Weeks 26 and 27: Monday, March 11th – Friday, March 22nd

Hebrew

ELA: Students finished reading “The Case for Reparations” by Ta-Nehisi Coates and articles responding to Coates.  They will complete their slavery unit by using evidence from a wide variety of sources to discuss reparations, oppression, how our history influences the present.  Students have also started their unit on the Holocaust and Trauma and will continue to their work by starting Elie Wiesel’s Night next week.

Social Studies: Students closely read The Constitution, learned the meaning of important governmental principles and specific clauses within it, and took a test on their understanding of its’ meaning and structure.  Next week, students will study the Bill of Rights.

Judaic Studies

8th graders took a break from Sefer Shoftim (the Book of Judges) to focus on Purim! They did an incredible job making a slide show to go along with our school Megillah reading and put a great amount of effort into creating a super fun and inventive Purim carnival. In addition, they visited the Jewish elderly on the Lower East Side through Project Ezra on Purim afternoon. Truly, they fulfilled the mitzvah of gladdening the hearts of others on Purim day — both within our community and beyond our walls.

Math 

8X is busy learning all about Quadratic Functions and their real-world applications. They’ve learned about how to calculate the vertex of a quadratic function, then about how it is used in the real-world to calculate things such as how to maximize profit by setting an item at an optimal price point. After they finish explorations of quadratic functions, they will learn about various aspects of Statistics before heading into the realm of Geometry. Speaking of Geometry, 8Y has been learning all about different types of geometric transformations within the past week, such as reflections and translations. They will also be learning about rotations and dilations before moving onto properties of angles and angle theorems.

Science 

Science continue their exploration of physics. Students this week explored the concept of acceleration.  Students continued to take notes on the keep terms and how the difference in velocities are related to acceleration. They conducted an experiment that used tubes and towels to see how acceleration is different when changing these experimental variables. We will continue with the exploration of acceleration and momentum in the coming weeks.