Autumn Learning feels like Virtual Spring

Greetings Senesh Community!  Please read on to learn about what has been simmering for our second grade scholars this fortnight in English Language Arts, Social Studies, Hebrew & Judaic Studies, Math, Science.

General Studies – Jacob

The Second-Grade writers have continued to excite and impress with their growing skills, abilities, and comfort with the Writing Process! Before transitioning to Senesh@home, the pods spent a full week combing over their story drafts and doing the hard work of revision. Children were inspired to comb through their writing and change “tired” words like sad or happy and replace them with “wow” words like gloomy and overjoyed!  In fact, these young writers now know that revising is how writers make their good writing, great! After revising, we focused on editing our writing with attention to sentence structure, punctuation and making sure that our writing sounds right and looks right too! This week, while at home, the pods will put on the finishing touches, developing a title and cover to match their terrific work!

Math & Science – John

Our second-grade learners have been deepening their regrouping skills in the ones and tens places with three-digit numbers in preparation for our next module on adding four two-digit numbers.  Every week, we have a chance to shine our best on Technology Fridays, using our online independent practice assessment tool, to support and enrich our learning.  We are proud of how swiftly our pods have transitioned into a virtual learning environment and have been integrating interactive lessons with videos, open-ended questions and diagram design for the water cycle online.  It’s been really great to see such organized work submitted in Seesaw in handwriting and math.  Let’s keep up the great work as our dedicated families support our students in the virtual Senesh community as we work together in our new home classrooms.

Hebrew & Judaic Studies – Ariana

These past weeks we had a great time learning together.  In Judaic Studies, we started practicing gematria which is the numerical value of the hebrew letters.  We learned the value of the first ten letters of the aleph bet from Aleph to Yud.  We also received our Choveret Chumash Breshit (our Chumash workbooks) and a smiley sticker to celebrate the beginning of our Torah learning. We also wish our Torah learning will always be a happy and meaningful experience for us.

We will learn the story of Briat Ha Olam, the Creation of the world. We learned the first pesukim (verses): Pasuk Aleph, bet, Guimmel, dalet and hay.  We read the story “The seventh day” a book that discussed the creation and Shabbat.  The children also decorated beautiful paper Arks and made animals to board Noah’s Ark.  Students were encouraged (in an optional activity) to test their Arks at home in their bathtubs or sinks and upload their experiences on Seesaw.  We enjoyed seeing our friends videos and their wonderful Arks.  We read the story “And there was evening and there was morning”.

The children adjusted beautifully to the online distance learning. They have been working diligently and professionally every day. We are so impressed with their resilience. Kol ha kavod kita bet!  We are currently learning about Hannah Senesh, our namesake. We learned about Hannah’s childhood in Budapest and her journey to live in Israel.  Hannah Senesh studied Hebrew and learned about Israel just like us.  We are inspired by Hannah’s bravery and her strength too.  We realized that we have a lot in common with Hannah Senesh as we also are learning Hebrew and about Israel which was so important for her.  We reflected on why our school would be named after her? The children shared that this was because she was brave, put others before herself and because she was a hero.  One student highlighted that we are inspired by Hannah Senesh bravery and we hope to emulate some of those values.

In Hebrew we continue learning our script letters in our Choveret otiot kotvot.  We learned letters Aleph, taf, hay, samech, nun, kuf, mem, lamed and chet.  He heard the story: “ Maase be 5 balonim”.  We practice writing sentences in script and reading short stories in script with the letters we have learned so far.  We are excited to continue learning more Hebrew letters in the week ahead!

Music – Heidi

Second Graders have progressed quickly with their rhythm reading. This week they examined a piece of sheet music and found the treble/G clef, time signatures, the staff, measure lines, song endings. They noticed that the notes they’ve been learning can be turned upside down once the melody goes above the center staff line. And they continued to read and play the rhythms they’ve learned so far – quarter, eighth, sixteenth, half and whole notes and quarter, half and whole rests. They have also been continuing to compose original 4 beat rhythms. Since we were online this week, we even got a chance to sing!