The Rashi School | Classroom Blog

Dear Fifth Grade Parents, While this week ended much differently than we all probably anticipated, we wanted to take a moment to recognize many successes from this week. Your children worked extremely hard finishing, or coming very close to finishing, their Science Fair boards. They have been working literally for months on these projects and have much to be proud of. While we are working to figure out how they will share what they've learned from this experience, the process they've gone through is equally, if not more important, than the final product. That said, we will be in touch when we have a clearer idea of what this year's Science Fair will look like. Students also learned about ancient Greek art and architecture, started their learning about Alexander the Great, and continued their study of long division. We also had a fantastic discussion of our weekly precept. While Stephanie Rotsky has been leading these discussions this year, with Stephanie's guid...

It was wonderful to welcome Mrs. Blair back to 5th grade! Shortly after she came back, one of our two butterflies, Tater, hatched. We are still waiting for Tot to appear. Mrs. Blair brought the chrysalises into our classroom in the fall, so we think they were waiting for her before hatching! Also, we have been studying daily life in ancient Greece, and on Thursday and Friday we learned about Greek democracy. In these photos, students were reading quotes about democracy, responding to them by commenting and asking questions.

After learning about animal welfare, climate change, and mental health organizations during last week's Tamchui teaching week, students donated their chips this week and spent time reflecting on the process. 5th graders spent 15 minutes each day in the Sukkat Shalom commenting on a variety of questions related to the organizations and the larger topics we've been learning about. Earlier this week we went to Newbridge to create candlesticks with the residents there. Our students took this partnering very seriously and created beautiful candlesticks. Also this week, students continued testing for their Science Fair projects, we concluded our unit on Ancient Egypt and began our study of Ancient Greece, and students investigated decimals in math. CALENDAR REMINDER The Purim play featuring the fifth grade is Friday, March 6th at 2:10pm. Please join us in the auditorium!

As we wrap up our study of ancient Egypt, students took part in an innovations game on Friday. Each group of three students focused on a specific innovation or invention from Egypt and then designed a piece of a giant game board. Each group asked questions to their classmates to quiz them on the new information they were teaching. The game was a success as lots of new information was learned and everyone had a fun time! Innovations included pyramids, papyrus, math, shaduf, hieroglyphs, and calendar.

Students are eagerly engaged in their Science Fair projects as we've moved into the testing phase. There are a variety of projects, all with interesting questions to be investigated. Each pair of students has conducted research, asked a question, developed a hypothesis, and written their detailed procedure. Many students are doing projects related to planting seeds while others are focusing on testing the nutritional value of certain foods. This is active learning at its best!

The fifth grade had a special end to our week with a trip to Newbridge to celebrate Shabbat with residents there. Here are some questions you might want to ask your child to get a sense of what we've been studying at school this week. Ask me about... 1. What are some distinctive features of ancient Egyptian art and architecture? 2. What is the short story you're writing about in Language Arts? 3. Why was the Nile River so important to the ancient Egyptian civilization? 4. While researching food insecurity, what have you learned to be potential solutions to this real world problem? 5. Who is Percy Jackson, and what has he been up to so far in  The Lightning Thief ?

We had an exciting end to December with a grade-wide Design Day. Students were tasked with building levees and trying to prevent water from flowing past the levee. We related our project to the flooding of the Tigris and Euphrates Rivers from our study of Mesopotamia. Last week we welcomed visiting author Mark Peter Hughes to Rashi. He talked about the importance of creating likable characters and his big message to the students was, "show, don't tell." Our students had a chance to do some writing with Hughes, and in the new year will get the chance to write their own short story.

Fifth Grade: Words to Live By - Precept #2 by Stephanie Rotsky "You are allowed to be both a masterpiece  and a work in progress simultaneously." I am thrilled that I will be looking at a Weekly Precept with your students all year long! Inspired by their reading of the book Wonder by R.J Palacio, fifth graders will be introduced to a weekly precept  in the same way that Auggie was introduced to weekly precepts by his teacher, Mr. Browne.  Every Monday students are introduced to the new precept by their teachers and throughout the week they have an opportunity to comment on it or respond to another classmate's comment.  On Thursday afternoon we gather on the rug, share our comments and go deeper into what the precept might mean for us. This year fifth graders will be introduced to precepts written by well-known writers, philosophers, teachers and children. Additionally, we will draw from rich Jewish wisdom and texts. Mr. Browne...

