6th Grade News: 1/28/22

  Humanities: 

In 6th grade humanities this month, we wrapped up older units and started several new ones. To celebrate the end of our ancient Greece unit, students competed in our annual “6th Grade Ancient Greek Olympics” — once again in person this year! They divided into four teams named for ancient Greek City states, made team signs and cheers that boasted true facts about their cities, and competed in some of the same competitions featured in the real ancient Greek Olympic Games. Students flexed their muscles and cheered each other on during the long jump, “javelin” throw, relay races, and tug of war. Congratulations to the green team, Argos, for their win! Just like the champions from ancient times, winners were granted olive wreath crowns, and we marched around them in celebration. All in all, it was wonderful to see the students immerse themselves in our content and participate in friendly, in-person competition at the same time. See photos from the event below!

We are now a few weeks into our ancient Rome unit. Students read several different origin stories (both mythological and historical) about the founding of Rome, and in response, they wrote their own fantastical and mythological “origin stories” about the founding of NYC. Ask your child to share their story to hear their creative rewriting of history!

In ELA, we are diving deep into the strange world of our current book, The Giver, through enlightening class discussions. As Jonas realizes that his community is repressive, bland, and eerily uniform, students are considering and sharing ideas about the benefits of choice, diversity, and individuality in our own community. Students also had fun pretending to be part of Jonas’s world for a day, as they participated in a special Coming of Age ceremony and received their “assignments,” or adult jobs. Students laughed, celebrated, and groaned after being assigned jobs like “dish washer,” “food deliverer,” and “swim instructor.”

I am looking forward to another month of joyful, challenging, and experiential learning in 6th grade!

Shabbat shalom,

Naomi

Judaics: 

We have been learning so many new things over the past few weeks! Most recently, we completed our Tefillah unit on Tefillin. Each student learned important texts, blessings and intentions around the ritual of tefillin. It was so beautiful to see each student connect to it in different ways and get curious about trying it out for their B- mitzvah and beyond.

We also have been working on our trope skills in order to read Torah with more ease. Hopefully this will also help them prepare for their B-mitzvah! Please share any special family trope you may want your child to be learning and they can use our class practice time on Fridays to learn in their family tune.

We are now jumping back into our Chumash studies where we will take a closer look at the heroines in the texts, the Midwives, Daughter of Pharoah, Jocheved and Miriam. We will compare their actions to the actions of the women in Chile when under the dictatorship of Pinochet. All of these women acted in non-violent and very intelligent heroic manners. I can’t wait to share their text exploration and art with you in the next few weeks!

Shabbat Shalom,

Laura

Math:

The 6th graders have been hard at work learning about ratios and the Fibonacci sequence. They learned how  the sequence is all around us and how it works. The students created slides to talk about and show their favorite part of what the sequence represents. We have just started our unit on percentages. Once we cover the lessons, students will use the skills of ratios, proportions and percents to solve authentic global problems. Students will learn about Fair Trade while being immersed with problems that are not only practical for the math content, but are talked about in everyday life. 

Science:

During the past month, sixth grade students started to learn about and discover human body systems. We started our exploration with the digestive system. The first activity was measuring the length of the different digestive system organs with color yarn. They discovered that the small intestine length is huge around 5 meters. Students then conducted a demonstration of how the mouth processes food using a small plastic bag and a cracker. Their fingers were used as teeth, and we added a small amount of water to stimulate saliva. Then they used a bigger plastic bag with water and lemon juice to model their stomach. With this demonstration, students explored chemical and mechanical digestion in the mouth and stomach. Later, students used simulation software to explore the other parts of the digestive system. We cannot wait to continue learning about the next human body system. 

Mike Noll

Hebrew Heritage:

להורים שלום,

השבוע התחלנו ללמוד יחידה חדשה״לא הסמרטפון לבדו״ הדן בעיסוק של בני נוער בסמרטפון והשלכותיו. אנחנו עוסקים בשאלות לאיזה צורך

Hebrew :

Last month we have been continuing to learn about Israel. We finished unit “The Negev”. Students talked about the Negev and special settlements in the Negev, about Bedouins and their life in the desert. We discussed the value of hospitality as it emerges from the Bedouin’s folktale story.  Students wrote comics “In the desert” and presented them in the class as a final project for this unit. Our next unit is “Jerusalem”. There are a lot of interesting sites in Jerusalem such as the market, special streets, old city, the library and the museum. Learning about places in Jerusalem we learned to describe sites in New York and Brooklyn and explain what’s special about it. I cannot wait to see my students being guides in Jerusalem during the class!

שבת שלום!

Yuliya