6th Grade News: 11/6 – 11/10/17

HUMANITIES

This week in Literature class, students had a great time participating in a formal debate inspired by The Epic of Gilgamesh. One team argued that Gilgamesh IS a true hero, while the other team argued that he NOT a hero. They practiced both listening and speaking skills, learning to acknowledge opposing arguments, respond respectfully to peers, and defend their points with specific textual evidence. Students were professional, enthusiastic, and collaborative throughout, and the debate was a pleasure to watch! See some photos here:

 

In History class, we learned about the famous historic document, the Code of Hammurabi. Students examined this list of laws from the ancient Babylonian Empire, and immediately noticed how much harsher they were, in a lot of ways, than our laws in the U.S. today. For example, students were somewhat shocked to see law #195: “If a son strike his father, his hands shall be hewn off.” As one group responded, a more acceptable consequence in our culture might be losing dessert for a week. Students had fun acting out these laws through mock trials, and comparing other ancient laws to those of our own society.

Lastly, students are in the midst of finishing up their independent reading books and writing the final draft of their Gilgamesh argument essay. I recommend you check in with your children to see how they are doing with these long-term assignments.

Have a great weekend,

Naomi

 

JUDAICS

Ronit Nolte

“This week we started using  trope to help us understand the text on a fun worksheet on google classroom with the text of Shemot. We had to highlight all the shoreshim (roots) and translate them. We also got new chavrutas  but instead of working with our chavruta all the time we are working independently on translations. We are learning to work alone and then check back with other people and discuss. That is not it we made kushias about the new text we are leaning. This week has been a big week because we also had the Hannah Senesh tekes. Some people form the sixth grad talked about Hannah Senesh’s past and some talk about why they thought our school was named after her. This week felt like a full week even though we missed a day. We are all having lots of fun in JS.

Shabbat Shalom!!”

Tamar Berkowitz-Henkin

“This week we did a lot! We finished up our Hannah Senesh unit with a beautiful memorial tekes. If you came, then we hope that you enjoyed hearing all of the grades share what they learned about her. We also worked a lot on torah trope this week. We have been combining our translating skills with our trope reading skills by going over the text that we are learning while looking at the trope and singing it. We have also been working really hard on translating without asking for help from Laura. It takes some struggling but in the end, I think that it helps us learn how to be independant. In 5th grade, we learned about the Joseph story, and we all know the Moses story, so now, we are starting to learn about all of the time in between the two. I think that it will be really fun to learn about the story that connects the two. I think that I speak for everyone, when I say that we had a lot of fun this week!

P.S. hi family!!!!!”

SCIENCE

Students used the microscopes to observe their own hair. Exploring the concept of DNA that is within their hair sample. Next week we will explore into more details about DNA and traits.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Mike Noll

HEBREW

Dear parents,

This week HaKbatza Aleph read texts and discussed what artists try to tell us through self-portraits. The students then chose a self-portrait and described it in a short paragraph.

HaKbatza Bet has been working on presenting a neighborhood to their classmates using a slideshow. The students will present their projects next week.

I wish everyone a good weekend,

Andreea