Deirdra Grode, Executive Director / Principal K-8

Sue Jain, Vice Principal Elementary & Middle School

713 Washington Street Hoboken, NJ 07030

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Chris Sell 9-12

High School 4th and Garden Streets, 4th floor

Hoboken, NJ 07030 Tel: 201-963-3280 Fax: 201-963-0695

THE HOBOKEN CHARTER SCHOOL NEWSLETTER

Important Dates: Wednesday, March 12—HCS Board Meeting—7:00pm—713 Washington Street Thursday, March 13—1:00pm dismissal for prof. dev. - After school session is available. Wednesday, April 9—HCS Board Meeting—7:00pm—713 Washington Street Thursday, April 10—1:00pm dismissal for prof. dev - After school session is available. Monday-Friday, April 14-18—K-8 will be closed Thursday, April 17—1:00 pm session for the High School. Friday—Friday, April 18-25—High School will be closed.

Table of Contents Español c/ señorita Pinamonti page 2 Art Smart w/ Mr. Duff pages 3-7 Health and PE w/ Mr. Flynn pages 8-9 Music Rocks! w/ Mr. Gavarny page 10-13 Yearbook Ad Form page 14

HCS YEARBOOK ORDER DEADLINE HAS BEEN EXTENDED TO FRIDAY, MARCH 21ST. PLEASE HURRY AND

PLACE YOUR ADS/ERSONALIZATION RE-QUESTS! DETAILS ARE FOUND ON PAGE.14

SAVE THE DATE > SATURDAY MARCH 15th <

from Noon to 2:30 PM

“WATER WINGS” A FUNdraiser benefiting H2O for Life to bring clean water to the Kamaget Primary School

in Kenya sponsored by Hoboken Charter School!

Featuring our now famous “altered duck” sculpture and art wearable auction!

-- PLUS -- An afternoon of water games, information and fundraising in a CARNIVAL atmosphere…

(Part of the 3rd grade UBUNTU Art & Water Project) -- WITH --

Featuring MS. BLACKMAN from the elementary school coached by MS. PINAMONTI, & MR. EVES from the high school coached by MS. GERACHT in the dance off of the century

to raise funds for the cause!

@ Saint Matt’s Parish Hall @ 8th&Washington Streets) Hoboken, NJ Because every day 4,500 children die due to a lack of clean water

ESPAÑOL Kindergarten– At the end of this week we are going to start our third unit. We will begin by learning some basic body parts through different songs and videos. Then we will start learning about clothes in Spanish. We will continue to review and work with colors during this unit.

1st Grade– We have started to learn about emotions and how to ask someone how they are. The students are doing a great job learning the new songs. This Friday some of the Spanish students from Hoboken Charter High School will be coming to read children’s stories that they wrote to our class and we will be performing some of the songs we have been practicing for them. It should be an exciting day.

2nd Grade– In second grade we started our next unit on adjectives. So far we have started to learn a song about opposite adjectives in Spanish. We will be performing that song on Friday to Spanish students from Hoboken Charter High School who are coming to our class to read stories that they wrote. I am looking forward to getting to share what we have been learning with the high school students.

3rd Grade– Before the February break we finished our unit on time and school schedules. We started our next unit which is on places in the community and occupations. The students really enjoyed reading a power point story about Bunnicula visiting places in the community. Over the next few weeks we will be doing listening and speaking activities to practice our new vocabulary.

6th Grade– This week we will be having our quiz on chores to finish up our around the house unit. This quiz was postponed due to snow. The following week we will start learning about places in the community and will learn how to give directions.

8th Grade– Before we left for February break we completed our unit on hobbies and daily routines. We have now started our next unit on entertainment. We have started learning about different genres of movies and television and are going to practice expressing our preferences for television and movies.

4th Grade– This week we started our new unit on verbs. We have started to learn a song to help the stu-dents remember some basic verbs in Spanish. During this unit the students will learn how to say what they like to do. They will also start to write basic sentences in Spanish using the verbs that we have been learning.

5th Grade– This week we will begin our unit on travel vocabulary. We will start by learning activities that people typically do on vacation and places that people sometimes visit. The students will practice using the verb “to go” to express places they visit on vacation. They will also learn how to say that they would like to visit somewhere.

7th Grade– We have just finished studying breakfast and lunch vocabulary. This week we will be learn-ing about dinner and desert vocabulary. The students will continue practicing saying their food prefer-ences. They will also learn some adjectives to describe how foods taste. After this, we will practice the food vocabulary we have learned by learning about restaurant vocabulary and useful phrases.

ARTSMARTSnow. Love. More snow!

