6th Grade News: 1/15 – 1/19/18
HUMANITIES This week marked the beginning of a few new units in Humanities classes. In Literature class, students started reading Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry by Mildred Taylor. Roll of Thunder tells the compelling and sometimes tragic story of a black family living in rural Mississippi during the 1930s, challenging readers to engage with important topics such as discrimination, violence, and prejudice. In order to prepare for this mature read, students began to learn about the the pre-civil rights era South. These discussions fit in nicely with Martin Luther King Day, and we’ll continue learning about race relations and other social justice issues... Read More
January 16 – January 19
Math This week, 7X started Unit 7 (percentage) and will be taking the unit test on January 24th. All Unit 6 HW corrections are due January 25th. 7Y will be bringing home their unit 7 test home today and I am happy to say that everyone did really well! It should be signed and returned by Tuesday (23rd) the latest. All Unit 7 HW corrections are due January 26th. Hebrew This week, both groups read short texts about the Kinneret and the Dead Sea. Students learned about the current water situation in Israel and about the Dead Sea “dying” out... Read More
5th Grade Week of 1/15
What a week! Our students came back from their long weekend, and did an excellent job as always of showing off their academic skills and love of learning! Please enjoy the updates below, and have a good weekend! HUMANITIES: It was a week of new beginnings in Humanities. We started Tuck Everlasting, while exploring big universal themes like immortality and family loyalty. We also worked on finding the meanings of words through context clues. In Social Studies, we started our China unit, learning about geography and the early civilizations in China. We also studied ancient and medieval Chinese inventions, and students came up... Read More
Experiments, Reading Groups and More!
Sixth Grade Buddy Time We had the chance to enjoy some time with our sixth grade buddies on Thursday. They designed creative and challenging games for us, such as scavenger hunts, word games, crosswords, and trivia. Ask your child what game they played and see if they would like to make a game to play at home! Community Building In honor of Jorge’s last day before he takes a leave for his upcoming surgery and re-cooperation, the second graders made cards for Jorge wishing him a speedy recovery, making sure to tell him that we appreciate all that he does,... Read More
Discovering the Power of the People
Dear Third Grade Families, This week marked the beginning of a new unit on persuasive writing! Before students start writing their own opinion pieces, they are working as a group to craft a persuasive and convincing speech about why Choice Time should be incorporated into the third grade schedule. Once complete, this speech will be presented to Shelley for her consideration. Students worked in partnerships to brainstorm reasons to support the thesis statement. While the majority of third graders are in favor of Choice Time, there are a few who chose to support the counter argument. After students shared their... Read More
Week 19: January 16th – January 19th
Humanities: This week in Humanities, we continued our study of Othello. Students analyzed how Shakespeare uses irony and soliloquy to create a full realized portrait of Iago as a character. Next week, we read Act III and study the elements of a classic Tragedy that exist in the play so far. Have a wonderful weekend, Michael Science: While students focus on their upcoming musical, in science we have been conducting a culinary science unit. This has allowed students to focus on the science concepts within cooking. In the last two weeks we have worked on transforming potatoes into mash and... Read More
First Grade News: Week of January 15th
First grade writers have been working hard on their information books. This week they looked closely at their writing to discover how they can make it even better. We looked at a checklist of all the things they’ve learned so far, and first graders identified things they are doing really well and things they can work on. We challenged each first grader to make a goal for their writing. Some goals are to add more details or to make the beginning more exciting. We continued our study of information writing in our reading groups. Some groups read non-fictions books and... Read More
Mid January
Hello Fourth Grade Families! We hope you had an uplifting and meaningful Martin Luther King Jr. Day weekend. We have now entered the Hebrew month of Shvat, the time when the weather starts to inch itself toward warmth and we celebrate the trees and plants that sustain us on Tu B’Shvat (this year on January 31). Fourth graders are hard at work in all of their classes, making good use of this stretch of uninterrupted school. A reminder to parents that spring after-school programming begins on January 29, so please let us know if there are any changes to your... Read More
Learning about Animals in Science and Judaics and with AriSafari!
Dear Kindergarten Families, We hope you enjoyed your long weekend! We had a great week in Kindergarten! The highlight of our week was Ari Safari with his amazing animals. The children really enjoyed the show “Animal Defenses” and got to learn about and touch some rare animals, such as a toad, snake, chameleon, legless lizard and a chinchilla. Ask your children what their favorite animal was and what was the most surprising thing they learned. In Math, we learned about pairs and counting by 2. We practiced making pairs of socks, gloves, shoes, tiles and much more. We also practiced... Read More