6th Grade News: 3/11 – 3/22/19
HUMANITIES
As we transition into spring, we are also wrapping up several units and beginning new ones in Humanities. In ELA, we have finished reading Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry, and are now completing some culminating activities related to the text itself and its historical context. For example, we identified over a dozen different literary terms in the story – including foreshadowing, dialect, flashbacks, and symbolism. We also further explored the racial divide in the Jim Crow era South by taking an old Louisiana voter Literacy test — a test that many African Americans were forced to take and pass in order to vote. Check out the test for yourself at this link; it’s quite tricky and confusing! Note that just ONE wrong answer means a failing score. Students recognized that this voter test was just one example of racial disparity during the time period of our book.
In Social Studies, we are wrapping up our unit on ancient Egypt and transitioning to our next unit on ancient Greece. As a culmination of our ancient Egypt studies, we are excited to participate in a simulation of the soul’s mythological journey to the ancient Egyptian afterlife. Students will complete challenges created by their classmates — including fitness tests, trivia, and ping-pong tosses — as they “travel” to the afterlife themselves. I look forward to seeing the students actively participate in the stories they’ve learned so much about.
As we move on to ancient Greece, students are just beginning a research project related to a topic that interests them. Choices include ancient Greek art, architecture, philosophy, the ancient Olympic Games, and more. In the coming months, students will become experts on their topics and will have opportunities to share what they learn with the wider community.
Shabbat shalom and Happy Purim,
Naomi
SCIENCE
Science continues with our STEAM disease project. Students have been assigned their disease that will be the foundation of their informational game. Groups have conducted in depth research about their disease in order to have proper knowledge for their game. We have review famous board games in order to discover key aspects that make these games work. Students will now use this information to start brainstorming their own game design. We are excited in science for these unique games that will inform people about their disease in a friendly and fun way. In the weeks to come we will start construction of these games.
Mike Noll and Samantha Butwin
MATH
The past week, the 6th graders have been working on plotting points on the coordinate plane and finding the distance between those points. They have been introduced to dependent and independent variables and will move onto graphing linear equations. This will give lots of opportunities for real world problem solving!
HEBREW
This has been a fruitful and productive week for us.
Hebrew 6K has been practicing using three different groups of verbs in the future tense both verbally and in writing.
Hebrew 6J has been practicing using adjectives in the four forms in authentic language, verbally and in writing.
I wish everyone a restful weekend,
Andreea
HEBREW HERITAGE
about different opinions on women’s ability/ obligation to read the Megillah and fulfill the mitzvah for others. It has been so impressive how students are able to translate these detailed texts and even more impressive that they were able to write their own Rabbinic response using the same style and vocabulary! They had to write their own opinion on the issue and give reasoning based on their society. These will be on display and then will come home in April for you to enjoy! We also translated and discussed a few texts and found similarities between them and the texts translated on Rosh Hashana and Sukkot. We discussed the common theme of having the right intention when you perform a mitzvah. We are going back to our Shemot studies next week.About Post Author
