What’s Happening in 5th- 5/7/21

Humanities

I want to start with a heartfelt ‘thank you’ to Shena and Milo for taking such good care of the fifth graders in my absence! Although I was out for 13 weeks, it feels like no time has passed and we are picking up right where we left off.

In ELA, we are working our way through the novel, Seedfolks. Seedfolks is about a community garden in a working-class neighborhood of Cleveland. Each chapter of the book is from the perspective of a different member of the community who shares their story and how they made their way to the garden. The book highlights the melting pot of the neighborhood and is a wonderful perspective of the many types of people who make up a community. This past week, we read a chapter about a family from Guatemala. One of the family members, Tio Juan, is from an indigenous tribe and doesn’t speak Spanish or English. Based on Tio Juan’s story, we explored endangered languages across the world and the efforts being made to preserve languages that will soon die out.

During Social Studies, we are continuing our study of Ancient Egypt. This past week, the students learned about the pharaohs and each student studied one “famous” pharaoh and presented their findings through posters and slideshows. We then moved into a study of the pyramids and will explore the Egyptian gods and afterlife.

Hebrew Heritage:

להורים שלום,

השבוע המשכנו לעבוד על היחידה ״פרויקט שורשים״, כרקע לכך למדנו על היישוב הישן, עלייה ראשונה ושנייה.  למדנו על מאפייני העולים, המניעים שלהם לעלייה והייחוד והתרומה של כל להתפתחות היישוב היהודי. התלמידים נחשפו לעולם המושגים חדש עליו נבחנו, כמו כן הכרנו דמויות מפתח של כל העלייה קראנו טקסטים קצרים הנוגעים בנושא וצפינו בסרטי תעודה.

סוף שבוע טוב,

אילנה

Judaics:

You may have seen your child running around the house gathering odd items, dressed up and even singing and dancing to old Israeli music. This is because we just took on the characters of the original members of Kibbutz Degania. We stayed in character as we learned about this first Kibbutz and Aliyot pre 1948. Students worked together and got a taste of socialism and what takes to create something together and stay motivated by a common dream. Their presentations were amazing and I look forward to continuing to study about the history of Israel with them next year. 

We are now back in Chumash continuing with the Joseph story. We are seeing that Joseph has changed a lot since we first met him on the text. We are exploring the questions “can people change” and “ can trust be rebuilt once it is broken”. Students are also reviewing grammar and roots that they learned over the year with fun games!

Shabbat shalom,

Laura 

Science

Last week in science we completed our viruses and vaccine unit. The students wrapped up this unit by making informational comics about the immune system. They were quite creative while showing their knowledge! If you haven’t discussed the vaccine with your student at home, now would be a great time to do so! They learned a lot of challenging information including the differences between 5 different types of vaccines- live, inactive, subunit, mRNA, and viral vector.

We have now embarked on our last unit, Magnets and Electricity. This will be a short unit as we are not in school for 3 of our scheduled class days. Time is flying fast!! The students are REALLY enjoying experimenting with magnets so far and are glad to be ending the year with some hands-on science again.

Math

The 5th graders have begun their unit on percentages. Scaffolding from our previous unit on ratios, we have learned that percentages are a ratio out of 100. Next, we will be finding percentages of a number given the part or whole. This will then lead into some real life situations including tax, tip, and discount — then into our final project where they will create their own business!