Week of January 6

Judaic Studies with Ariana
It’s been wonderful to see the students back in school.

The first week we made sure to play community building games and ice breakers to get better acquainted with our new groups.We have also returned to our Chumash studies. We continue to explore the intricate story of Yaakov and Esav. We learned four new pesukim and have been working with our Chavruta teammates in our workbooks and notebooks. Next week, we will begin working on our Social Action Project. We are planning a visit to an animal shelter that will take place on the Senesh Week of Action. Stay tuned for more exciting details about this amazing project

General Studies with Dawn
The new year began with fourth graders reflecting on goals that they had set at the beginning of the school year. Each student had set an academic goal, a social goal, and a behavioral goal. Fourth graders thought about whether or not they had met each goal and set new ones for 2020.  Connected to the goal setting was a discussion about MIndset.  We talked about the difference between a fixed mindset in which the person thinks they are a certain way and will never change and a growth mindset in which a person looks for ways to work on things that can be challenging, knowing that the brain is elastic and can change.

In math we have been focusing on division including division facts, division with remainders,division word problems, and dividing three digit numbers. We have also talked about how you can use multiplication to help with division. In reading students are finishing up their realistic fiction books with their reading groups. We will next be reading historical fiction books. Our next writing project will be an opinion piece on the Civil rights Movement.

In social studies we have begun a study of the Civil Rights Movement in preparation for the fourth grade recitation of the I Have A Dream Speech. You can join us at the Martin Luther King Tekes on January 17. We have been talking about segregation, the sit-ins, the Freedom Riders, the Civil Rights Act,voting rights, and much more.  Students listened to a speech which King talked about having to tell his young daughter Yolanda why she could not go to the local amusement park, Funtown, which was for whites only.  You can listen to the speech here.

We look forward to seeing many of you at the Tekes at 9:10 on Friday, January 17.