November 11, 2022
HUMANITIES 7th graders are tackling intense subject matter in both Social Studies and English Language Arts. We started reading Chains, a historical fiction novel from the perspective of an enslaved girl set in New York City during the American Revolution. While reading Chains in ELA, we are continuing our study of Early America, focusing on the Atlantic Slave Trade. In both classes, we are focusing on the theme of freedom and what it means to be free. Ask your seventh graders when they feel most free; they have a lot of interesting ideas to share! Sammy MATH While adjusting... Read More
November 11, 2022 — Mid-Conference Life
Humanities with Hilary Dear 4th Grade Families, Thank you so much for coming out to conferences these past two Thursdays. It was so wonderful to get to meet some of you (or re-connect with you), and to sit and talk about your fabulous fourth grader! We are finally at the end of our [realistic] fiction writing unit. Let me tell you we have some very imaginative writers in this grade. Stories about migrating ants, body switching, clones, snowball fights, dog adoption, and more! We can’t wait for you to be able to read them during the Publishing Party on Wednesday, Dec... Read More
3rd Blog – 11/11
We have been very busy these past few weeks! It was so nice getting to chat with you all about your children! We love gushing about the wonderful work they’ve been doing in class. To celebrate our personal narrative stories, everyone had a chance to read their stories aloud. We then toasted with “champagne” to our first published pieces! We started a new reading unit and a new read aloud! We started by looking at non-fiction books. We know that they are about facts, teach you something, provide definitions, and has photographs. We then looked at all of the features... Read More
Kindergarten Blog 11/11
Dear Kindergarten Families, It was a pleasure meeting with many of you over the last two weeks to talk about the incredible progress your children have made thus far in the school year! We are preparing for the Thanksgiving Food Drive, which will benefit the Community Fridge on Hoyt Street. We read a book called Maddie’s Fridge in which a child realizes that her friend does not have much food and helps her out. We talked about the fact that some people in Brooklyn don’t have enough food and we can help them out by bringing in items for the... Read More
First Grade News
Hello Families, In Hebrew, we learned the letter reish and we added more words to our word wall like: rakevet (train), raashan (grogger) and rimon (pomegranate). We also learned 3 new action words – raah (saw for boy), raatah (saw for girl), nach(to rest for boy), nacha (to rest for girl), shar (to sing for boy), and sharah (to sing for girl). The first graders were so proud to be able to read and write so many sentences. InTefilah, we learned the first section of the amidah which is about giborim. We spoke about the meaning of the word gibor (hero)... Read More
November 11: Fall Updates
Humanities We’ve been really busy in humanities! During reading we are over half-way through Wonder. Along the way we have tracked character development, made connections to our own lives, and continued to practice answering reading comprehension questions using complete sentences and examples from the text. As we read Jack’s chapters, students chose a project to complete. Many chose to do a reader’s theater performing some of the chapters we read. We loved seeing each groups interpretation of the conversations they performed. During writing, students are working on a short essay about the history of their name. I hope you enjoyed... Read More
11/11/22
Dear Second Grade Families, It is hard to believe that November is already here! We really enjoyed meeting with you at conferences to share the wonderful work the children are doing in class! Reading: In reading we have been learning that second grade readers roll up their sleeves and get to work upon encountering tricky words. We built on decoding strategies and learned that readers often use many strategies at a time. If your child has a difficult time figuring out a difficult word at home, these are our strategies: Look through the whole word part by part Use... Read More
6th Grade Fall Updates 11/11/22
Humanities: It was so nice to meet you all at our parent-teacher conferences this week and last. I couldn’t have more positive feedback to share about your kids! Here are some updates about reading, writing, and social studies from these past few weeks… In ELA, we’ve been following Odysseus’s thrilling and dangerous adventures in The Odyssey. While we read Gareth Hinds’s graphic-novel version of the class tale, students are tracking big ideas and character traits like “Temptation v. Self Restraint,” “Hospitality,” and “Hubris” – or excessive self-pride. We discuss Odysseus’s complexity as a literary hero; sometimes he shows admirable qualities... Read More