November 1st — Our first full week in a LONG time!

General Studies with Hilary

Dear Third Grade Families,

In Social Studies, we started learning about the Lenni Lenape, which is the Native American tribe that lived in New York City back in 1600. We started by looking at a map of Manhattan from the 2000s, and comparing it to a map of what Eric Sanderson (a landscape ecologist) — through research — believed Mannahatta (land of many hills)  looked like in 1600.  

Students noticed that the Hudson River looked wider back then. Some wondered if the water level had dropped and maybe that’s why the land is now bigger/wider. Another observation is that we have a LOT more buildings now, compared to back then when space was green, covered by forests and filled with over 500 hills. We then discussed the names of the three sub-tribes to the Lenape: Munsee (who are represented by the wolf); Unlachto (who are represented by the turkey); and Unami (who are represented by the turtle).

This week, students were introduced to reading groups, which we call Book Clubs. The five books that Third Graders are reading are some of my personal favorites, and I’m very excited to share them with the class! Students will mainly be working on their comprehension skills during book clubs, and finding ways to explain their thinking and finding text-based evidence.

In Writing, as you may know, we finished our first writing unit! Third graders have been working very hard to create descriptive personal narrative stories. All this week, we worked tirelessly on writing out our final copy for Thursday’s share with the fourth grade class. We thought it would be great for our class to hear from recent experts about the writing process, and how they implement the skills in older grades. Just the ability and chance to write was a BIG crowd pleaser among the Third Graders.These kids deserve a round of applause for trying new techniques, such as an attention-grabbing introduction/conclusion, using dialogue, and including descriptive language. You can now find their writing up on our bulletin board!

Activities you can do with your student:

• Look at the map of Mannahatta (from 1600) compared to Manhattan today → what differences do you see?
• • • • Click here for a link from the Welikia Project, which shows modern day NYC and provides information for what used to be there

• Look at the cover of a book and predict what it might be about based on the title and the cover illustration.
• Try to add items from a receipt, such as a restaurant receipt or grocery list, to practice addition stacking

Dates to know in November:

• Conferences:
  • Thursday, November 7 — 4:00-6:30
  • Monday, November 11 — 8:00-6:30
• Early Dismissal Begins: Starting NEXT FRIDAY, Friday, November 8, school ends at 1:30
• First Field Trip!: Tuesday, November 11 — 9am-1:30pm
• No School: Thursday, November 28; Friday, November 29 (Thanksgiving weekend)
• 3rd Grade Publishing Party: Wednesday, December 4
  • 8:15-9:00 → Parents’ Coffee Chat in the Library
  • 9:00-9:45 → 3rd Grade Celebration in the Gym

I look forward to seeing everyone for conferences! Shabbat Shalom!

Best,

Hilary

Hebrew with Rimma and Tomer

In our Hebrew class we studied the song “Walk to Caesarea״. This song is a prayer asking God to preserve the precious things in our lives, such as sand and the sea, the rustle of the water, the lightning in the sky and the prayer of a man. Inspired by Hannah Senesh’s poem we came up with our own important things that we wish will never end.

Here are a few lines from our poem

אלי, אלי שלא יגמר לעולם

,אושר ובריאות, אהבה וחברות

.עצים ומים, גשם ושמיים

אלי, אלי שלא יגמר לעולם

,חופש, כיף ומשחקים

.גם שירים וריקודים

3^rd grade also started to read the story/song חברים בכל מיני צבעים

We discussed a broad spectrum of friends, who come from different background and have different looks and different ideas.

Judaic studies with Ariana