We’ve been very busy up here in the attic producing art and learning complex things at an amazing speed! While Common Core is the lay of the land – our art-making lends it-self to teaching us complex problem solving, how to follow directions, languages, math, cultures, geography, science and biology, multi-tasking, and so much more! However from the brief time of our last posting to now with snow days and winter break some grade levels haven’t had much art time lately (which makes us both sad)…

KINDERGARTEN Kindergarten kids continue to learn via art lessons that connect visual and verbal. Most recently we have learned to draw dinosaurs by breaking them into shapes and lines (or shapes and sticks according to Mr. Duff’s rhyme)!

“I may be five, I may be six,

but I can draw any-thing

with shapes and sticks…”

Why dinosaurs? Because they’re more fun than people, of course! We also created dino-saurs over a simple “armature” as we learned the basics of making sculpture.

AND we also learned customs related to Chi-nese New Year and created

children’s lanterns to honor the year of the horse!

1st GRADE First grade continues to learn about tools and techniques as we build an art vocabulary. We’ve focused specifically on customs re-lated to Mardi Gras and the making of masks AND the creation of pop art hearts after the artworks of Jim Dine!

2nd GRADE We continue to look at art from a multicul-tural perspective!Recently we have created Mardi Gras masks in preparation for Fat

Tuesday and made dragon puppets for Chi-nese New Year – while learning the customs and practices of both! AND now we are em-barking on Mexican Folk painting(s)!

3rd GRADE We have been actively working on WATER WINGS!!! Remember to put it on your cal-endars AKA March 15th from noon to 2:30 -- WATER WINGS at St. Matt’s! This year our water carnival will feature more on the water crisis PLUS Africa, ducks, bubbles– oh my!This year (via H20 for Life) we are spon-soring and will be bringing clean water, toi-lets and sanitation to the Kamaget Primary School of Kenya. We even made and sent valentines to our new Kenyan friends penned in Swahili! AND as we learn about African hairstyles and how they relate to identity we are also creating weavings on Afro combs! How does Mr. Duff come up with these things? (Nonetheless, as you can see below, the current facilities for our

friends at the Kamaget School leave a lot to be desired!)Our help will literally save lives!

4th GRADE We are continuing to study art and artists (and art movements). Recently we have stud-ied and produced artworks emulating the art of Alexander Calder where we worked in pri-mary colors with black on white.

We also learned about Jim Dine and pop art. Now we are taking on British painter Howard Hodgkin. We are looking at his abstract paintings and recreating our versions as tap-estries on burlap (thanks to our friend Abbe Rivers of Empire Coffee)! We are collaging fabric, learning stitching, embroidery and ap-plique! Now that’s a loaded lesson!

5th& 6th GRADE The new 5/6 academic class this trimester is Widgets 101-- a team taught course with Mr. Duff and Mr. Kunkel.This is a 21st century skills course where students are engaged in teamwork and collaboration creating toy companies w/ logos and marketing strate-gies… Each group is creating a simple toy line via programs like Sculptris – that we will then will produce via a 3D printer.

Each team has a project manager, graphic designer, IT specialist, and technician. With the two teachers involved we are able to cover technology and programming as well as design and marketing.

AND Duff and Kunkel (not to be confused with Martin and Lewis) are taking us to see the unlimited possibilities that this course presents at the MAD AKA The Museum of Arts and Design in NYC! 7th& 8th GRADE Round two of theEthics and Outsiders aca-demic enrichment course that currently fo-cuses on Aboriginal peoples, the blind, and Gays and Lesbians in relation to the Respect for Marriage Act is well underway. We’ve completed our unit on the Aborigines and are busy learning about the blind, how they live and various types of sight disorders ranging from Glaucoma to Cateracts. AND currently we are producing storybooks in Braille with raised illustrations to donate to The Little Lighthouse School for the Blind as an art and service learning project.

MONKEY BUSINESS: An Answer to Apathy (Art and Animal Advo-cacy) – 5/6 & 7/8 Due to the immense popularity of this Arts-bridge course traditionally taught to 7/8 grades, it was also rolled out this trimester to 5/6 grades simultaneously. Recently, the two groups have learned about Koko the gorilla and her ability to communicate via American Sign Language. AND we are also learning some basics of ASL. Hey, if a gorilla can do it, so can we!

We also just created editions of linoleum cut prints of farm animals after our unit on/against industrial farming. In March we will be taking a day trip to Woodstock, New York to volunteer working with farm animals (rescued from cruel industrial farm situa-tions) at the Woodstock Farm Animal Sanctu-ary.

