January 22nd – January 26th

Judaic Studies

There were so many deep and insightful conversations in our JS classroom this week. I am in awe!

Students translated the next 6 verses in Chapter 11 of Bmidbar/Numbers. They developed powerful questions about these verses, and shared interpretations with each other. The room was full of lively conversations about text!!! Here are some of the highlights:

**The Torah says that Bnai Yisrael “cried to their families, each man in the door of his tent.” We looked at Rashi and Ibn Ezra’s ideas about why they cried to their families. As a class, we talked about the strangeness of crying in the doorway — neither in private space nor totally out in public space. When in our lives have we cried in doorways?

**Moshe has an outburst in which he says to God, “Did I get pregnant with this people? Did I give birth to them, that you should tell me ‘Carry them in your bosom’ like a male wetnurse carries a baby…?” Why does Moshe make these crazy comparisons?

**Moshe concludes by begging God to kill him so he won’t see his evil. What is the evil in Moshe that Moshe doesn’t want to see? What is the evil in ourselves that is painful for us to see?

It was a joy teaching, learning, and discussing with the 7th grade this week.

Shabbat shalom,

Jessica

Art 

Seventh grade was instrumental in getting the sets made for the Middle School musical. Here are some behind the scenes views of students getting the flats painted for the castle interior, adding to the forest backdrop and creating the books for the library scene. They also helped create the rooftop tiles for the village houses.

 

Science

Students this week continued their exploration of water. We again focused on the different properties of water by conducting a series of experiments. Students learned about refraction, cohesion, adhesion, and the differences between hard and soft water. This foundational knowledge will be applied to our earth and how water interactions in our environment.

 

 

 

 

 

Mike Noll

 

Math

7X have begun their eighth unit, “Angles, Triangles, and Quadrilaterals.” In this unit they will learn to describe a point, a line, a line segment, a ray, and a plane, identify different types of angles and explore their properties, find unknown angles, explore properties of perpendicular and angle bisectors, and classify triangles and quadrilaterals based on their properties.

7Y have begun their ninth unit, “Number Patterns” in the new (7B) textbook. In this unit they will learn to understand the idea of a sequence, find the terms of a sequence and the formula for the general term of a sequence, and solve problems involving sequences and number patterns. The unit test is currently scheduled for Tuesday, January 30th. (Other due dates for 7Y: Unit 8 EC due January 30th and Unit 9 EC due January 31st.)

Humanities 

We finished our Medieval Book Club, and I loved hearing the final conversations about so many different characters throughout the 1200s and 1300s. Students also worked on creating a study guide for the Late Middle Ages. We used a strategy called APPARTS to analyze primary source documents: Author, Place and Time, Prior Knowledge, Reason, The main idea, Significance.

We began playing with words and brainstorming for narrative writing. I loved reading all the descriptive passages that students worked on. It was amazing to see them excited to share their words and the beginnings of their stories.

Hebrew

This week we finished our unit on “Trips in northern Israel.”
In preparation for their quiz next week ( 7k- Thursday, 7J- Friday) students worked on analyzing short texts about trips and translating sentences from English to Hebrew using the vocabulary that will be on the quiz.