First Grade News

Hello Families,

In the Hebrew classroom, we continue traveling through the state of Israel! We traveled all the way to the mountains of Jerusalem. We spoke and wrote sentences about what is so special about this city. As part of their stop in Jerusalem, each student made their own kotel (Western Wall) out of construction paper. They wrote notes, about their hopes and wishes, to put in their kotel. We look forward to sharing all their work with you at our Siddur Ceremony. We also spoke about Lag Ba’Omer. We learned that many years ago the Jewish people used bonfires to communicate with each other. We explored how every Hebrew letter is equal to a number. Lag Ba’Omer is equal to the number 33, that’s why we are celebrating it on the 33 day of the omer. Students also added up the letters in their Hebrew name. They found out that just because they had a lot of letters didn’t mean they got a large number!

In social studies we revisited maps. We have explored a wide variety of maps and practiced how to follow cardinal directions to locate symbols and places, learned new map vocabulary (such as scale), and planned and created maps of our own. First graders also became familiar with were they are located – specifically their borough, city, state, country, and continent. 

In reading, we have been paying attention to the main character’s relationships with other characters by asking, are they friends, siblings, neighbors,  enemies, etc? This helps us to understand more about the star of the story (main character). First graders also noticing the change in characters emotions using clues in the pictures and words. Just like actors, we also look for clues in punctuation so we can sound like the characters and bring them to life. Are they whispering, shouting, crying etc?  The class has enjoy the series Iris and Walter, Mr. Putter, and Poppleton, and we just jumped into reading Charlotte’s Web together. 

Check out our pics:

Shabbat Shalom,

Ilana and Liz