We watched a clip from BABE (Mr. Duff’s favorite movie) and rendered pigs. Created gorilla in sumi-e AKA Japanese ink and brush, and had a lesson created especially for Zoe on (her favorite) giraffes that we will now team teach to a lower grade! ART PLAY W/ SK and T.HIS A.IN’T Y.OUR M.OMMA’S D.RAWING C.LASS (Combined) After School Enrichment This combined course brings together ele-mentary kids from Mr. Duff’s Art Play w/ SK class (grant funded for two years running by Target Corporation) w/ TAYMDC AKA This Ain’t Your Momma’s Drawing Class alternating projects every other week. Draw-

ing classes have focused on contour, and ren-dering the figure by drawing ourselves as su-perheroes (using the method of 7 ½ heads to achieve proper proportion(s), etc.

AND we also drew parrots by breaking the birds into shapes and lines, etc. While Art Play classes have recently focused on the creation of Victorian valentines and the like… So that’s it for now, so until next time…I remain yours in art, education and service, SK DUFF & the HCS ARTSMART kids

HEALTH W/ MR. FLYNN In Health, grades K-8 learned about the cardio respiratory systems. Facts we all learned about the cardio respiratory systems.

Cardio is short for cardiovascular -- having to do with the heart and blood circulation. Cardio exercise is necessary for keeping the heart strong and healthy, for helping to keep stress levels down, and for controlling weight. Blood pressure is a good measure of the health of a person's heart and blood vessels. Higher than normal blood pressure is called hypertension. The average adult has about five liters of blood living inside of their body, coursing through their vessels, delivering essential elements, and removing harmful wastes. Without blood, the human body would stop working.

Middle School Health classes also learned about CPR, how to use an AED and how to perform the Heimlich Maneuver.

I have to thank all of the children and faculty here at HCS because working here has been so rewarding from a teaching and learning perspective. Hard to believe but the 100th day of school arrived! We have been having so much fun in PE it never occurred to me the year has moved this fast. While on the subject of fast movers you should see our Kindergarteners, first and second graders move on the scooters. It’s a new unit we added this year and they have been having a great time learning how to move forwards and backwards on them. We have learned a few tricks on them too like boogie boarding and canoeing. Partner work has been fun too when we team up and do what’s called the “twins.”

Grades 3-8 have been learning how to play scooter polo. We have been learning skills like the serve, setting, bumping and spiking. Scooterball is an Alaskan game was started as an offshoot to water polo and Team Handball . Hey they have cold winters in Massachusetts. They had to do something indoors till baseball season starts years.

Kudos to all of our HCS Cougar basketball teams for making the playoffs this year. This is the first time in school history all of our teams made the playoffs in the same year. GOOOOO Cougars!!! In Health grades k-5 has been learning about our teeth and how to take care of them. Interesting questions like “What happens to my tooth after I lose it?” and “Why do some kids need braces?” have been posed. Inquisitive minds here at HCS. Did you know ash was used as toothpaste originally? Yuck I know!

Grades 6-8 have started a unit on tobacco use and its dangers. We have tied this in with learning about the cardio and respiratory systems. We know that as our kids become teenagers there are lots pressures out there and at HCS we believe in helping our kids make good choices so they can have healthy bodies and minds.

We hope for an early spring so we can get outside and enjoy some warm weather sports. Till next time!

In Health we are learning about body systems. So far we have covered dental hygiene and teeth. Did you know we have 20 baby teeth and when we get our permanent adult teeth we have 32. We have just started discussing the Cardio and Respiratory Systems. If your child comes home and asks if they can check your pulse they learned that in Health class.

Music Rocks! Mr. Sean Gavarny

Students have been working hard this past month developing technique and practicing for future events coming up at HCS. We are now full blast into rehearsals for our two plays coming up in April. K-4 students will be doing Peter Pan and middle school students are working on the Music Man. Kindergarten Kindergarten has worked on melody, form, tone color and rhythm this past month. We have learned how to sing the song “America,” “Little Airplane” and “I Like Valentines.” Students are also preparing for their first classi-cal listening test. They will hear a portion of the five songs they have learned so far and will have to identify the song and the composer. This month they have been introduced to jazz history and have learned about Louis Armstrong.

1st Grade The 1st grade has been working on tone color and expressive qualities. The songs they have been working on are “Icicles, “ “Little Red Car,” and “Michael Row.” They have also been learning about instrument families. They should be able to identify instru-ments in the woodwind, brass, strings and per-cussion families. In terms of rhythm, they have been practicing on non-pitched instruments like drums, triangles and rhythm sticks. They have been reading quarter, half and eighth note rhythms and playing at the same time. In terms of melody, they have been learning how to read and play basic songs on the glockenspiels. They are currently preparing for their first clas-sical listening test in which they will need to identify a song they hear and who the composer is. In addition, they have learned about the jazz musician Charlie Parker. 2nd Grade Second grade has studied rhythm, melody and expressive qualities. Songs they have learned are, “Japenese New Year Song,” “Love Grows Under the Wild Oak Tree,” and “Pass the Stick.” In this past month the second grade had a performance test where they were asked to sight sing a melody using the pitches do, re, mi, fa and sol. In addition, they are preparing for their first classical listening test in which they need to name the song and the composer and the country the composer was from. They have started practice singing the pitch “la” and are getting more comfortable reading eighth notes with “solfege” and notes that skip as well. They have also been practicing writing the notes on white boards and composing simple melodies on music staff paper. This month they have also focused on a jazz mu-sician, Ella Fitzgerald.

