the Forest Hills Flyer

Forest Hills Families,

With the season of spring upon us, we have many exciting events planned! Friday, March 6th will be our annual Book Character Parade in honor of Read Across America Week! If you plan to attend, please park in our main parking lot or the field behind the gym. We ask guests to spread out along the drive in front of our office or gym sidewalk to view the parade.

Registration for the 26-27 school year opens on Friday, March 6th! All new and returning students must register online. Snapcodes will be emailed to returning students' families at 5:00 p.m. on Friday March 6th, so please be sure that your email address on file in PowerSchool is correct. Should you need assistance, please call our office at (256) 768-2500 and we are happy to assist!

Please mark your calendars for ACAP testing in April. Students should avoid absences on these dates. Also, please remember that digital devices including smart watches and cell phones are not allowed during testing or any day of the school year.

As we enter the last 3 months of the school year, I want to remind families of the high expectations that Forest Hills has for our students. Every morning our students recite The Falcon Way and commit to having integrity. Each year, it is not uncommon to see an uptick in discipline infractions during spring months. I ask that families do the following with their children:

• Remind students to be respectful of adults, peers, and property.
• Remind students to be responsible for their actions and decisions.
• Discuss The Falcon Way & virtue of the month at home.

I firmly believe that when families and Forest Hills partner together to set expectations high, we will see the greatest results for our students!

The Alabama Reading Initiative has created an excellent resource for families to use. If you're interested in supporting your child's literacy development at home, view their resource HERE. There is also a fun Spring Break reading challenge I encourage you and your child to participate in!

Finally, if you have not yet had an opportunity to take our Climate Survey, please do so now! The survey will take you less than 5 minutes and provides us with valuable feedback that helps guide our planning and decisions for the 26-27 school year.

Climate Survey (English)

Climate Survey (Spanish)

If I can ever be of assistance to you, please call, email, or stop by! GO FALCONS! 💙

Sincerely,

Mrs. Fowler, Principal

#WeAreFalcons

ALL STUDENTS must be re-enrolled for the 26-27 school year. A snapcode will be sent to the email we have on file on Friday, March 6 at 5:00pm. Please use the link in the email to re-enroll your student.

Should you have questions or need help with the registration process, PLEASE call the front office at 256-768-2500. Mrs. Charly and Mrs. Emily are HAPPY TO HELP you enroll!

All students are encouraged to participate in our FREE breakfast program in our cafeteria each morning from 7:00-7:30 am. You can find the January menu above. Other breakfast items from home should not be brought into the school.

Use the link below to add money to your child's lunch account. While breakfast and lunch are free for all students, this money can be used to buy extra food at lunch or ice cream. Your child will have the opportunity to purchase ice cream for $1.00 one day each week.

Parents are encouraged to make sure their children are on time for school each day. Instruction begins at 7:30 am and students are counted as tardy after 7:35 am. Please note that Class I tardy offenses are cumulative for one semester only (meaning all students begin the second semester with zero tardies). Please review the chart below.

Purchase the 25-26 yearbook using the website above or by returning the order form that was sent home with your child!

6th grade parents - please send a baby picture of your child for Awards Day to ktittle@florencek12.org ASAP!

To view the Book Character Parade, please stand in the parking lot in front of the office or the middle of the gym parking lot. Do not stand on the front sidewalk. The parade route will exit the 3rd grade hallway and travel down the front office sidewalk and then make a loop around the gym parking lot.

We are excited to kick off the month of March with "Read Across America Week"! We can't wait to display our love of characters in our "Book Character Parade" on March 6.

In Reading, we are finishing up learning the rest of the alphabet and focusing strong on reading and writing CVC words. We are also focusing on writing a complete sentence with correct punctuation.

In Math, we are continuing to add and subtract within 10. We will also be learning all of the "Number Pairs of 10". We will end March with learning all about teen numbers!

Our Units will include: Dr. Seuss, St. Patrick's Day, and Insects. Our Kindergarten Musical will be on March 19 at 6:00pm. We hope to see you there!

March is going to be an exciting and busy month in 1st grade!

