First Grade News
Dear Families, In Hebrew, we started traveling through the state of Israel! We started in the north in the port city of Haifa, made our way to the Kineret and through the busy streets of Tel Aviv. Students wrote sentences in Hebrew of what we can find in each place and drew pictures of each city inspired by images they saw in photographs, videos and books. We look forward to continuing our traveling to new places in Israel next week. We also had so much fun celebrating Yom Ha’atzmaut together. This week in science we have been preparing for our caterpillar friends. We learned about their metamorphosis process... Read More
April in the 8th Grade
Judaic Studies It’s been a powerful 2 weeks of learning with the 8th grade. I was moved and awed by the focus and thoughtfulness students brought to our Yom haShoah unit. In preparation for our speaker, Dr. Anna Ornstein, we learned about the Holocaust in Hungary, and about Auschwitz. This was a difficult topic, but students were resilient and able to share and process together in a way that I really admired. We began our next unit — looking at moral dilemmas through the lens of Rabbinic literature. We are focusing on a real life question: what should be done... Read More
6th Grade News: 4/16/21
Humanities: We had so much fun in Social Studies this week celebrating our Rome research projects during our 6th grade Roman Banquet. At the banquet, students read from their research essays and shared “artifacts” they made related to their topics. Check out all the artifact videos at this link (if it asks for a password it’s RomeResearch), and see photos from the event at this link. We reclined on pillows and blankets, just as wealthy Romans did during ancient times, we sipped on grape juice just like they drank wine, and we enjoyed ancient Roman entertainment in between presentations, like... Read More
Friday, March 12 — WELCOME BACK TO IN PERSON SCHOOL!
Humanities with Hilary Dear 4th Grade Families, Wow. Today marks one year since our last day of in-person teaching for 3rd Grade …. What a year this has been! Our classroom community has been through so much, but since day 1 of Zoom teaching (March 23rd, to be exact) we have had some mega stars in our midst who adapted to and learned technology so quickly I was bragging about them to everyone I knew. Thank you all for being a great support in helping us get through this year, and please remember to keep being safe (and following protocols)... Read More
Kindergarten Blog 3/12/21
Dear Families, It’s been an exciting and artistic week in Kindergarten! In math, students decorated their own Hundreds Charts, and practiced how to use them. We also played a game about ordering numbers. Kids were each given a card with a number on it (shuffled!), and then had to rearrange themselves so that their numbers were in order! We are also learning how to tie our shoes! Students each have a paper shoe to keep at school, and are able to practice tying the laces at points throughout the day. If you would like to practice at home, remind your... Read More
March in the 8th Grade
Humanities Students are wrapping up their essay reflections about visiting home-bound elders and will submit them for national competition on this Friday. The beauty of these relationships the students have developed with their elders really shines through their writing! It’s been a pleasure to read. Additionally, students are deep in their study of the legacy of enslavement in the United States. They have read primary source narratives and are making their way through reading the New York Times’ 1619 Broadside. Joseph Math The 8th Grade just finished a hefty unit about systems of Linear Equations and Inequalities. Now that the... Read More
What’s Happening in 5th- 3/12/21
Humanities: In fifth grade we are finishing “Wonder” this week. We have continued discussions about drawing themes from the book, and exploring how the book uses different character’s point of view to add to it’s narrative. We are looking forward to seeing what the students create for their final projects next week. We are halfway through our Argumentative Writing unit. Students have worked on their snow day issue essays to improve paragraph structure and learned to quote and paraphrase evidence from reliable sources. We will continue this unit with students writing an argumentative essay about a topic of their choice... Read More
6th Grade News: 3/12/21
Humanities: These past several weeks in humanities have included mature and nuanced discussions about social justice issues in the past and today. As we wrapped up our ELA unit on Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry, we had open and honest conversations about how our country’s legacy of racism continues to impact our communities and world. We explored questions like: How do prejudices begin to form at a young age? How is systemic racism embedded into our institutions? How can we help prevent racism around us and within ourselves? I was so impressed with students’ thoughtfulness, maturity, and self-awareness during these... Read More
First Grade News
Hello Families, In Hebrew, we learned the words aroch (long) and katzar (short) and learned how to use those words when speaking and writing. The students also wrote about their hair and the color of their eyes using aroch, katzar, yesh li (I have) and ein li (I do not have). We wrote lots of sentences and continued to practice our reading. In Tefila, we learned a new prayer from the Amida called melech ohev tzedakah umishpat. We spoke about the rules that we have in our classroom and in America and how they help us stay safe and be better people. We have learned so many of the prayers from the amidah and... Read More
Kindergarten Blog 3/5/21
Dear Families, This week, we celebrated the 100th day of school! Students celebrated by counting to 100 as a group, making necklaces with 100 beads, doing a puzzle of the number 100 filled with snap words, and more! In Judaics we went deeper into the Purim story and practiced telling it ourselves. We learned about the special mitzvot of Purim: Hear the Megillah, distribute Mishloach Manot (packages of food), donate/volunteer for Matanot L’evyonim to the less fortunate. It was so exciting to see everyone all dressed up, and we had fun listening to the big kids read from the... Read More