Spring is in full bloom at Hornsby! This is evident by the knowledge being demonstrated by our students and the plush green grass and wildflowers blooming. 5th grade students have completed the first round of testing, taking the Math, Reading tests, while 4th grade completed Writing STAAR tests last week on Tuesday and Wednesday, March 26th and 27th. With all of the hard work going on recently we are excited about upcoming school fun days. Our Pre-Kindergarten and Kindergarten students will participate in an Easter egg hunt on Thursday April 5th and we will have our annual Spring Carnival on Friday April 13th here at Hornsby from 5-8pm. We look forward to celebrating our students’ hard work during these events.

The second round of STAAR Testing will begin on Tuesday April 24th through Thursday April 26th. 3rd and 4th grade students will be taking the Math and Reading STAAR Test, and our 5th grade students will be taking the Science STAAR Test. It is important that students get a good night’s sleep, eat a healthy breakfast, and come to school on time during the test days. As the end of another school year ap-proaches, teachers are taking the time to ensure that our students are prepared for the next level of their education, and we would like to impress upon our students’ parents how important daily attendance is. Hornsby opens at 7am with a learning breakfast from 7:30-7:50. Students are considered tardy at 7:45am. Please continue to work hard to have your child to school on time every day. Thank you for your continued sup-port.

Mark Estrada

Who: Girls 2nd-5th grade AND their adult female role models (students must be accompanied by an adult) What: Real Beauty Workshop Where: Hornsby-Dunlap E.S. When: Saturday, April 28, 2012 from 8:30-11:30 Why: to embrace unique qualities, honor personal strengths, respect the power of words, and practice self-appreciation through positive thinking *Registration DEADLINE is Friday, April 13, 2012* Registration forms are available in the front office.

Principal’s Pen

Counselors’ Corner

Volume 1, Issue 5

Hounddog News

6th - No school

GOOD FRIDAY

11th Early Re-lease

12th PTA MTG @ 6

12th Parent RDG workshop @ 7

13th Hornsby’s Spring Carnival

24th Math STAAR Test for 3rd &4th

25th Reading STAAR Test for 3rd & 4th

26th Science STAAR Test for 5th Grade

Hornsby Dunlap Elementary School 2011-2012 Del Valle Independent School District

April 2012

Please remember!

The  month  of  March  was so  much  fun.  On  March  2nd,  we had  our  Rodeo  Day. We were  al‐lowed  to  dress  up  like  cowboys and  cowgirls. We  had  sack  races, stick horse races, western tattoos, a bean bag toss, pin the hat on the cowboy  and  even  a  hay  ride.  My favorite part of the whole day was that I was able to ride a real pony, 

that day was great! My  teacher has told  us  that  we  will  be  having  an Easter egg hunt in April, I can’t wait. Kindergarten is awesome! Although we  have  fun  days  in  kindergarten, we  also  work  hard.    In  Language Arts,  many  of  us  are  now  writing and  reading on our own. More and more of us are reading higher  level weekly readers.  I am able to recog‐nize  and  read  many  of  my  sight words.  In  math,  we  will  begin  to learn to compare objects by weight. 

My  teacher  is  going  to  teach  us how  to  measure  length  using standard and non standard units. Only one semester left in kinder‐garten, I have already learned so much  this  year.  My  teacher makes  learning  interesting  and fun,  he  shows  me  how  the knowledge  and  skills  I  learn  to‐day will not only help me in first grade, it will help us later in life.  

consonants with –le syllables. Math – We will be focusing on hwo to model addition and subtraction of 3 digit numbers with objects, pictures, words, and numbers. Students will be expected to determine if regrouping is necessary or not. We will also be beginning the modeling and representing multiplication and division situations. Social Studies- We will be learning about the importance of work and distinguish between goods and services. We will also distinguish between a producer and a consumer.Science- We will be observ-ing, recording and comparing information about plants. We will look at how the physi-cal characteristics of plants help them meet their basic needs, identify the basic needs of

Flowers are blooming and the weather is getting warmer. April is definitely here! As the end of this school year is in sight, we are re-minding our students the importance of finishing strong! Please help us by reminding your child that we all must stay focused and continue to work hard in our learning.In April we will be learning…..Reading/Phonics- We will be working on summarizing and making inferences about the text throughout our reading. We will also be focusing on open syllables and

plants, and identify factors (rain, tem-perature) in the environment that might affect the growth or behavior of a plant. Important Upcoming Dates: Writing Landmark - Monday, April 9th (narrative writing). With your child please practice writing in logical order and writing with detail. Also, remind your child to always check for punctuation and capitalization. Math Landmark – Wednesday, April 11 (money, fractions, and probability). Make sure your child is completing their homework every night, this is a great review and way to practice for math land-marks. Field Trip – Thursday, April 12 to the Austin Chil-dren’s Museum. School Carnival- Friday, April 13 from 5-8 pm.

