Weekly Update

HUMANITIES
Jamestown, Plymouth and Louisiana were all early colonies in America that we’ve been studying over the past couple of weeks. Students learned about why settlers were motivated to move from their homelands, as well as the hardships they faced once they arrived in their new settlements. We read literature that brought one of these early villages alive, and met the people who were vital in providing the goods and services needed for these early neighborhoods to thrive. Instead of a test, students are now working on putting together an advertisement for one of these colonies. They will tout the location, the cultural, political and the economic advantages of the colony. This is a great way for students to show what they know by using analysis, images and creative writing.

The bigger news this week, though, is the scrapbooks. Students turned in beautiful products that I am sure they will want to save for years to come. During Friday’s class, Mrs. Goldman Brown and Mr. Epstein joined us as each student presented one page from their scrapbook, before showing off their whole project. Great job, everyone! You should be proud!
SCIENCE
Did you know that Jupiter nearly has as many moons as Saturn? Or that Venus has clouds made of sulfuric acid? Students have been looking at each of the planets in depth this week. We made a chart to compare the number of moons, the atmosphere and temperature of each planet, as well as the number of years it takes for the planet to make one revolution around the sun. Unfortunately, none of us would make it “one year” on Neptune. It takes 164.79 years for it to revolve once around the sun!

MATH
We’ve continued to work with graphs this week, strengthening our skills with mean, median and mode. Students were put into challenge groups with a limited number of “question cards,” forcing them to rely on each other, rather than the teacher, to find the answers. The experiment worked well, and most groups even surprised themselves when they teamed together to check one another’s work.
Work also continued on our stock competition. The teams were disappointed to find that most stock prices went down this week, probably on news of a weak start to the holiday shopping season last week in the states. Students created charts in Excel to track their progress, even using formulas to take away the “hard math” and minimize mistakes. Team CASH – Rubin, Ariella and Nini – took the smallest hit this week, only losing $43.99. However, Barack, Joanna and Linnea had the largest loss, down $401.85. Better luck next week, teams!

JEWISH STUDIES FOR ES
From Mora Epstein

• Phonetic reading practice
• Learned about the mission of Moshe and his conversation with Ha-shem
• Worked on our pesukim by heart.
• Vocabulary quiz
• Parashat Hashavua

Thank you to all the parents who are taking the time to learn the Daf with their child.
Next week we will begin preparing for Chanuka. Shabbat Shalom