QUESTions and Answers

Friday, March 15, 2024

March Principal's Update

QUEST Families,

What a wild winter filled with lots of up and down weather. I hope you and your family have enjoyed some time in the sunshine these last few days. As we enter the third marking period, QUEST is busy preparing for many end-of-the-year events. Please take a moment to browse the blog, and feel free to reach out should you have any questions.

Report Cards

The second marking period report cards are out as of March 13, 2024 and you are able to access them through the Campus Backback. We appreciate you taking the time to talk through the report card with your child, but more than that we also appreciate the sharing the occurs through Portfolio Share. Our goal at QUEST is to push our students to be agents of their own learning, and our approaches are aligned with that philosophy.

Placement

Similar to last year, in late April we will begin the placement process at QUEST. In order to create balanced classrooms, we collaborate as a school, ensuring that each student has their needs met through placement. Although we try our best, when possible, to honor family history, QUEST does not take requests for a specific teacher.

As always, if you have any placement questions, feel free to reach out. You can expect to get the placement letter mid/late-June!

COVID Update

On March 1, 2024, the CDC adopted new guidelines for COVID-19, which can be found here: CDC Guidance for Respiratory Virus. This new guidance compares precautions and procedures for COVID-19 to those for other respiratory illnesses, and removes the requirement of mandatory isolation. The CDC reiterated that when individuals become sick with a respiratory virus, it is recommended that they stay home and away from others. For individuals who test positive specifically for COVID-19 and influenza, treatment is available and can lessen symptoms and lower the risk of severe illness. The new CDC recommendations suggest that an individual who tests positive for COVID-19 can return to normal activities when overall symptoms have been improving for at least 24 hours and, if a fever was present, the fever has been gone without use of a fever-reducing medication. You can find more information on the CDC's website: CDC: What to do when you are sick.

What this means for students who test positive for COVID:

Mandatory isolation is no longer required.
It is recommended that students with any respiratory illness stay home and way from others until their symptoms are improving and they are fever free.
Students can return to school and extracurricular activities when their symptoms are improving and they are fever-free without using fever-reducing medications.

Enjoy the rest of the month. As always, do not hesitate to reach out if we can support your family in any way.

Yours in Education,

Derek

QUEST Principal

Little Cadets Carnival

Student Council

February Band Students of the Month

Congratulations to the February Band Students of the Month:

Evelyn Ballard

Michael Borcyk

Lucas Bronson

Chiryn Burdick

Liviarose Childs

Caleb Davis

Cora Dimino

Dominic Dimino

Brynn Eisenhauer

Spencer Floyd

Olivia Gilman

Gabby Gotham

Riley Gotham

Avery Green

Emma Green

Maysa Harvill

Carter Hodges

Parker Holdgate

Cody Howell

Seth Moore

Alexis Moore

Ani Nabewaniec

Carter Otto

Evelyn Pestilli

Lydia Picente

Alex Pincelli

Rose Pincelli

Parker Place

Olivia Plaisted

Lillian Schuler

Jayden Scott

Evan Szczepanik

Sebastian Szczepanik

Patrick Shaw

Cameron Smith

Emma Spreter

Visal Thean

Penelope Tracey

Cassiel Vega

Olive Warren

Gavin Webber

Jason Zornow

Thursday, February 15, 2024

February Principal's Update

Team QUEST,

I had to look at the calendar when writing this post. What happened to winter? Regardless of what mother nature is doing on the outside, our school is staying quite busy ensuring high levels of learning for each student. Not only that, but we also were able to squeeze in the beloved Sled Race just in time for the snow to melt. At your convenience, please take the time to review the many updates provided.

Portfolio Share? When and Why?

QUEST aims to have students be agents of their own learning. One way we accomplish this is through a portfolio share. In late February, or early/mid-March, teachers have students share a portfolio with their parents. This is accomplished in many ways: the child may bring home the portfolio to share and work with you on reflecting; the teacher may request a Zoom or a conference with the home where the child will share; in some cases a child may make something digital.

Regardless of the sharing method, the goal stays the same: the students reflect on their learning, their goals, and show evidence of growth toward their goals. This ownership is part of how we foster agency. Please join me in celebrating growth this month as your child shares their portfolio with you.

Student Action

Speaking of agency, QUEST students take action! Is there an action that your family took to tackle a local or global issue? Or, has there been any volunteerism that your child has done or that you have done as a family? In the spirit of taking action, I would encourage you to share any action with Mr. Greg Booth (gbooth@hilton.k12.ny.us), our IB Coordinator. Our school currently has a display that highlights student actions, and wow are there some great ones! Check it out the next time you are in, but in the meantime, keep sending those actions in!

Enjoy the blog this month. As always, please do not hesitate to reach out with any questions.

Yours in Education,

Derek

QUEST Principal

Level Updates

Kindergarten

We made it to 100 days! We have learned so much and love school! We are looking forward to the next half of the year!

We are looking into a few exciting opportunities for field trips as the weather starts to get warmer. We have lots of learning to still do! We will be investigating Needs and Wants and then on to Living Thing... all things WORMS! Woohoo! How fun and exciting!

Primary

The primary team is working hard! We have just finished our planner on culture and are now into a science planner under Where we are in Place and Time. Our central idea is Observations of Earth, Moon and Star cycles help us to understand our world, and our lines of Inquiry are: How patterns impact human decisions, seasons, Gregorian calendar and the amount of daylight and sunlight. We are all visiting the planetarium at SUNY Brockport to support this planner! If we have clear skies at night or early morning, please take some time to look up and notice the moon and stars and then talk about what you notice. The kids love this planner and have fun making connections! Please continue to read at home each night. It is still good to read to your child and have them read to you! There are so many good books to share! In writing we are finishing our nonfiction unit and then returning to fiction or small moment stories. Please talk about ideas for stories with your child by helping them notice when they have an experience that they could write about. It could be something funny that happened, a birthday party or and day they played outside for example. In math, younger friends are finishing up a measurement unit and then will be returning to addition and subtraction. We are also learning about time to the hour and half hour. Now is a good time to pull out analog watches and clocks and talk about what time it is! Older friends are learning to sort, collect and interpreting data through bar and pictographs. They will have fun doing surveys and then graphing the results. They are also continuing to learn time to the hour, half hour and five minutes. Please have fun talking about the time on analog and digital clocks! Thank you for all of your ongoing support!

Elementary

The Elementary Level has been involved in a hands-on science unit titled “Ride the Wave”. In this unit students learned about various invisible forces and used some of those forces to create a Rube Goldberg machine. Be sure to ask your child about the one his/her team created! This study of invisible forces connected well with our work on building sleds and the annual sled race. In the second part of this unit, students studied about waves and how information travels along a wave. Students used spring coils and slinkys to determine the overall pattern of waves. They also investigated binary code and how cell phones use this to send messages. Our next unit will be a social studies based planner that looks at change over time. We will study how New York became a state and look at how the United States of America was formed, along with looking at immigration and Westward Movement. Classes will be joining together on certain days to provide students with some different learning opportunities regarding these topics.

Intermediate

This month, the Intermediate level participated in their in-school field trip, Space Day. Classes rotated through different stations in the school where they learned how to create an animation in Canva on moon phases, the 2024 solar eclipse, and why the Earth has seasons. We have started our next planner titled "Artifacts Tell a Story," where we will inquire into early exploration, power among countries, and trade.