Back To School Night

I really enjoyed meeting those of you who came to Back to School Night. I feel so positive about the year ahead. I will do everything I can to give your child a happy and productive year. The evening was so filled with lots of information that I forgot to talk about birthday parties. Please try to invite all the children of your child’s gender or, all the children in the class. By 5th Grade, social status becomes a serious issue. It is very hurtful to any child to be left out of a birthday party. We are a small school and everybody knows what is going on. It is hard to keep birthday parties a secret and the impact of leaving a few kids out effects the dynamics of the classroom. We have only seven boys and nine girls in our class. If your child is a girl, for instance, and you invite 6 girls, for example, you are leaving out two girls. The hurt and pain to those two girls will be great. Including all the girls, in this case, will teach your own daughter the value of compassion and inclusiveness. 

We need some volunteers. Would anyone be willing to do the Scholastic book orders for our class? Nobody signed up to volunteer for our Thanksgiving cooking activity and for the day of our Thanksgiving meal. The cooking will take plave on November 19, 8:30 to 11:30, and we also need help for the next day, November 20, 10:30 to 12:30. It’s a lovely opportunity to be with the children and enjoy this fun time.

These last few days of school our children have been making oral presentations about the invention they chose as one of the most important in the world. They have had to explain why the invention they chose has been so important, as well as describe the invention and gives it’s inventor and date of origin. Then they place their information card on a graph which has been divided up into seven categories. They must decide under which category the invention should be listed. Some inventions are hard to limit to one category. For instance, Is the light bulb under “convenience” or under “tool”? What about the computer? It could be under “communication,” “tools,”  “health and safety,” etc.  All this led to lively and thoughtful discussions about the role technology plays in our lives. Some of the more unusual invention choices students made were: antibiotics, written laguage, steam engine and roller skates.

In writing, students took red pencils and “proof read” and edited their own stories that they wrote last week. Much discussion and instruction arose concerning when to make a new paragraph. What is a paragraph? How do you know when to start one? It’s not easy for them to “get it,” yet. But we will be revisiting this process over and over again this year.

In math, we learned and reviewed rounding numbers to the nearest 10,  100,  1000, etc. in order to estimate the answer to a problem. Estimation and place value are foundation blocks for mathematical understanding.

On Friday afternoon, our class lit the Shabbat candles and made the brachot and the Kiddush in front of the whole school assembly. It was lovely! Thank you for letting me work with your wonderful children.