Sixth Grade Blogger

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... Read More

6th Grade Advisory:  In advisory this week and last, we’ve engaged with several important topics: Stress at school, how to communicate with a team, and how to respond to tricky social situations. To address some high levels of homework anxiety, Mike Noll and I (6th grade advisors) invited students to share time-management strategies with their classmates. We also discussed the importance of prioritizing, asking students: How do you know which assignment to work on first? Second? Last? Etc. It would be helpful if you continued discussing time-management strategies with your children at home! We’re lucky that in a few weeks,... Read More

Humanities:  In 6th grade humanities, we have been focusing A LOT on writing lately. Last week, we prepared for and then took an in-class argument/literary writing assessment. Students were asked to read a very short story and then respond with a well-organized and articulate paragraph. In their responses, students wrote about the protagonist’s feelings or personality traits and backed up their claims with both quotes and details from the story. This week, students had the opportunity to look over their individualized feedback and improve their essays. Some worked on crafting a more focused main idea, others worked on better connecting... Read More

ADVISORY:  6th graders had a great time these past few weeks getting to know their 2nd grade buddies. We participated in ice breakers, drawn together, celebrated kaballat Shabbat together, and spent time together in the Sukkah. The 6th and 2nd grade pairs will continue to strengthen their bonds throughout this year, and they’ll continue the buddy relationship next year as well! Enjoy the photos from one of our buddy activities below.     Best, Mike and Naomi, 6th grade advisors HUMANITIES:  The past few weeks in humanities have been full of ancient Greek history and mythology. As we launched into... Read More

Dear parents, We hope you enjoyed our e-mail updates these last few days about our wonderful time at TEVA! Students had a blast hiking, exploring the natural environment, singing original TEVA songs, making food and ritual objects, doing tefila (prayer) outside in the sun, and more. Throughout the week, they strengthened bonds with good friends and formed new connections with other classmates. It was wonderful to see the students outside the classroom, learning in active and creative ways. I know it’s an experience the 6th graders won’t soon forget! Feel free to browse our TEVA photos at this link. You... Read More

ADVISORY It’s been a busy first week in sixth grade! Because we have ten new students in the grade, we have really focused on our sixth grade community these first few days. First, we created re-wearable name tags with our names and special symbols, and we’ve been encouraging the students to wear their name tags each day. We also created a peer buddy system, so that each new student is paired with a returning student. Returning students have been showing their buddies around the school, sitting with them at lunch, and generally helping them feel welcome. You can see the... Read More

6TH GRADE TEAM:  Dear 6th grade parents, We are Mike Noll and Naomi Forman, and beyond teaching science and humanities classes, we’re excited to be on the 6th grade team this year. As the 6th grade advisors, we will be looking out for your child’s general social/emotional and academic wellbeing at Hannah Senesh. We’ll also be leading the students in community service and social justice initiatives, planning various field trips, and facilitating team-building activities and ice-breakers during advisory classes twice a week. You can expect an e-mail from one of us soon with more details. We can’t wait to better... Read More

HUMANITIES It’s hard to believe that we’re already wrapping up our year in 6th grade humanities. It was a true joy to be able to work with this group of students, and I know that I’ll come away from the year having learned a lot from each of them. We’re ending the year on a busy note, and spent time the past few weeks preparing for the Greek Symposium on Tuesday. The students worked hard to design ancient Greek “artifacts” that relate to their research topics; they’ll explain their design choices and the related content during their speeches at the... Read More

GENERAL The 6th graders had a blast yesterday competing for the Yellow, Green, Red, and Blue teams during Lag B’Omer! Enjoy some photos of 6th graders showing their team spirit here: https://photos.app.goo.gl/D7ZpzufmiTBbqjit6 JUDAICS:  This week we finished our Toon Tastic projects and shared them with the class! Students took the text from Shemot where Bnai Yisrael crossed the Red Sea and turned it into their very own animated movies! They included the text that we use in tefillah, Mi Chamocha and Az Yashir. It was so fun to see the text come alive as they used this accessible technology. I... Read More

HUMANITIES:  I hope you had a fulfilling Passover holiday. In Social Studies these past few weeks, we’ve continued our study of ancient Greece. We immersed ourselves in the democracy of ancient Athens by participating in a mini-simulation: I asked the class to help me plan a class party, but I only solicited opinions from a select few students and allowed only those few students to vote on our final decisions. We talked about this discussion afterward as a whole class, reflecting on how it felt to be left out of the planning and voting processes. Students discovered that in some... Read More