Weekly Blurb, November 13, 2009

Humanities
Of course, the real excitement in Humanities class has been getting ready for our trip to Shanghai. We put hours into preparation last week studying the arrival of Jews in Shanghai. We learned that Baghdadi businessmen were the first to arrive, followed by the Russians fleeing communism, followed by the European Jews, the largest group, escaping Nazi persecution.

Students had many good questions generated by the documentary we watched and articles we read, and we had some great class discussions. The sources became the basis of our first big research paper. In class, students captured data on a research organizer, and we took class time to learn about how to write good introductory paragraphs.

Besides Shanghai, however, there was other work to accomplish. In our Social Studies book, we’ve been studying the first colonies in America. We even watched the movie, Pocahontas, which tells the story about some of the conflicts between the colonists of Jamestown and the Native Americans. This movie also allowed us to make some great connections back to our previous class novel, Sign of the Beaver.

When we get back from Shanghai, it will be a great week to start studying the Pilgrims since it is the week leading up to the American holiday, Thanksgiving.

Math
Do you dabble in stocks? Maybe you should ask your fifth grader for advice or perhaps you can share the business section with them. Over the next twelve weeks, students will participate in a fantasy stock competition. I’ve run stock portfolio competitions with classes before, but never for this long. This weekly game challenges students to analyze companies and their earnings, calculate stock increases and decreases, and manage the ebb and flow of money. At the same time, the students will get a good lesson on how to use spreadsheets, chart data and create graphs with Excel. There will be some groundwork that will have to be laid down, but this should be an exciting project that the students will work on each Friday. It also happens to kick off our unit on statistics and data.

Science
What is the difference between the Morning Star and the Evening Star? You’d be correct if you said they were one and the same. Students learned about the differences between celestial bodies like planets and stars, and comets and meteors. We also found facts about the instrument that helps us gaze at these far away objects – the telescope.

Students were also close to performing a rain dance this week. We wanted to collect some falling rainwater and analyze it in class, but the weather didn’t cooperate with us. What are we looking for? Meteorite dust. It sits suspended in the air until a heavy rain falls. If it rains this weekend, don’t be surprised if you see your child standing out in it with a bucket trying to collect some dust from outer space.

Jewish Studies
from Mora Epstein
• Discussed the lives of the Shanghai Jews
• Learned parts of the prayers for our trip
• Used the IT Lab to research a d’var Torah
• Parashat Hashavua
• Shabbat Z’mirot

Hebrew for E.S.
from Arie Epstein
• Reading practice
• Work on the story, “Carmel’s Glasses”
• Correcting sentences
• Verbs in the past tense
• Oral discussion based on a poster