Purim Tomorrow!

Hello 5 & 6 families!

Just a reminder for tomorrow’s Purim celebration: We ask students to not include weapons or masks as part of costumes. In addition, students should be wearing appropriate footwear.

We are so looking forward to an exciting day of celebration and fun!

Gev. Noorlander

Greek God Posters!

Hello 5 & 6 Families!

We have spent this week hard at work on our Greek God and Goddess posters! Our final work day is Monday, February 24th. The posters are due on Wednesday, the 26th. I am so impressed with the work all of the kids have done on this project, the work ethic I have seen from them is incredible! Several of the kids took their posters home today so that they can continue to work on them over the weekend, please remind them to bring them back on Monday! 🙂

Shabbat Shalom,

Gev. Noorlander

 

Greek Gods and Goddesses Project

Hello 5th and 6th grade families!

Today, we started a new project. Each student is researching a Greek God or Goddess, and making a poster about them! This week will be spent in the research phase. Rough drafts are due at the end of class on Friday, and students will have the opportunity to edit based on my comments next week after our long weekend.

The kids were really excited about getting this project going, and I love seeing how interested in this subject they are! They each have a rubric and calendar with due dates on it, should you have any questions.

As always, reach out if you have any questions or concerns. I am so excited to see the final products!

Gev. Noorlander

Chickens: The Finale

Hello All!

Well, we finally did it. Our chickens are done! They are dried, wrapped, and decorated. Today we discussed what we got out of this project, and the kids had great insight. Among my favorite takeaways were: teamwork, communication, and history of mummification!

This project was so fun, and I am blown away by the kids ability to dive in, build their own procedure, and execute it.

In our next class we will begin Ancient Greece, with research of Greek Gods and Goddesses!

I will be out of class on Thursday for a meeting, and Friday there will not be Social Studies due to our trip to Sunburst for snow tubing (a reminder to turn in your waivers!)

Gev. Noorlander

 

 

 

Wrapping Chickens, Updates

Hello 5th and 6th grade families!

Yesterday in social studies we began the last step in our chicken project: wrapping the chickens! This process involves making a glue and water mixture to dip gauze in, and then to wrap our chickens in. In the beginning of class we were on a bit of a learning curve, but by the end we were all going strong. The teamwork skills in this group are tremendous! After we finish wrapping the chickens, we will decorate them with hieroglyphics.

Next week Wednesday we have a field trip to the Art Museum which will take up our social studies time, so after class today we only have two more class periods in the semester! I have sent out information about grades on our most recent assessment, and as always if you have any questions or concerns please feel free to reach out.

Shabbat Shalom,

Gev. Noorlander

 

Updates and Assessment

Hello everyone!

I hope you are all having an amazing first week back from break.

Social Studies is back in the swing of things, and we even started something new! On Mondays, for as long as it serves us as a class, we will be doing mindfulness activities. The students and I worked on defining what mindfulness is, what our expectations for this time are, and what activities help make us feel calm and happy. Mindfulness will change some as we move through the year, but will likely be short meditations at the beginning of class. Mindfulness practices are so important for helping our kiddos ground themselves and keep in touch with how they feel, and can be incredibly important for adjusting stress levels. These are life long skills!

Tomorrow, we will be starting an assessment looking at research and summarization skills. This assessment will be a format which the students have worked with several times, asking to show their research process as well as summarize their work.

The students have been working on these skills through the entire first half of the year, and I am confident in their abilities! We will be working on this assessment on Thursday and Friday(January 9th and 10th. )

As always, if you have any questions or concerns please feel free to reach out.

 

Gev. Noorlander

Thank you so much!

I am so blown away by the gifts I received from the 5th and 6th grade families  today! You guys clearly know how much I love tacos and coffee. 🙂 Thank you so much.

The first half of this year has been amazing, and I can not wait to keep it going after break. More Chicken updates to come!

Have a safe, happy, wonderful break! See you when we get back!

Gev. Noorlander

Holy Moly!

Hello everyone!

Today we changed the chicken mix again, and wow! I am so impressed with the kids work. They barely needed any direction as they dove into switching the salt and baking soda mix out of their chickens. They are making great observations about how the chickens are responding, such as:

  • Altered skin color
  • drier salt (still wet and mushy, but not as much as our first two switches!)
  • size of chicken change
  • feel of chicken change

Seeing them  engage in this project has been truly amazing, and I love seeing their ownership over their work.

Next class we will start to dive more into some Jewish connections to Ancient Egypt- particularly in the burial process. Moving forward, we will be working on chickens on Mondays, and spending the rest of the week on other Ancient Egyptian material.

Happy Monday!

Gev. Noorlander

 

Things Are Getting Stinky!

Today in Social Studies, we revisited our chicken friends to switch out their salt and baking soda mix. Most of us discovered that the salt we had put in the chicken, was now a wet mess, from absorbing all of the moisture from the chicken. Everyone then had to get all of the new gooey salt mix out of the chicken, and put a dry mix in! This proved to not only be pretty gross, but pretty smelly. Luckily, the garbage bags we have been keeping the chickens in seem to have kept the smell at bay…for the most part.

Each of the kids has their own role in their group, which rotates. Today, our photographers snagged some pretty great, and silly photos from our group. (Some are below!)

The kids are really diving into the intricacies of this project, and it is so amazing to see them flourish in this work!

 

Chickens Have Begun!

Well everyone, we finally started! The chickens are currently bathing in a lot of salt and baking soda in our classroom. Things haven’t gotten too smelly….yet.

Everyone did an amazing job of following our procedure which we spent so much time researching and creating. Our steps today were to remove the chicken’s organs, clean the chicken with rubbing alcohol, and to stuff it with salt and baking soda. Then, we put the chickens in bags where we added even more salt and baking soda!

We had lots of excited reactions, and some very grossed out kiddos. It was a very exciting day in social studies! If you ask your kids about this, I am sure they will have lots to tell you. 🙂

Gev. Noorlander