Schools of the Week: Hillsboro School (Middle), Sunset Elementary

  • Published October 19, 2021

    This week, the Schools of the Week spotlight is on Hillsboro School (Middle) and Sunset Elementary. We asked the principals of both schools to share a few things that make their schools special.

    Hillsboro School (Middle)

    • Hillsboro is Williamson County’s only K-8 facility.
    • Hillsboro was originally founded as a private school in 1891 and was purchased by the Williamson County Board of Education in 1905.
    • In 2014, Hillsboro was named a National Blue Ribbon School and received the SCORE Prize, recognizing the top public middle school in Tennessee.

    Check out the photo gallery below to see seventh grade students as they worked on a recent imagery project intheir ELA class.

  • Hillsboro students in seventh grade teacher Jaclyn Smochek's class are making stories come to life through imagery.

    After reading Dark They Were, and Golden-Eyed by Ray Bradbury, students created a scene to illustrate the feelings expressed in different passages. Many students chose a hands-on, 3D option using clay, while some chose to do an auditory presentation or provide a drawing.

    "This type of project gives people like me who aren't good with words a different way to express how you understand the story and the mood it gave you,” said seventh grader Annabelle Green. “You can do auditory, visual, tactile and touch to show the story in a lot of different ways, so there isn't a single student who can't get an opportunity to express their feelings."

  • Sunset Elementary

    • Sunset Elementary has been open 15 years.
    • About one-third of Sunset Elementary students either bike or walk to school.
    • There are endangered crayfish that live in the stream on the property.

  • Students in Sunset Elementary teacher Donna Reels' fifth grade science class spent the first nine weeks of the school year learning about everything from molecules and heredity to biological change and Earth’s place in the universe.

    As part of their lesson, the students have been examining Peter Brown's book Wild Robot, which tells the story of what happens when nature and technology collide. On October 7, they participated in a Science, Technology, Engineering and Math (STEM) activity that reflected their understanding of all the topics they covered this quarter.

    "The students were required to build shelters for their organisms; specify various traits that are important for survival and create fossils and rock strata," said Reels. "The book Wild Robot helped the students bring their science standards to life."