March 6, 2020

Humanities

In ELA, we’ve been continuing to read and analyze short stories in a variety of genres. I have loved using classic texts like “The Tell-Tale Heart” and “The Lottery” to expand students’ concepts of short stories. Their freewrites based on stories like “Seventh Grade” by Gary Soto and “Amigo Brothers” by Piri Thomas were thoughtful and funny, incorporating dialogue and conflict. Students will be writing their own short stories over the next week and a half. In social studies, we are beginning to examine both the early Middle Ages, as well as elements of the Facing History curriculum. Facing History asks students to use the lessons of history to stand up to bigotry and hate. The initial lessons ask students to examine the components of identity and how identity is impacted by a variety of factors.

Math

The 7th grade is in the midst of learning all about percentages. They’ve learned how to convert decimals and fractions to percentages and back, how to express quantities as a percentage of one another, how to calculate parts or totals when given a percentage and values, and percentage increases and decreases. In the coming week, they will be learning about discounts and sales tax which is especially useful in everyday life. After the Percentage unit, they will be going back to more abstract Algebra by learning about Linear Inequalities.

Science 

Students in science have been exploring water. They have been conducting activities to explore how the Earth’s water is distributed on the planet. They realize how fresh water is overall a small percentage of the global water supply. They continued exploring water by discovering the properties of water in a series of rotation activities. Next the conducted a realistic water quality experiment, using testing supplies in order to discover which of four water samples is safe to drink. In the coming weeks we will continue exploring water and how weather functions on earth.

Hebrew J

After February break, during the Hebrew class the students reviewed and enriched their vocabulary and grammar rules in Hebrew on the topic “ Food.” We described Israeli cuisine and discussed the question “Is there Israeli food?” and food quality in restaurants. The students exchanged recipes of popular Israeli food and  presentation them in class. We learned together new words and expressions related to the topic. Moreover, we described vegetarians and non-vegetarians and learned to express feelings and opinions about vegetarianism. 

We played group word games according to instructions. While the games the students learned to use nominal sentences in the present tense in a fluent and natural way. 

Hebrew K 

We started the third part of our book and our new topic is “Colors and shapes.” This is a new topic with different types of texts : article, song, folk story and conversation. The students learned to use nominal sentences in the present tense in a fluent and natural way and inflect names of colors ( and some other words that follow the same pattern).

They made up theirs stories according to the text ״האישהירוק״ and performed them in the class. In addition, we solved simple math geometry problems in Hebrew. 

In class we discussed the variety of shapes and colors in our world in analogy to multiculturalism in society.