Pennies for Patients

Posted on by
Reply

A Message from Third & Fourth Grade: 

Third and Fourth grade are excited to announce that they have officially kicked off  their Pennies for Patients program. The program will run until Monday, November 8th, 2019. MJDS students will be coming home with their own collection box and a flyer that explains all of the exciting hero gear you can receive by collecting money in your box. This year, we are also encouraging students to set up an online page to receive donations, so that our school can make the biggest impact ever for the mission of LLS. Our goal is to raise $3,000! Each class is setting a goal to raise $300! When heroes work together, we can change cancer!

Why is this program important? Approximately every 3 minutes, someone in the U.S. is diagnosed with blood cancer. Leukemia is the number one most diagnosed form of childhood cancer. The money that we collect will help fund research. The donations will help fund researchers in 7 different countries!

Please fill up your fundraising box and bring it each week on Friday to add to the classroom collection box. To redeem the power ring and hero band, you should bring a signed coupon found on the parent letter along with your donation to school.

As a reminder, you can fundraise online, collect coins, cash and checks in your collection box!

Thank you for participating in Pennies for Patients!

 

Tashlich Friday — Walking to Klode Park

Posted on by
Reply
This Friday is our first of the new year and the last we celebrate together before Yom Kippur which means. . . it is time for our annual Tashlich service together.  
As of now the weather reports for Friday look cool, but dry. Assuming that is still the case on Friday, we will walk to Klode Park.  We’ll then sing and pray, have a short reflection activity by grade, and each student will have a chance to symbolically toss their mistakes from the past year (this year small stones deemed healthier for the wildlife than bread crumbs) into Lake Michigan for a fresh start in the new year. After our Tashlich service we’ll welcome Shabbat together at the playground and have a little down time before walking back to school.
Please check the weather reports and make sure your child is dressed appropriately to spend the morning outdoors, and closed toed walking shoes are required.  
If it is raining we will not walk to Klode. Instead we will have regularly scheduled Shabbat sing from 8:05-8:35 a.m., during which students will have some time for reflection and we’ll use dissolvable paper to symbolically “wash away” our mistakes from the past year without leaving the Beit Midrash.
If you’d like to know more about the Tashlich tradition, you can read about the history of the practice here. If you have any questions about our ceremony, please contact Rabbi Schaller, tschaller@mjds.org. 

Reading Response Homework

Posted on by
1

Today I introduced our thinking Journals to use at home for reading responses. Most weeks I will assign 3 reading responses to be due the following week.  This means that your child should be reading for at least 20 minutes, three times a week at home. In addition, they should be using their thinking journals to respond to what they have read.

We talked about the expectations for responses, put rubrics in our journals and looked at a few examples together. As we delve further into our fiction unit we will practice the different strategies to use when responding to a text.

Loader Loading...
EAD Logo Taking too long?

Reload Reload document
| Open Open in new tab

Download

At this point in fifth grade, I expect students to respond by using at least  one of our strategies. Next quarter I will expect them to use two and as each quarter progresses, the expectation will grow. This will allow them the time to practice the different strategies before 6th grade where they will be expected to use multiple strategies throughout the entire year.

When reading responses are assigned they will be written in assignment notebooks daily! 🙂 They have TWO responses due on Monday. 

 

How Reading Improves Your Mind And Body Infographic

Look for a Book Wisconsin- An Awesome Family Activity!

Posted on by
2

Over the long weekend I became aware of an amazingly fun activity for you & your families! Gev. Jill Voras (3rd grade teacher) started #lookforabookwi with a friend and their daughters- and it is so cool! After doing some quick research I realized that there are #lookforabook groups all over the world, but the idea was new to me! Way to be up with current trends Gev. Voras! 

Essentially you find a book that you’re willing to part with, stick it in baggie with a note explaining what it is (see below), hide the bag in a community spot and then use the Facebook Group Page and Instagram hashtag to leave clues for eager seekers/readers! What a fun way to promote literacy around the state! If you follow the hashtag and FB page you can also look for the hidden books! I was SO excited to participate that Sami, Andrew and I ventured out into the rain and hid a book today! 

I will be sharing the fun activity with your kiddos tomorrow and we may hide a book or two together! 

 

 

Community Service Reminder

Posted on by
Reply

Rabbi Schaller visited 5th grade this week to remind us about community service hours. The kids had many questions for her, and now have an understanding of the multiple opportunities for community service this quarter. 

If you need inspiration, there are many ideas listed in the packets you received via email after Family Orientation. 

As students complete hours, they should fill out the required form. All hours are due by November 11. 

If you have any questions, please contact Rabbi Schaller, tschaller@mjds.org

 

Teamwork Rubric

Posted on by
Reply

Today we introduced our ETC teamwork rubric. For each child, this will be a living and breathing document that is constantly referred back to. The hope is that students will add to it in an authentic way – as they catch themselves working toward one of the goals, or have a proud moment when they realize self growth – throughout the quarter.

In class we talked about the objectives for the quarter as well as how to use the rubric. We will never look at all of the goals at once, that would be way too overwhelming. Instead, the kids will choose one or two objectives to focus on at a time.

Ideally, this will be an authentic way for your child to monitor his/her progress throughout the quarter and become more self aware of areas of growth and goals as well as strengths.

Students will share their rubrics with you at student led conferences. They are more than welcome to share their progress with you at any other time as well! 

Loader Loading...
EAD Logo Taking too long?

Reload Reload document
| Open Open in new tab

Download

And… it happened… ETC 5/6

Posted on by
2

As you know, we’ve been working on team challenges in our ETC class. We have a lot of goals for this class, but our highest priority (for first quarter) is to learn how to work as a team. We’ve been waiting for the conflict to begin, and today it did– don’t worry, this is a good thing, we promise! 

The groups worked together on the Umbrella Challenge – can you keep a Duplo man dry for ten seconds by creating an umbrella using only the provided materials. The kids planned individually and then as groups. Today was the first challenge where students wholeheartedly disagreed on design. As adults, we know how tough this can be. You think you have an amazing idea, you bring it to your group and they shut you down. Imagine being 10 or 11 and trying to navigate these feelings. Not only as the person being shut down, but also as the message delivery person. How do you compromise without insulting someone else? How do you take feedback without being defensive? How do you make sure your voice is heard when others are taking charge? These are such important skills to develop NOW as they will be so important throughout all of life. 

We didn’t plan for this to happen, but we knew it would–  And we love it! On Friday we will tackle our next challenge with a new lens. One that is guided by a teamwork rubric- an opportunity to self assess how we are doing while working in groups. We can’t wait to share how it unfolds!

Word Work Wednesday 5th ELA

Posted on by
Reply

It’s Word Work Wednesday! Each week we will dedicate our Wednesday class session to developing our spelling, grammar and understanding of the English Language.

Today’s focus was on capitalization. Over the years, your children learned many different rules related to capitalization. As early as kindergarten, they learned that their name must begin with a capital letter, and so must the word “I” and the first word of a sentence. These are the “basics.” As they continued through elementary school, other rules were added to the mix, and they did their best to remember and use them. In today’s lesson, we reviewed the rules for capital letters and made a promise to one another to always try to apply those rules in any piece of writing we produce. We looked at a sample of writing that used correct capitalization, rather than incorrect, and noticed how often capital letters are used in writing. 

I shared with the class that there are so many rules, that even as an adult, and ELA teacher, I often have to look up the rules while I’m writing! For this reason, I’ve given them a cheat sheet to keep in their ELA binders to reference while writing.