5th Grade Week of 1/28

Another great week in 5th Grade! Please enjoy our classroom updates below, and have a fun and relaxing weekend.

Humanities

Students this week in Humanities finished their essays on Homeless Bird, which came out beautifully! We began our prereading work for Tuck Everlasting, which included learning about figurative language and symbols, as well as discussing and debating whether immortality is good or bad. Shabbat Shalom!-Tony

Math

Students began their Algebra unit this week, and began learning how to write and calculate expressions. Have a good weekend!-Katie

Judaics

Students have been working in new chevruta partners while studying Chumash. So far they have worked on reading aloud in Hebrew to each other and searching for key works in both Hebrew and English. They also did a wonderful job in our new biblical grammar unit about roots that lose one letter in different forms. It has been amazing to see how they are using the the words and concepts from their last grammar assessment  to help them translate new text. We are also practicing asking text based questions called “Kushiyot”. These questions are based on something that are based off an assumption that every word and grammatical choice in the Torah was put there for a reason. Students have to provide a citation and the words they are specifically questioning. They have learned to ask Kushiyot when the text suproses the, confuses them, feels like it is missing something and feels repetitive. From these Kushiyot we have had some great deep discussions about the layers of meaning in our text. For example, there is a repetition of the word “brought down” when Joseph goes to Egypt. Students discussed how this is not just physical, but also a moment of humbling for Joseph. This discovery will lead perfectly into our next big topic of “Can people change”. They also used their Kushiyah skills to pick up on a famous confusing moment in our text where it is unclear if it is the Ishmaelites or the Midianites that sell and buy Joseph. They created mystery crime scene boards providing detailed personal theories based on text proof, famous commentary and historical knowledge of the different tribes mentioned. They are currently still voting on the most likely theory with the best text backing. It is so fun to see them get so excited about a debate that has been going on for hundreds of years! Shabbat Shalom-Laura 

Science

In the past few weeks students have been immersing themselves in the science concept of magnetism. Student started with a free explore activity using magnetic balls in order to see the attraction force between magnets. Then student conducted an activity using magnets and creating a magnetic field pattern within a pan of iron filings. During our experiment this week students used a force meter to measure the force used to remove different kinds of magnets from the device’s metal hook. The next weeks in science, we will continue to explore magnetism be creating our own electromagnets.-Mike Noll and Samantha Butwin

Hebrew