Kindergarten

level H. If they are below that level, please make sure to practice, practice, practice! Make sure to practice sight words, read homework books, and read homework fluency passages each night. This will help with word recognition and fluency.

For math, we finished up our meas-urement unit and took our district landmark. Now, we are working on graphing and probability. We will be taking our district landmark at the end of this month.

We also finished our Animal Re-search projects and we had so much fun! Thank you parents for helping our students get those started over Spring Break so that we could finish them in a timely manner. We also took our dis-trict landmark over animals and living/non-living unit. Next up during Science is rocks and soil, resources, parts of plants and plant life cycles. Our district landmark for these topics won’t be until May.

Wow! We’re already in April!

In 1st grade, we have been really busy. We have really started to push hard on our reading fluency. We are cur-rently doing a reading program called Read Naturally and it’s going really well. We are definitely seeing improvements in how much our practice is helping our fluency (how fast we can read). Right now, your child should be reading on a

First Grade

Second Grade

Page 4 Hounddog News

Two more months of school and our students are busy bees! We continue to practice our reading comprehension skills and are learning more about poetry.

We have also been studying weather in science, and fractions in math. The STAAR test is around the corner and third grade is working hard to prepare! To help out at home, make sure

your child is reading every night for at least 20 minutes. Ask ques-tions to make sure they can ex-plain what they read.

Before STAAR, make sure your child gets plenty of sleep and eats a good breakfast.

Our students are also working hard at learning their multiplica-tion and division facts. At begin-ning of April, we will be celebrat-ing students have learned their

facts through the 12s. Students who do will receive a special treat! Help you student prepare by quiz-zing them on their facts at home.

We hope you will come join us at the Hornsby Carnival on April 13th. It is always a lot of fun. Come sup-port our school and third grade! We will be selling snow cones to raise money for our grade level. There will be games, food, and fun throughout the school.

In 5th grade reading/language arts students will be completing two of their final Sea World re-quirement projects, along with a large push and emphasis on reading fluency. The first of the Sea World requirement projects is the state research project, where students will be required to complete an informational report regarding one of the fifty states of the United States. The second is a fic-tional book report, where stu-dents will choose a fictional chapter book in order to com-plete their third book report pro-

We have a busy month in science class. There will be a benchmark test on April 12th that will cover the topics of Force, Astronomy, Ecol-ogy and Life Cycles. The science STAAR test will be on April 26th. The students will be getting a lot of review material and study guides. It will be very important that they are completing all their homework and studying at home. We are very proud of the work they have done so far and appreciate your con-tinued support as they pre-pare for these tests.

ject and presentation. And lastly, 5th grade students will have an added em-phasis on their fluency work as we con-tinue to become fluent readers for their 6th grade year! Do not forget to read at least 20 minutes at home per night with your child! Happy reading to all! Now that the STAAR test is over we will be concentrating on 6th grade skills. The topics include: average, finding com-mon denominators when adding/subtracting, tangrams, multiplication of decimals, and order of operations. We will also be supporting science, working on a few math projects to finish out the year.

Third Grade

students have made thus far and all the hard work they have put in their writing this year! In other 4th grade news, our students participated in a craft day at the end of the month as a reward for all their excellent behavior, class participation, and assignment/homework completion. Cookies were decorated, fossils were im-printed, and there was even some slime mixed into the bunch. As we head into April we will be focusing a lot of our at-tention on reading skills and getting our students prepared for 5th grade. Please

continue to make sure your student is com-pleting all their homework nightly. Rhom-bus, edges, vertices, 3D! Geometry! Dur-ing the last few weeks, 4th graders learned about geometric figures and analyzed data shown in graphs. We constructed 3D solids using clay and toothpicks, and constructed graphs about our classroom. The arrival of spring and warmer weather offered opportu-nities to study the grounds of our Horsnby campus. Fourth graders observed and ana-lyzed soil samples and have also planted vegetable seedlings. One month until Math STAAR test!

We hope all of our 4th grade families and friends enjoyed a wonderful Spring Break vacation. Our students jumped right back on the writing wagon. We all got fired up and en-joyed some laughs at our “Writing Idol” Pep-Rally the Friday before our Writing STAAR test. We are ex-tremely proud of all the progress our

Fourth Grade

Fifth Grade

Page 5 Volume 1, Issue 5

Sun Mon Tue Wed Thu Fri Sat 1 2 3 4

5

6 NO SCHOOL

GOOD FRIDAY

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8 9 10 11 12 PTA Mtg @ 6pm

13 Hornsby’s Spring

Carninval

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15 16

17 18 19 20 21

22 23 24

MATH STAAR TESTS 3rd—4th Grade

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Reading STAAR TESTS 3rd—4th Grade

26

Science STAAR TEST 5th Grade

27 28

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April 2012

EARTH WEEK...DO YOUR PART...REDUCE, REUSE, RECYCLE