One of the most important things we can do is keep our students curious and get them out of their seats as much as possible. Students continued learning this week about perspective taking and empathy. This photo is from an activity where students journal wrote about a character of their choice from Wonder, and then acted out that character while a classmate interviewed them. This week, we also went outside to the woods for part of a Prehistory lesson to discuss what it was like thousands of years ago, and what they needed to survive.

We had many more firsts in our second week of fifth grade. We had a wonderful session with our Shinshinim from Israel. The students loved meeting Maya and Yahav and had lots of fun playing games and learning about Israel and Rashi's new Shinshinim. This week also brought the beginning of our first math unit which covers cross number puzzles, input-output machines, and the beginnings of algebra. Stephanie Rotsky visited our room on Thursday for the first of what will become a weekly discussion about a precept of the week. Later in the week, our study of Prehistory began as the students learned that the introduction of written language was the main difference between Prehistory and History. Lastly, you should ask your child what bananas have to do with our science curriculum. Have a wonderful weekend!

Welcome back to Rashi! We've had a wonderful start to the new school year in Room 227. Your children have been kind, polite, and eager to learn. The photos below are from two assignments. The first is a "getting to know you" assignment where students were asked to share what it's like to be in their shoes. The other photos are from today's first science lesson where we asked students to draw a potato. We taught them how to correctly make a detailed scientific drawing. We also had our first Wonder  lesson where we talked about the plot of the story, different perspectives, and empathy. Additionally, your child wrote hopes and dreams for the year and together we came up with a set of class rules to help them reach those goals.

In Science and Social Studies this week, students "trekked around the world" as we dug deeper into our current units. While learning about biomes, each student researched a biome from somewhere in the world, and created a Google Slides presentation which included a focus on a plant in that biome, and how it adapts to survive. We had a gallery walk this week with students looking at the other students' presentations. We also had a fascinating Skype conversation with Fumiko Ishioka. We read about her while reading Hana's Suitcase in our Holocaust Unit . It was 8:30am in Massachusetts and 9:30pm in Japan while we Skyped. Students asked thoughtful questions and it was great to hear from Fumiko about her experience discovering everything she could about Hana Brady, and then teaching the world Hana's story. IMPORTANT DATES FOR THE WEEK AHEAD: Tuesday : Math review and assessment Wednesday : Lit Circle reading/completed job due for Lit Circle 1 Your child...

If your child hasn't told you about the book we recently read, Hana's Suitcase , please ask them about it. It's part of our Holocaust curriculum and it is an extremely moving story about a girl who grew up in Czechoslovakia during World War II, and an amazing woman from Japan who, decades later, worked tirelessly to uncover that story. Today, students presented their final projects related to the book.  The woman from Japan is named Fumiko Ishioka. We shared with the class earlier this week that we will be speaking with Fumiko, over Skype, on Tuesday, April 30th at 8:00am. We are very lucky to have this opportunity. We need to start right at 8:00am because that's 9:00pm in Japan. Please have your child arrive at school on time as we will be opening our door at 7:50am and getting both classes settled before our Skype session.

As we continued our study of ancient Greece this week, students learned about the origins of democracy, art and architecture, and the two major city-states, Athens and Sparta. While learning about Athens and Sparta, each child was assigned a city-state and had to argue that it was the more ideal place to live. Students conducted research, planned their arguments, and then respectfully debated.

The final project in our Ancient Egypt unit was about innovations from Egypt. Students were put into small groups and assigned one innovation. Their task was to design a game board piece that would fit into a larger game board. Students creatively came up with different ways to play their game, which they then taught to the class. Each group was responsible for teaching about their innovation to the rest of the class. Topics included Boats, Mathematics, Hieroglyphics, Papyrus, Shaduf, and Calendar.

It was a busy week in the fifth grade wing as our students started conducting their science fair experiments. There is a wide variety of topics and experiments and the fifth graders are excited and eager to do their testing. Yesterday, our students took part in an assembly to honor Martin Luther King, Jr. with the reading of a poem about Dr. King.

Because Rashi places such value in Tikkun Olam, I decided to share my passion for dog rescue with the class this week. For several years, I have been volunteering with All Sato Rescue, a Puerto Rican dog rescue organization. The nonprofit rescues abandoned, abused and neglected stray dogs all over Puerto Rico. Students learned about the problem of why there are so many strays, and what solutions are being implemented to try to address the crisis which has gotten worse since Hurricane Maria. The class decided it wanted to donate tzedakah to the organization, and I shared with them that as a way to say thank you, All Sato Rescue will name new rescues after each student. Here are three photos I shared with the class today showing puppies that were rescued in the past few days. In case your child asks, the website is: www.allsatorescue.org.