Family Tree

The next set of pesukim are all names. Rather than covering the pesukim in class, the students will be making up family trees and answering some basic questions. The project is due Monday.

Here is a copy of the handout the students got today in class.

Family Tree Project



I -Make a Family Tree for שבט ראובן, שמעון and לוי based on פסוקים יד-כח in פרק ו

II- Based on the family trees answer the following questions:

מי היה הסבא של משה?__________________________

מה היתה השם של האשה של אהרון? __________________

של אהרון ?________________(brother-in-law)מי היה הגיס

מי היה הנכד של אהרון? __________________________

What is the relationship between יוכבד and עמרם ? _______

This project is Due Monday January 10, 2010

Wordle? What’s a Wordle?

Wordle is a program that gives a visual presentation of a text giving importance to the words used most often in the text. Below is an example of a wordle we did today for the beginning of parshat Va’ereh.








Based on this wordle the students were asked the following two questions:
1. What do you think the key words are?
2. What do you think is the main idea of these pesukim?

The main goal of this assignment was to have the students think and come up with their own answers. Before vacation I attended a webinar given by Chris Lehman a Principal of a very progressive school in New England,said that one of the most important questions we need to be asking our students today is, “what do you think?”

I hope you all had an enjoyable break and now we are all ready to learn.

Navi Presentations and Chumash Games

Here are some pictures from some of our Chumash games and Navi Presentations
Enjoy
Have an enjoyable Winter Break
Rabbi Greenblatt

Mazel Tov Mazel Tov!!

Today we finished Parashat Shemot. Tomorrow we will review the last Perek in class and we will have some time to play the games the students made.

In Navi the students are working Creative projects in class to review the Stories and Eglon and Ehud, as well as the story of Sisra and Yael. Some groups are making plays, while others are working on a Newscast and a comic strip.

Have a Great Day!!
Rabbi Greenblatt

A Daily Summary

After our very exciting day on Friday we got right back into the learning today. Today we discussed the "Pyramid of Power" which existed in Egypt, and we learned who was actually in charge of the slaves. It may surprise you. Ask your child for the answer.
In the past few days we have finished the stories of Ehud and Eglon, as well as Yael and Sisra in Navi. As a review the students will be working on creative projects about these stories in class.
Reminder: The” make up a game” project is due tomorrow

Students Become Teachers

Today the entire class had the opportunity to Skype with a fifth grade class in Stony Plain Alberta about Chanukah. I am connected to the Principal of the school in Stony Plain through my association with Connected Principals, an online community of administrators, and he arranged for this Skype session with one of his teachers. The teacher sent me questions in advance which I went over with the class and we divided up the class so that each student would answer at least one question.
Both classes had fun and learned a lot from the experience and my hope is that we could do it again with other areas of the curriculum.

What was really special to me was the way our students answered the questions and became the teachers. Mrs. Wittlin commented to me afterwards, "How often do our kids get a chance to be the experts1" I believe she hit the nail on the head. We are told one of the highest forms of learning is to be able to teach others and for many that doesn't happen until they are older but our fifth grade students today had the opportunity to take what they have learned about Chanukah and were able teach others.

They did a great Job.
Kol Hakavod Kitah Hay

Wishing everyone a good shabbos
Rabbi Greenblatt

Respecting a King even an Evil King

Today in Chumash we learned that according to Rashi Moshe used a word that meant that the Jews would get punished, but he really meant to say that Pharaoh would be punished. Why would did Moshe do that? Rashi explains that even to Pharaoh one had to show respect since he was the king
For H.W. I asked the students to come up with 5 other examples of hoe we show respect to Kings ( or Parents and Teachers)

Rabbi Greenblatt