We are kicking off the month with Read Across America Week as we celebrate our love of reading. Students will have the opportunity to dress up as their favorite book characters and participate in fun literacy activities that highlight the joy and importance of books.

In Math, we are beginning two-digit addition. Students will learn strategies to add larger numbers with confidence, using place value, models, and hands-on practice to build strong number sense.

In Reading, we are focusing on long vowel sounds and vowel teams. This will help students become stronger readers as they learn to recognize common spelling patterns and apply them in both reading and writing.

We are also exploring different cultures and customs from around the world. Students have been working hard on their country research, and we are looking forward to completing and sharing our projects about countries around the globe. It has been wonderful to see their curiosity and excitement as they learn about new places and traditions.

Second graders are so excited to explore Bear Creek for our field trip this year. Permission forms were sent home with each child last week. Be sure to have all money turned in by April 18th. We are looking forward to a wonderful adventure. We are finishing up our unit in math on measurement. The students have loved learning about many different real world scenarios, and how we use measurement in our day to day lives. In our reading unit, we are reading a couple of different stories about bees. We had a REAL beekeeper come to visit us last week to teach us all about bees. It was so much fun! Second graders have been working extremely hard on their habitat shoe boxes. We are excited for the entire school to come down to the basement during the month of March, to see the many different kinds of habitats.

Third graders will be working hard in March!!!

In Math students have just finished learning about fractions. We will be discussing time, liquid volume, and mass in the coming weeks. Don’t forget to keep practicing those multiplication facts! The Multiplication Fluency Bee is quickly approaching!

In Reading we will be continuing Unit 4 which is all about Animals and Their Habitats. We are learning so much about animal traits and adaptations. Please remember to have your child read their fluency passage three times a week.

On Friday, March 6th, we will be participating in Read Across America!! We will have guest readers and students are allowed to dress as their favorite book character for the parade!

We have a lot of important skills to learn before the ACAP test in April. It is very important that your child is at school everyday unless they are sick.

Thank you for your continued support at home.

We are excited about our upcoming trip to Montgomery on March 11th. We will tour the State Capitol building, the Archives & History Museum, and the Rosa Parks Museum. We’ll enjoy lunch on the Harriott II Riverboat on the Alabama River. We will also go back in time to the pioneer days at Old Alabama Town and see a one-room schoolhouse, a shotgun house, a dry goods store, a doctor's office, and an old church.

In Math, students have been hard at work learning about fractions of tenths and hundredths and relating that knowledge to decimals to the tenths and hundredths place. You can reinforce this learning at home by connecting it to money or stats in sports.

In Reading, students are learning how adaptations help plants and animals through diving into informational texts. Students are learning Greek roots, suffixes, and prefixes. Students are working on their grammar skills through writing narratives.

For the month of March, we will continue working on ACAP test preparation in ELA and math. We know that our students are well-equipped with the skills that they need to be successful, and we plan to work on using those skills to navigate ACAP-style questions and prompts. We will also continue learning how to read and respond to informational text, as well as improve our writing skills in all modes of writing. We are so impressed with the growth we have seen in our students and look forward to watching them continue to grow! In math, we are working on line plots and will begin geometry very soon. We love these units because the students get to be very hands on in their discovery and learning about shapes. In science, fifth graders will be exploring Earth and space patterns. We will be discussing gravity's impact on Earth, the phases of the moon, Earth's motion in the universe, and Earth's place in space. Don't forget about our field trip this month to the Space and Rocket Center on March 16th!

ELA
In February, students explored the Civil Rights Movement through informational texts highlighting Jackie Robinson, Dr. King, & the Little Rock Nine, focusing on central ideas, text structure, and formal essay writing. Starting in March, we will shift our focus to fiction standards to prepare for the upcoming April ACAP assessment. During this transition, students will revisit key literary elements like character analysis, theme, and plot to build confidence and mastery.

Math
Students have been learning how to work with the four-quadrant coordinate plane by practicing plotting and identifying ordered pairs, understanding positive and negative numbers, and solving real-world problems by interpreting graphs. This has helped strengthen their number sense and math confidence!

