READ 180 National Contest Winner, Amy Luna!

Amy Luna was one of three students to win the READ 180  Stage B (Middle School) Award Nationwide. After she made it past the qualifying round we were feeling very competitive. For the finalist round, we made a video and she did a lot of work outside of class to prepare all the materials for submission. 

 

She won $1200 dollars for her first year of college. The school won $1000 worth of READ 180 materials for the classroom. 

 

Amy has a inspiring story. Amy has a passion to become a special education teacher.   When we went on our field trip to Enger (a school for developmentally disabled students), the teachers wanted to hire her. She has volunteered her recess and lunch to manage Hester Coffee Crew student sales. In helping with the coffee crew she has inquired and researched how to work with students with Autism. She learned how to use Boardmaker so she could use it as an artifact for her Career Project. She is an ambassador, boys soccer manager, on student council, and now a National Winner for READ 180! Nice Work Amy!

SCOTY School Citizen Of The Year 2015

Congratulations to our 2015 Hester School Citizen of the Year Award Winner Alexandra Bianco!  With a passion and dedication for community service and helping those in need, Alexandra rose to the top of the SCOTY award nominees.  Alexandra was recognized last night at the West 40 School Citizen of the Year Ceremony at West Leyden High School.  We are very proud of you!

Once upon a mattress! (Princess and the Pea)

Solo contest Feb. 7

Hester Jr. High Solo Contest Feb. 7 "in the news"

Congratulations to our Hester Jr. High band students who competed in our solo contest on Feb. 7.  Check out the pictures and story at:

http://www.chicagotribune.com/suburbs/chi-band-musicians-at-hester-junior-high-get-solo-critiques-20150210-photogallery.html

http://www.chicagotribune.com/suburbs/ct-fhj-band-solo-tl-0212-20150210-story.html

Hester 8th grade Weather videos

Mr. Zablocki's 8th grade science classes produced weather videos to show their knowledge of weather terminology while incorporating ipad and green screen technology.

 

1/22/2015 6th grade science fun with Mr. Richardson and liquid nitrogen

Hester 7th and 8th grade chorus performs at Leyden Sing n' Share 1/15/15

Hester 7th and 8th grade chorus performs with all partner schools at Leyden Sing n' Share 1/15/15
**Mr. Trotter makes no claims of being an accomplished videographer!

Hester Robotics Advances to STATE!

The TUFCRU (Teamwork, Unity, Friendship, Cooperation, Respect, Unwavering) Lego Robotics team competed in an all-day tournament on December 13^th at Lincoln Middle School in Mount Prospect against 15 other teams. The team pulled together, demonstrating key attributes such as teamwork, cooperation and creativity! They performed amazingly placing top four out of all the teams, qualifying for state in January! A Hester first! Mr. Mak was impressed and proud of every team member!

There are multiple sections of the competition in which the team is scored on. The first is robotic performance, in which each team has 4 (four), 2-minute trials to complete as many missions as time allows. At the beginning of the year every team is given the same twelve missions to build and then have to build and program a robot that completes the given task at each mission. Each mission is worth a specific amount of points and varied based on the difficulty. The TUFCRU finished third place in this section.

The other sections include Robot Design, Research Presentation and Core Values. For each of these, the team had to go into a room and were judged, interviewed and graded. Robot Design consists of the students explaining to the judges how they came up with and their thoughts behind their design. For the Research Project the students needed to pick a concept they learn in school and come up with an innovative way of learning it. There are two parts to Core Values. In the first part, the team was given the task of blind-folding one member and using the guidance of the other members, the blind-folded had to put together a puzzle. Sixth grader Ryan Smith stepped up, took on the tough challenge and did amazing. For the second part, the judges asked the team questions about the values they set and how they upheld them.

The TUFCRU team consisting of 8^th graders James Adamczyk, Tyler Franklin, Robbie Morris, Andrew Rosado, 7^th graders Rafael Diaz, Jonathan Gomez, Maya Gronkowski, Allan Lyth, Dannalee Mata, Irvin Ortiz, Juvontae Sykes, Josh Uy and 6^th graders Elmer Diaz and Ryan Smith will be competing at the state championship on January 17^th, in Elgin in a field of 64 teams!