Weeks 24 and 25: Monday, February 25th – Friday, March 8th

Hebrew

Dear parents,
This week we are studying a unit on memories. The students have been practicing using descriptive sentences in the past tense. The unit will culminate with a project in which students will interview each other on a historic character they chose to represent.

Have a nice weekend,
Andreea

Heritage

ELA: Students have finished their book club books on slavery. In the coming weeks, students will read multiple perspectives on the whether the descendants of slaves should receive reparations. They will discuss the issue in a socratic seminar at the end of the unit in their bookclub groups. They will also complete a creative writing assignment where they will transport one of the characters from their novel to the present and update their experience when it comes how the deal with oppression and show resilience.

Social Studies: Students have finished their study of the Revolutionary War and the major compromises reached during the Constitutional Convention. In the coming weeks, students will study the Constitution and the Bill of Rights.

Israel 

The 8th graders have been invited to participate in a respectful dialogue/debate about the settlement question and a one state vs. two state solution. Student pairs were given profiles representing the different sectors of Israeli society. After researching and analyzing a variety of sources (by sorting sources into fact and opinion) they will represent their characters’ opinions in respectful dialogue. Students will be graded on both the content knowledge and conduct they bring to the dialogue.

Phyllis and Andreea

Judaic Studies

We have begun a fantastic new story in Sefer Shoftim: the tale of Shimshon, the last of the judges. 8th graders translated and analyzed the first several verses of this story, paying attention to intertextuality (moments when the text is referring to other texts) and to the way Shimshon and his parents are characterized. Questions we discussed include:

• Will שמשון be a good שופט? Why or why not?
• Free will can be defined as “”the freedom to make choices that are not determined by God or by prior causes.” Using that definition, does שמשון have free will? Do you have free will? What, if anything, limits your free will?
• What is שמשון’s mission in life? What is your mission in life? What gives your life a sense of meaning and purpose?

Enjoy these photos of the 8th graders leading singing and dancing in the gym for Pajama Day today!

Math

The 8th grade has been learning about different types of statistical tables and graphs for the past two weeks. They learned about frequency tables, relative frequency tables, using class intervals, two-way tables, bar graphs, stacked bar graphs, and histograms. They used this knowledge to run an experiment with M&Ms.

An article online claimed that there is a science behind the color distribution in a bag of M&Ms, so the 8th grade sorted and counted M&Ms and compared the percentage breakdown of each color to the ones provided in the article. They recorded and discussed their observations and then we combined all the data to see if it would affect the accuracy of our experimental percentages in comparison to the theoretical percentages.

Science

Science has started our new unit of physics. Students will be exploring  different motion concepts. This week we explore the concept of velocity. Students took notes on the keep terms and how speed and velocity are different. Then the conducted a prepared experiment to explore how velocity changes under different experimental conditions. The following class they needed to form their own experiment to continue the exploration of velocity. This pattern of direct lesson instruction  and experimentation will continue weekly during our physic unit.