January 11, 2012

Dear Gefen Families,

This week in our study of Civil Rights we focused on the life of Ruby Bridges. We began by reading a story about her life and then we watched a movie about her story. (Throughout our Civil Rights unit we will be watching a few learning movies.) As we discussed the movie in detail, the students were asked to think about why her story is so important and what lessons it can teach us. We learned why Ruby was patient, courageous, hopeful and peaceful. We shared what we would have done had we been in Ruby's situation. And, finally, we watched a short Scholastic clip of an interview with Ruby conducted by a young student.

In math we began our unit on graphs. This week we focused on pictographs and bar graphs, Next, we will be looking at line graphs, marking coordinates and counting tallies.

We continue with our study of contractions. Flash cards were sent home to practice.

In writer's workshop we worked on "How to . . . . . ." writing. These were the topics:
Alyssa: how to brush your teeth
Talia: how to hoola hoop
Hana: how to ice skate
Maayan: how to play the piano
Aiden: how to play wall ball
Melanie: how to create a dress
Nate: how to play baseball
Justin: how to play tug-of-war with your dog
Amanda S.: how to make cookies
Amanda M.: how to ride a horse

Stop by and check out the bulletin board in our hallway to find out how to do all of these important things!

Shabbat Shalom,

Hamorah Caren