put on a "Vocabulary Parade" for the rest of the school. They worked in pairs to highlight a vocabulary word of their choosing. While one student "paraded" the word, the other student talked about the word - the word's meaning, part of speech, synonyms, antonyms, etc. In the picture below Ella showcases brainstorming while Kevin highlights onomatopoeia. Many East Hill students will be given the opportunity to participate in a similar parade at the beginning of February. Stay tuned for more information!

Speaking of vocabulary words, the words for this week are fraction (M), research (T), community (W), rotation (Th), and perseverance (F.)

Our next PTA meeting will be held Wednesday, January 13, 2016 in the WGHS LGI at 6:00 p.m. We will meet prior to Dr. Brown's "Talk with the Superintendent." I hope to see you there!

Have a great rest of the week!

- Lisa