Photos of the Week

Here is where you can find the link to our photo album for this blog. There are pictures from the Beit Midrash, our Judaic Studies Event from 10/12, and Science with Sammi.

Science with Sammi

Over the last two weeks, the 4th grade scientists have continued to work on team challenges. Both challenges they have completed focused on sketching out a plan and continued our conversations on compromising and positive language. 

In one challenge, they worked with cups, sticks, blocks, and binder clips to build different structures that had one cube as the base, was tall, and had something sticking out in an impressive way. There was no “winner” of these challenges, which gave everyone a break from feeling competitive so they could just focus on fulling the requirements of a design challenge.

The other challenge was to build an aluminum foil boat that could hold as many pennies as possible. Students had 3 pieces of foil, each 12 inches in length, and 7 inches of duct tape for the build. After testing all of the initial designs, we reflected on what worked well and what didn’t work well. Students then had a chance to replan and rebuild with their group and WOW were the results impressive! Students really applied their observations and conservation to create boats with less seams, lighter weight, more balance, taller walls, and a large surface area to evenly distribute pennies. 

As you talk to your students at home about these challenges, be sure to ask about how they felt at the end of it. Sometimes they are very proud of their accomplishments and sometimes they are very frustrated that a well intended plan didn’t work out. It is important to remind them that engineering is HARD! It is also important to let them hear stories of your own mistakes/failures and how you later gained success through hard work and perseverance. This week I told them about how I spent 3.5 hours trying to engineer an easily replicable cardstock keyboard cover. I explained all the things that didn’t work, what I learned along the way, and how extremely proud I felt when I was done after working for so long on it. The design looked simple, but it was significant for them to hear the challenges that came up along the way. One class even gave me a round of applause 🙂

STEAM with Sammi

We finally got to have STEAM class! This class is on Wednesdays in their regular classrooms. We started the year by creating a list of rules that we should follow with our Chromebooks. We then reviewed the school’s chromebook contract which students took home to sign. If you have not sent back a contract yet, please send it back on Monday.

In our second class, we made keyboard covers for our Chromebooks. These covers are to be used when we are practicing typing in Typing Club so we can resist the temptation to look at our keyboards. For now, I am asking students not to practice Typing Club at home. I would like students to really get the practice with the keyboard covers first. In a few weeks,  I will send an email home with instructions on how to make a keyboard cover and information about practicing at home.

Music with Heidi

Math with Justin

Fourth Graders are finishing their exploration of place value while reviewing addition and subtraction with numbers up to one million. We will finish this unit by taking a look at place value word problems and how bar models can help us understand and work through these problems. Our next unit will be on multiplication and division where we will tackle the arithmetic with both the traditional algorithms as well as pictorial strategies like the “area model”. Last week students got their Chromebooks and started using Google Classroom, where all homework and weekly challenges will be posted. Thank you again for coming out to the math zoom last night. If you couldn’t make it, the recording is here. Unfortunately, it got started a little late, but all of the essential info is included in the Google Slides which you can see here. Let me know if you have any questions. Happy bar modeling!

Hebrew with Rimma

Hebrew with Rimma

In our Hebrew class students talked  about their school life, about their classes and their daily activities.

We watched a short video clip where students could hear a range of native Hebrew kids at their age talking about their school life in Israel.

While watching the video clip, children spotted  and discussed similarities and differences. For example, kids in Israel study 6 days per week. Students shared with others which subject they like the most at school. Students applied a new structure אני הכי אוהב/ת that they studied couple classes before when we talked about Tamar and her friend (Chaverim BeIvrit)- We expanded it to their favourite foods and days of the week. 

Students finished the week with a fun activity by creating their ideal school schedule with their favorite activities and classes.

Reminder: The vocabulary quiz 2 is on October 21st. The list and the Quizlet for practicing words is posted on Google classroom.

Humanities with Hilary

Dear 4th Grade families,

Phew — we have successfully had two full weeks of school. GO US! Everyone has been such a trooper with this transition. It might not have been easy. but the 4th grade sure made it look like it was!

Writing

We are in the revision stage of our realistic fiction writing. Students have been working on stories about rock climbing, roller coaster rides, brick throwers, animal talkers, the dread of moving, and more! Over the past two weeks, we have worked on:

• the story arc (and remembering to stick to it as we write)
• using various types of punctuation
• writing exciting and engaging leads
• how and when to make paragraphs
• including a solution to each problem, and ending the story with a solution to the biggest problem

We are now in the typing stage. Once we finish typing our story, it will make it easier to read and add revisions (or edits). The class is using checklists to make sure that they are on track.

Reading

We are kicking off our Book Club unit! Today, we learned about the jobs we could have (discussion director, key detail finder, connector, illustrator, word wonderer, travel agent).  We then tried out two jobs —  discussion director and travel agent — while reading some picture books.

Here is what we thought worked well in our partnerships:

• we had interesting discussions
• we had a mutual confusion about how someone can carry so many hats at once
• we were able to come up with a lot of different questions
• we had disagreements about the plot, but were able to figure it out as a partnership
• we each wrote our own questions that were the same as our partner!
• we worked together to come up with more questions
• we had different opinions about a character

Some great questions we came up with (as Discussion Director) were:

• Why do we make maps?
• Why did Strega Nona only make one type of pasta? Why not other types of food?
• Why is everything in two straight lines?
• Why would everyone want their appendix out?
• Why do all of the houses look the same on one page, but on another they look very different?
• What does her scar look like?
• Why would monkeys want the caps?

By the next blog, you will learn more about the books we are reading in our book club, and why they are significant.

Social Studies

Over the last two weeks, we started learning about European explorers, their interactions with the Native Nations they encountered, and the start of settlements that later turned into colonies across the Atlantic coast.

There are four explores we specifically look at — Juan Ponce de Leon, Hernando de Soto, Samuel de Champlain, and Rene-Robert de la Salle. The first two explored and claimed land for Spain. Their exploration was focused on the coast of the Gulf of Mexico, taking over Florida, Alabama, Mississippi, and Arkansas. This is part of the reason that the southern section of the United States used to be colonized by Spain, and has a large Spanish influence (especially thinking about California, New Mexico, Arizona, Texas, and Florida). The latter two explored and claimed land for France. Their exploration was focused on the Atlantic coast from Cape Cod up to Nova Scotia, New Brunswick and Prince Edward Islands, as well as the four eastern Great Lakes and the Mississippi River. This is part of the reason why this section of Canada and the land surrounding the Mississippi River were colonized by France, and has a large French influence (especially thinking about Quebec and New Orleans)

We then began a discussion about why people leave. The search for gold, glory and God was a major reason for why the Jamestown settlement began, giving England the glory of land and the ability to search for gold, like what Spain had “found” in Mexico. Religious freedoms were why the Pilgrims crossed the Atlantic, as well as why Jews found their way to New Amsterdam by 1654. Next week, we are going to be learning about the “creation” of the 13 colonies, and comparing/contrasting the Southern, Middle and Northern colonies. **We will also start talking about enslaved people — both from Africa and the indigenous people of America. These will be serious conversations, and I hope your students will be open to learning this aspect of American history.**

Shabbat shalom!
Hilary