October 12: First Full Week!

Math 

With a new month comes a new unit and the 7th grade is moving on to Unit 2 of their math books; Real Numbers. If you’re curious, and/or don’t remember your high school math classes, imaginary numbers do exist but are not introduced until Algebra II. Until then, we’ll stick to real numbers and its subsets. These numbers make the whole world go round, whether we’re aware of them or not. No worries, it’s only natural to forget how much math is involved in our daily lives. When we cook or bake, make or spend money, travel distances, find out the temperature, or even tell the time, real numbers are positively there in the background working for us without truly making themselves known. Do you think that sounds irrational? Don’t be so negative!

Shana

Judaic Studies

The 7th graders have plunged into our next unit: the formation of community in the first 10 chapters of Sefer Bmidbar/the book of Numbers. Students discussed the census that is conducted at the beginning of the book — who is included and to what purpose, and who is left out. This led to an overarching theme for the year, which dovetails beautifully with the humanities curriculum: how does a community balance the needs of individuals with those of the group? To understand our own 7th grade community more deeply, the class conducted its own census, featuring questions such as: who has read all of the Harry Potter books? Who believes in love at first sight? Who has close friends of the opposite gender?

I look forward to exploring the other ways community is established in Sefer Bmidbar with your students over the next few weeks!

Shabbat shalom,

Jessica

Humanities 

In ELA, we began our study of Julius Caesar! It was an exciting scene 1 and 2 – Beware the ides of March!!! I love listening to students read Shakespeare for the first time. Greek and Latin roots this week include: incipere, nihil, negare, vacuus, aperire. In History, we are beginning to write an essay comparing secondary sources. How can we verify a source’s authorship and credibility?

Hebrew Heritage 

Science

These past two weeks we have started to apply the physics of simple machines into our long term STEAM project. The Rube Goldberg project is now in full swing. Students have form partnerships which have produced excellent blueprints. These blueprints demonstrate the function of the different parts of their Rube Goldberg machine. We are now ready to start collecting material and beginning the construction of their great ideas. The classroom is full of excitement and enjoy while everyone works together in this long term STEAM project. We are so excited to see what is physically created in the next few weeks.

Mike Noll and Samantha Butwin