First Stop: Video News

Now that we have had a full week of school, science was back in full swing!  Our scientific week started out with the dissection of a seed.  During the dissection, we learned about the major seed parts; the plant food (cotyledon), seed coat, and baby plant (embryo) .

We continued exploring plants by planting seeds with our buddies that will grow in the fifth grade grow lab.

Then we had the chance to go to Blackstone Park and collect interesting nature specimens which later fueled much learning, discussion, and experimentation in class.  Thanks to Mara for coming along!

In Design Lab, we began our study on balance and motion by learning about weights, counterweights, and balance points.

We finished up our week with an awesome guest reader!

Last week we made our own food chains, and as a class made a food web. Some of the food chains were life in a swamp, ocean and mountain, and there were others also. In the food web we each picked an animal and learned what it ate and what ate it. Next we each said what our animals ate and what ate it. Then we connected yarn from one of us to another.If our animal ate theirs or if theirs ate ours. then we would drop the strings one by one as they got eaten or overpopulated and starved. This made me realize that if one thing dies out, other things do too.

The room was filled with Hebrew, serious learning and excitement in the past two weeks. Each student made a huge progress. I am happy to announce that the Shaliach (Israeli emissary), Gilor (pronounced Gil-Or) will join our class every Thursday.

In Lashon we are using stories as a jumping off point for our learning.  Ask your child about the story he or she read in class!

Regular group – We are reading ‘תפילה של ילד’ (Boy’s Prayer.) We learned three new verbs from the story: יושב (sit) לומד (learn) הולך (go/walk). We practiced building full sentences using these verbs in present tense to fit them to the person who does the action such as he, she, they, boys and girls.

Advanced group – We read stories about new beginnings of two girls. In class and at home we practiced the new vocabulary and talked about the stories. 

We have started our new workbook חברים בעברית Chaverim B’Ivrit. The group of verbs we are studying can appear in two ways in a sentence like in English 1) I like to watch movies 2) I watch the movie at night. We learned four new verbs and practiced more verbs that fit that group.

דוברי עברית Native Hebrew speakers: we have started our workbook מילה טובה. We are learning about verbs and what verbs can tell us.

Homework routine

I want to make it clear that All HW is a reinforcement of what we do in class. We started our HW routine this week. Here it is:

• HW given on Monday is due Wednesday – worksheet/ workbook/ writing assignment/ etc.

• Thursday’s HW is due Friday – reading practice. I will send an email on Wednesday evening to the students’ email addresses.

• Monday due following Monday – independent reading, which will start after Simchat Torah.  I’ll provide more info when we get there.

• Friday – quiz, which will start after Simchat Torah

שנה טובה וחתימה טובה Shanah Tova and chatima tovah. Rotem

The second and third graders enjoyed listening to the book, The Shofar That Lost Its Voice, a story about a boy named Avi who was planning to blow the shofar on Rosh Hashana and for some unknown reason the shofar would not sound.     It turns out that the shofar was reluctant to let its sound be heard in our world since there are so many sounds here that are unkind. The students thoughtfully considered which sounds the shofar would be satisfied with in our world and which ones we should work hard to get rid of in order to improve our world.

In our learning about Yom Kippur, we focused on the custom of wearing white on the holiday as a way to get the image of a fresh new start for the new year. The second graders enjoyed our white clothing project while practicing some basic Hebrew vocabulary and conjugation of the verb wear!

First Stop: Video News

Quick note to parents: I send home school work to students throughout the week with hopes that you will look at it, learn about what your child is working on in class, and decide what is important enough to keep and what can be recycled.  It is my hope that through this work and through the classroom blog you get a window into what we are learning that week.

We had a busy week, as you can tell from our slightly hectic video news.  We are taking advantage of the few full weeks we have in October.

First I want to say thank you to all of the parents who were able to join us at Open School Night.  It was great to see familiar faces and welcome new ones.

We had a full week of learning in second grade filled with reading, writing and math.  In math, we are learning how to add large numbers vertically with and without regrouping.  Students got a chance to practice their math skills during our math center time with iPads, math games, and written practice.

We also spent some time in the garden during science time.  We observed, measured, and diagrammed our pea plants.  Additionally, after learning the meaning of the word “germinate”, we used a high-tech microscope to look at a the process of germination in a pea seed.  

In Design Lab, we used our creativity and teamwork to build a classroom sukkah!

This week in Writer’s Workshop, we began working on our first long term writing project.  Students will be writing, editing, and publishing a “Small Moment Story” which is a true story about an important moment in their lives.

We look forward to another half week of school!