3rd Grade Third grade has been working on form, har-mony, expressive qualities, tone color and rhythm. They have been doing very well with their recorder training. They have learned how to play “Hot Crossed Buns” and “In the Moonlight” using the notes G, A and B. They need to be sure to use the 4 step method when they practice at home: 1. Clap it 2. 2. Say it 3. 3. Sing it 4. 4. Play it! Along with their recorder playing, they have continued their classical training and will be having their first classical listening test on the five songs and composers they have studied this year. In addition, they have learned about the jazz musician Miles Davis. The Lincoln Center Chamber Music Society con-cert was unfortunately cancelled due to inclem-ent weather but will be made up next Thursday, March 6th!

4th Grade The fourth grade has been focusing on rhythm, tone color, harmony and melody . The main songs we have been working on this past month are Swan Lake and the Can-Can. In Swan Lake, students learned how to play high E which re-quires a new technique, using a half hole for the thumb on the left hand. For the Can-can, we have been taking the melody slow but eventu-ally students should be able to play it at a fast tempo. It uses notes such as low C that are a bit difficult to play because you need to use all your fingers. In addition, we have continued our noteflight.com compositions. Students have been coming up with great ideas and I have en-joyed what they have come up with so far! For music history, they have learned about the jazz musician John Coltrane. They have contin-ued reviewing their classical history and will be preparing for a test in the near future. The Lincoln Center Chamber Music Society con-cert was unfortunately cancelled due to inclem-ent weather but will be made up next Thursday, March 6th! Carnegie Hall LinkUP! Program: The Orchestra Rocks Students in grades 3–4 discover how composers and musicians play with elements of rhythm, creating patterns of sound and silence that are expressive and exciting. Exploring a range of orchestral repertoire, students sing, play the re-corder, compose, and perform in a culminating concert in Carnegie Hall's Stern Auditorium.

Middle School Artsbridge Classes Grades 5-6 - Guitar Guitar has been going very well this past month. Students now know notes on the E, B and G and D strings. They know how to play the chords E minor, E Major, A minor, A Major, C Major, D Major and G Major. As a class, we have prac-ticed improvisation where one student plays chords and another student makes up a melody using the E pentatonic scale. All students did very well in their first perform-ances of group projects and are now preparing for their second project. Grades 7-8—Garageband

The past month has been difficult for this class due to many missed classes but they have made the best of it. So far they have accomplished fin-ishing their first group project songs and have finished recording their first class song. The song they practiced and recorded as a class was, “I Feel Good,” by James Brown. They are currently rehearsing their songs for the second group project and will begin recording next week.

Beginner Band Beginner band students are preparing for their first concert on Friday, March 7th in the base-ment. They have been working so hard on their songs and I am sure they will do great. Students will have the opportunity to play as a full band, in duets and in quartets. I am excited for them to perform! 3rd graders and siblings will also be invited to the event.

Concert Band 5th and 6th grade Concert Band has been work-ing on the Star Spangled Banner, Midnight Skies and Invincible. 7th and 8th grade Concert Band has been work-ing on A River’s Fury, Korobushka and Annabel Lee. Each one of these songs reinforces different tech-niques to help the needs of the band such as playing with rhythmic clarity, learning new rhythms, playing lyrically, using dynamics and much more. Projects for each grade have been going very well. This week the 5th and 6th grade students began their presentations on their musicians or countries. 7th graders will be rehearsing their original compositions and they will be performed and recorded soon. 8th graders will begin teach-ing the young ones in the classroom in the next couple weeks.

After School Programs

Jazz Band Jazz band has beenworking on “Bad,” “Think”, “Satin Doll” and “Guiding Light.” Healing Choir Healing choir has been working on their percus-sion group songs and singing basic songs to pre-pare for future concerts. ****************************************

Upcoming Events:

March 7th—Beginner Band Concert - 9:00 AM

April 4th-6th - Music Man - Grades 5-8

April 11th-13th - Peter Pan - Grades K-4

June 3rd (rain date June 4th)- Summer Gathering

Ms. Septimus has extended the deadline for purchasing a year-book and/or placing an ad until Friday, March 21, 2014.

Friday, March 21, 2014,