First Grade News
This week the first graders did a lot of sharing. Whether it was through editing our writing with a friend, spending time with our 5th grade buddies or working with a partner during word work. We love working together with our friends! In Reading the students have continued their exploration of the’ magic e’ rule. We made sure to explore books in our library and found a lot of words. We noticed that their are other words with ‘magic e’ besides words that the ‘e’ made the ‘a’ vowel say its name. For example, we noticed that the vowels i... Read More
First grade news
Dear First grade families, This week was all about Kindness. Thank you for sharing with us how kindness has transferred into your home. Through reading books, art projects, and class discussions, we shared how we can be thoughtful with one another. Thank you to the Abel family for opening the doors of the Watermark factory and showing the class how to plate copper into nickel and gold. We loved seeing the factory. It was very cool to be sitting in a board room! In Reading this week we learned a lot of phonics rules! We learned that “have” is an... Read More
Kindness Week
Community Building This week we have been focusing on kindness- how we can spread kindness at home, in school, and the greater community. Second graders heard the story Each Kindness, by Jacqueline Woodson, a story about a girl named Maya who moves to a new school and the main character Chloe chooses to be unkind to her. Maya attempts many times throughout the story to befriend Chloe, but Chloe continues to choose to be unkind. As we discussed how we thought the story would end most students predicted “They will make up and become friends”. However, the story closes with... Read More
First grade news
Dear First Grade Parents, This week was full of observation and exploration. We really enjoyed going to the fire house and meeting the fire fighters. They taught us what to do if there is smoke and a fire and most of all, they made us feel safe and like we could always come to them for help. This week in first grade we talked about setting in story. For example, when we read “The Night Gardener” by Terry and Eric Fan. We talked about if the book took place in an urban or suburban environment. This week in phonics we... Read More
Week of Action: Tzedakkah, Card Writing, and Trip!
Yahadut: Tzedakkah (Charity) As part of the school’s Week of Action, we are introducing Tzedakkah into our classroom. On Tuesday we read the book “Joey and the Giant Box” about a child who organizes a food bank in his class. This reminded us of the collections our school is doing this week. We visited the boxes in the lobby to see what our school was collecting, and created designs for a class tzedakkah box that show different forms of tzedakkah. Today we decorated personal tzedakkah baggies for storing money. We brainstormed ways that we might earn money at home in... Read More
8th Grade in January–We are buuusy!
Hi 8th grade parents! Our students are in full-force preparing for their musical. We all can’t wait for you to see the beautiful sets, the wonderful music, and all the talented acting next Wednesday and Thursday! In Humanities class, students have been studying tirelessly about the American revolution. Because of all the play rehearsals, students have been learning this material mostly independently. Big shout out to all their hard work! For ELA, students have chosen their nonfiction independent reading book and I have honestly never seen more excitement and energy around an independent reading project. The students have chosen really... Read More
Our Week in Fifth Grade: 1-24-20
Advisory This week, the fifth graders had the hard conversation about the increasing threat of anti-semitism in our world. We talked about events that have occurred recently in New York and created a space for the students to share their thoughts, feelings, and concerns. The students had really beautiful reactions and shared some actions they could take to show that they are proud to be Jewish and to support the Jewish community. Some suggestions included not hiding their Judaism, saying something if they hear another kid make a mean comment about Jewish people, or call the police, erase (if possible),... Read More
First grade news
Dear First Grade Families, We loved seeing you at the tekes today. It was really special for the students to share what they have been learning about Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. In Reading this week, we continued reading books by Patricia Polacco. This week we read the book Mr. Lincoln’s Way, a book about how to treat one another and how our words can make people feel. In our guided reading groups, we have been working on writing complete sentences and zooming in and finding evidence from the text. In Math, we began a unit on shapes. We learned... Read More
MLK Tekes
Writing, Reading, and Social Studies We started the week with a little experiment: If we crack a brown egg and a white egg, will they look different on the inside? Many students predicted that the yolks might be a different color, or that one egg would be have more liquid. When we cracked the eggs and compared them, the “ooh!” and “ahh!” that erupted around the room made this an exciting moment. We realized the eggs looked so similar- both had a yellowish yolk, and both looked like raw eggs. Students quickly made the connection that although the eggs had... Read More
First Grade News
Dear First Grade Families, We hope that you had a lovely break. It has been great to be back for our first full week of school. We have enjoyed seeing friendships blossom with our new classroom communities. This week has been full of community building, getting back into the school routine and learning about Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. In Reading we learned sight words, those words we know by heart and in a snap. We spoke of the importance of studying a word in order to know it more deeply. For example, we studied words to see if they... Read More