6th Grade News 12/11/20

Advisory

We are grateful that in recent weeks, our advisory time has given us the opportunity to participate in community service. As you may know, our school is holding a PPE drive in order to collect much-needed safety and cleaning supplies for the Brooklyn Landmark School. Last week, 6th graders created multi-media advertisements for the younger students encouraging them to donate supplies. We were excited to take on a leadership role this week, too, as several 6th graders stood downstairs in the lobby during morning drop-off to collect items for the drive and spread the word to parents.

During other advisory and morning meeting lessons this month, 6th grade focused on the themes of relationship-building and conflict resolution. We compared world conflicts to conflicts in our own classrooms, spoke about strategies we could use to repair and maintain relationships, and analyzed fictional (but familiar!) middle-school scenarios related to texting, social media, shifting cliques, and friendships during the time of Covid. While students are beginning to face more complex social challenges as they navigate middle school and their “tweenage” years, they are also learning to problem-solve and confront these challenges with increasing maturity, self-awareness, empathy, and responsibility. We look forward to continuing these meaningful discussions with the students and supporting them as their friendships develop, grow, and change.

Humanities

In 6th grade humanities, students have been busy getting ready for our Heroes Convention next week! They are in the midst of designing and polishing online books about real-life heroes they read about, which they’ll share with parents and special visitors during our virtual event. Students are looking forward to speaking about a variety of historical and contemporary figures, from athletes, to activists, to engineers and other change-makers. Please save the date and time of our Heroes Convention if you haven’t: Friday, December 18th, at 11:15am. We can’t wait to see you there!

We are further immersed in our theme of Heroism as we write our argument essays on The Odyssey. For their essays, students are answering the question: Is Odysseus or Penelope a hero — or not a hero? There are valid arguments on both sides of each question. Students are learning to use a logical essay structure and incorporate evidence from the text to defend their ideas. I recommend you ask your child about their stance and urge them to explain their reasoning. You might get into a lively, intellectual debate!

Lastly, we are wrapping up our ancient Greece unit with a test and some competitive history-themed games. Throughout our unit, students explored the ancient Greek cities of Sparta and Athens, compared ancient Greek democracy to our own in the United States, imagined daily life for people of different ages and genders, and more. Now they’re ready to move west across the Mediterranean Sea and bit forward in time to our next social studies unit: ancient Rome!

I’m looking forward to seeing many of you at our Heroes Convention next week.

Shabbat shalom,

Naomi

 

Judaics

We just finished our Dvar Torah rough drafts! Students worked so hard to look at their parsha and find something they found meaningful and interesting to create a speech about. They worked with other students as well as classic commentaries to include additional opinions in their writing. I am so excited to edit them over break so we can schedule students to share them in tefillah. I will be reaching out with dates if you would like to come hear them deliver it on zoom.

We also just finished our first Chumash unit. We have worked on some core Hebrew roots and grammar concepts as well as looked at how the text personally connects to us. Many students made meaningful connections to Black Lives Matter when they saw the way that Shemot begins with a list of names before the Jews went into slavery. They discussed the importance of recognizing the individual and honoring names. We also explored the theme of how difficult times can make you stronger, what makes a strong nation, and why are people threatened by other’s greatness. I look forward to celebrating and learning Rabbinic text about Hanukkah next week with the class. I will be sending home a family study sheet if you would like to discuss with your child what they are learning for Hannukah this year.

Wishing you all a light filled Hanukkah and Shabbat Shalom,

Laura

Hebrew

We are finished our topic about special schools. Students learned about art school, agriculture school and wrote about our school. Each student recorded himself/herself in Flipgrad speaking about our Jewish school. They did their best and it was very interesting to listen to their stories about the school. We are started our next topic “Negev”. We have discussed in the class about special settlements in the Negev,  historical places and attractions. The students shared their memories from the trip to Israel. We talked about what we want to do in different situation using grammar construction with infinitives. The students  practiced to conjugate verbs belonging to the 5 main groups of the verb in the present tense, and use several common verbs from each of the groups in speech and writing.

 

Science

Students during the last month discovered how genetic and DNA works by the passing down of traits. Students were given the opportunity to create their own DNA necklaces using cheek cells. They conducted an experiment that allowed them to extract DNA from their own cells in order to visually see the DNA. We later conducted a “Genetic with a Smile” activity that allowed students to create unique smiley faces using 12 genetic traits. Students flip a coin to discovery which traits would be recessive or dominate. This allowed the entire grade to create a community of genetic faces. We continued the unit of genetics using simulation software to figure out the traits of mouse fur as they breed hundreds of mice. This allowed students to figure the combination of parents that can produce the different color fur offspring. As we wrap up this DNA and genetic unit we cannot wait to start exploring the human body system next semester.  

 

 

 

 

 

Mike Noll