6th Grade News: 11/18 – 12/5/19

Advisory:

In advisory check-ins, we’ve continued to discuss on how to stay on top of academic work. We talk about prioritizing certain assignments, checking Jupiter Ed, and communicating with teachers about missing or late work. During full advisory periods, we’ve recently focused on handling tricky social scenarios and communicating as part of a team. Some team challenges we participated in this week: How tall can your team build a card tower? How fast can your team pass a hoola hoop through all of your bodies? How can we best communicate to complete these tasks and others efficiently and effectively? Through fun challenges like these, students are learning to speak kindly, encourage others, plan ahead, delegate roles, and stay positive.

Best,

Naomi and Mike, 6th Grade Advisors

Humanities: 

We’ve been pretty busy these past few weeks in 6th grade humanities! In ELA class, we’ve been preparing for our upcoming Heroes Convention on 12/12 (save the date!). Students will be displaying essays about Gilgamesh the “hero,” projects about biographies they read, and digital hero stories that they wrote and created themselves. They’ll also be sharing work from Hebrew and Judaic Studies classes. To prepare for this event, we thought about the question: What does it mean to be a true hero? We read quotes from a variety of authors and scholars about this topic, and then composed our own definitions of “Hero.” After defining the concept, we thought of personal heroes in our own lives. You’ll hear about these discussions and students’ opinions at the Heroes Convention.

In Social Studies class, we recently brought our ancient Greece curriculum to life through our very own 6th Grade Ancient Greek Olympic Games! Students were placed into four teams representing different city-states, including Argos, Miletus, Thebes, and Corinth. To prepare for the Games, each group researched the history of their city-state and made team signs and cheers based on their research. In the end, students had a lot of fun competing in Olympic-inspired sports, like discus, javelin, long jump, relay races, and more. We even held a pretend horse race! Congratulations to Miletus who emerged victorious and earned the traditional prize – olive wreath crowns – as their reward. Enjoy some photos from our Games:

Shabbat shalom,

Naomi

Math:

This week we are finishing the chapter on decimals. Next, we are going to start learning about positive and negative numbers. To start, we will be finding integers in newspapers, magazines, and the internet. We will also be analyzing weather trends and analyzing the integers involved. 

Katie

Judaics: 

This week we continued to study Shemot 1. It has been so exciting to see students remembering more root words and being able to translate with more ease as they recognize them in different forms. Please encorage them to continue to study for the weekly root quiz! We are looking at the story of Shifra and Puah and how they stood up very wisely to Pharaoh. We reflected on the fact that they feared G-d over Pharoah and this motivated them to do the right thing and not follow the orders to kill the Hebrew baby boys. We explored the heroism of Miriam and Bat Pharaoh as well. Students looked at the history of the women of Chile and how they also found a very wise and non violent way to protest and stand up for what is right. We will be creating Hero projects inspired by the arpilleras of the Chillean women’s protests under the reign of Pinochet showing the non violent protesting of our Hero’s in Shemot.

Shabbat Shalom,

Laura

Science:

Students have been working on their genetic smiles activity. These smiles were created by flipping coins in order to determine dominant or recessive traits. This activity created 25 unique faces demonstrating how genetics work in society. We will wrap us this unit by creating genetic bugs using the same technique as genetic smiles.

Mike Noll

Hebrew

Dear parents,

For the last two weeks, we have been focusing on heroes. We learned about our heroes’ qualities and what made them special. The students practiced writing a short biography in Hebrew, then they learned to present their heroes by heart, and finally, they prepared a slideshow presentation.

I wish everyone a relaxing weekend,

Andreea

Hebrew Heritage: