Our School

Hillcrest Elementary School is a Title I school, educating students from pre-kindergarten through first grade. With so many little ones under our roof, every day is fun and exciting. Just take a walk through our corridors, and listen to the happy learning going on. As you do, you’ll know your child is in the right place!

Hillcrest Pre-kindergarten

Our pre-kindergarten students engage in a variety of learning experiences. Each classroom is led by a Massachusetts certified early childhood teacher, and we are happy to have teaching assistants in each classroom as well. Through participation in music, art, physical education, and library, our three- through five-year-olds gain the tools they will need to progress through kindergarten and beyond. Please visit our school district website to learn more about the GMRSD Preschool Program.

Hillcrest Kindergarten - 1st Grade

We strive to create an exciting and rigorous academic program for all of our students. We also acknowledge the importance of the arts and physical education in a well-rounded education and foster these offerings within our school curriculum. We closely align all areas of our curriculum with the Massachusetts State Frameworks and the other schools in the Gill-Montague Regional School District.

Our curriculum includes:

  • Computer Education
  • Art
  • Music
  • Physical Education
  • Library
  • Science
  • Field Trips
  • English Language Arts
  • Math
  • Social Studies

Social Curriculum

We at Hillcrest Elementary incorporate the practices of Responsive Classroom in everything we do throughout the school day. These guiding principles lay the foundation for our school culture:

  • The social curriculum is as important as the academic curriculum.
  • How children learn is as important as what they learn: process and content go hand in hand.
  • The greatest cognitive growth occurs through social interaction.
  • To be successful academically and socially, children need to learn and practice specific social skills. Five particularly important social skills are cooperation, assertion, responsibility, empathy, and self-control (CARES).
  • Knowing the children we teach—individually, culturally, and developmentally—is as important as knowing the content we teach.
  • Knowing the families of the children we teach is as important as knowing the children we teach.
  • How the adults work together is as important as our individual competence: lasting change begins with the adult community.