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08 Apr 2022
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April 8: Spring Rolls In

Humanities

In reading, we are moving onto a new class novel, Seedfolks by Paul Fleischman. I have taught Seedfolks for many years and love this book! It is a beautiful story about a diverse community who come together to build a garden in their worn-down neighborhood in Cleveland. As we read, we will focus on immigrant stories, lost languages, women in history, community leaders, and how each individual can make a difference. Your students will be tasked with charting each character’s background, motivation for helping the community, and the character’s struggle. They will also be given vocabulary assignments and quizzes.

In writing, we are continuing our argumentative research essay. I genuinely can’t believe how amazing the thesis paragraphs are that your students wrote! Ask them to share theirs with you! We are also busy organizing our research in preparation for writing the body paragraphs. In upcoming lessons we will talk about how to incorporate a quote, include and refute a counter-claim, and how to balance research with analysis. We can’t wait to share the final products!

Finally, in social studies, we are finishing up our study of Ancient Egypt. Our penultimate project has been to research a god/goddess and create a mask to represent them. Pictures are attached of the class working on the masks. I can’t share the *final* project with you just yet but I’m sure your students will do so after it happens! Our next unit will bring us to Ancient China.

 

Judaics (Written by Student Teacher Josh Less) 

“Much I have learned from my teachers, more from colleagues, and the most from my students.”- Talmud Taanit 7b

I began this year with my own learning journey at the Pardes Institute of Jewish Studies in Jerusalem. I learned from inspiring teachers and also from motivated colleagues. My year of graduate school is concluding with an amazing experience at Hannah Senesh. I just wanted to say thank you to everyone in this community for being so welcoming and for my students, whom I was honored to teach and learn from. In Fifth grade Judaics, we have been studying the book of Breisheit (Genesis), more specifically the iconic stories of Yosef and his brothers. I set out for my students to work on their translation skills, Hebrew grammar, as well as developing kushiyot. Together as a class and in chevruta, the students have successfully translated 20 passukim, no minor accomplishment. Students have reviewed grammar concepts such as recognizing prefixes and suffixes that identify possession and future tense for various pronouns. Students also developed a new skill for grammar in which they learned how to identify the “you plural” form in the future.
I also set out for my students to dig into some of the deeper themes present in our Yosef stories: trust, regret, forgiveness, and family. We have investigated questions as a class such as  “What’s the first step in mending a wrong?” and “How do we rebuild trust once its broken?” and “How do our past actions affect us in the future?” We have used the content in the Breisheit text to dig deeper into the feelings and emotions of the characters. The students displayed these feelings by performing activities such as personal diary entries of Yosef or his brothers, biblio dramas, and a debate club. We also were introduced to the concept of a “mila mancha”- a repeating word in the Torah. Students were taught that when a word repeats itself in the Torah, it often conveys a deeper meaning and is there for a reason. Students identified Hebrew words that repeated themselves in the text, looked up different meanings for the words, and then wrote their own interpretations of what the deeper meaning could be. Many students had very impressive answers that displayed abstract thought and critical thinking skills. To conclude our time together and to summarize the content we’ve covered, the students worked on a final project. The project consisted of choosing a certain situation that occurred in the passukim and representing it in an artistic way such as: painting, song, poem, comic strip, or watercolor. This project urged students to continue to get into the shoes of various characters and answer questions about them while also having an artistic outlet to synthesize the material.
It has been a huge pleasure to be here this month!
Shabbat Shalom,
Josh
Math

Fractions, fractions, and more fractions!

We have finished our unit on multiplying fractions which will be followed up with dividing fractions! Students were able to play Jeopardy in a class and small group setting as a review. It was using real life examples within word problems to practice throughout the unit. I am really looking forward to putting all of our skills together for some fun activities after Passover break. 

Hebrew Heritage:

להורים שלום,

בשבועיים אחרונים התלמידים עסקו ביחידה ״אוכל ישראלי״. התלמידים חקרו, האם קיים מטבח ישראלי? מה הם המאכלים שאנחנו רואים בהם כחלק מהמטבח הישראלי? מה התרומה של עדות בישראל למטבח?. התלמידים חקרו את מקורם של מה שנתפס כמאכלים ישראלים והגיעו למסקנה כי  המטבח הישראלי הוא מרקם של מאכלים מעדות שונות שהשתלבו במטבח הישראלי. התלמידים עובדים על פרויקט בו הם כותבים על מאכל אחד שהם אוהבים.

סוף שבוע נעים,

אילנה

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