Science
Students have spent most of February exploring the Sun-Earth-Moon relationships, examining tides, moon phases, solar and lunar eclipses. We are currently in our Natural Hazards unit reviewing and learning more about Earthquakes, Volcanoes, and Severe Weather before moving on to the Human Impact on the Environment unit.

Social Studies
Students have been reading, discussing, and watching videos about WWII for quite a while now. We are wrapping up that unit soon. We will be hitting some pretty serious and heavy topics moving forward as we learn the horrible truths of the Holocaust and societal norms of the 1950's and 1960's - leading us to a study of the Civil Rights Movement.

Beginning Wednesday, September 10th, we will have a staff member on duty as a crossing guard from 7:00-7:30 am at the intersection by the school parking lot entrance and Forest Hills Baptist Church. The crossing guard will hold traffic so that students can safely walk onto campus. We will also have a crossing guard help students across the intersection shortly after dismissal each afternoon (estimated time between 2:35 & 2:40). Parents are encouraged to meet their walkers at the Forest Hills Baptist Church parking lot. Please know that if you choose to let your child walk home after being released to the church parking lot, dismissal traffic will still be flowing, so parents should advise their students to use caution if walking home. We will also have a staff member continue to release other walkers to the track area, but this will now be occuring between 2:35 & 2:40. Please remember that parents MUST sign the waiver below before a child is permitted to be a walker.

If you live within 2 miles of the school and would like for your student to walk home in the afternoon, please contact your child's teacher and request a waiver be sent home. Students will not be allowed to walk home without a signed waiver on file in our office.

Please scan the QR code below to learn about all of the support services our counselors offer to students at Forest Hills.

Don't forget ALL Kids is here to help make sure your kids aren’t sidelined this season because they don’t have health insurance!! ALL Kids offers low cost healthcare coverage to eligible children in Alabama that can keep your team covered and in the game. Coverage includes regular checkups, immunizations, doctor and dentist visits, hospital care, mental health services, prescriptions AND MORE--APPLY FOR ALL KIDS TODAY!!

https://www.alabamapublichealth.gov/allkids/apply.html

March 2 - Math Team Practice 2:30-3:30pm

March 3 - 5/6 Music Ensemble Rehearsal 2:30-4:30pm

March 4 - Spring Picture Day

March 5 - PTO Meeting in Gym Foyer 7:45am

March 5 - Robotics Practice 2:30-4:00pm

March 6 - Book Character Parade 8:30am

March 9 - Math Team Practice 2:30-3:30pm

March 10 - 5/6 Music Ensemble Rehearsal 2:30-4:30pm

March 11 - End of 3rd Nine Weeks

March 11 - 4th Grade Montgomery Field Trip

March 12 - Parent/Teacher Conferences - No school for students

March 13 - No School for Students

March 17 - 5/6 Music Ensemble Rehearsal 2:30-4:30pm

March 18 - Report Cards

March 19 - Robotics Practice 2:30-4:00pm

March 19 - Kindergarten Musical in Gym 6:00pm

March 20 - Family Track Day

March 23-27 - Spring Break

March 31 - 5/6 Music Ensemble Rehearsal 2:30-4:30pm

Email: lfowler@florencek12.org
Website: https://www.florencek12.org/Domain/12
Location: 101 Stovall Drive, Florence, AL, USA
Phone: 256-768-2500
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100057754536339
Twitter: @ForestHillsEle

Laurie Fowler - Principal

lfowler@florencek12.org

Jon Ray Russell - Assistant Principal

jrrussell@florencek12.org

Konnie Lee - Assistant Principal

kllee@florencek12.org

Shelia Holt - Assistant Principal

smholt@florence12.org

Charly Carter - Secretary

cncarter@florencek12.org

Emily Scruggs - Attendance

ekscruggs@florencek12.org

Andrea Hutcheson - Bookkeeper

adhutcheson@florencek12.org

(256) 768-2510

Allison Scott - PTO President

fcsfhespto@gmail.com

Ali Jones - Nurse

(256) 768-2519

Cafeteria

(256)768-2509

Social Media Accounts

Follow us on Facebook here and Florence City Schools here

Follow us on Twitter here and Florence City Schools here

Follow us on Instagram here and Florence City Schools here

Follow the PTO on Facebook here