Hi 5th Grade,
Welcome to the first day of remote learning at Yachad! This is a time of uncertainty for all of us, but I hope you are all staying safe and healthy amid the chaos. The Yachad team is here for you and we hope this community can support each other even from a distance.
This week, parents in each class who work as lawyers were generous enough to join us in class to teach the 5th graders about the different roles in a trial and what happens in court. The students were very engaged in these discussions and asked great questions.
This week in 5th grade, we’ve begun a deeper analysis of the story of Jacob and Esau, looking at which characters committed wrongdoings throughout. Students have been asking great questions as they realize there can be many sides of a story, and the truth is not always so clear cut. Ask your child: Who do you think is to blame for the outcome of this story?
Next week, students will hear from some guest speaker-parents who work as lawyers, about what it’s like to be part of a trial. They’ll learn more about the different roles in a trial as we work our way toward assigning roles in our own mock trial.
Happy 2020! We began our new year at Yachad by reviewing our classroom Brit (covenant) and sharing the resolutions and blessings we want to bring into the new year with us. We spoke about how we set goals for ourselves during Rosh Hashanah, and now we get a chance during the secular new year to check in on those goals and re-focus ourselves. Ask your child: What blessings do you want to bring into 2020?
In 5th grade, we’ve been determining the important qualities good leaders should have through art, discussion and debate.
We’ve begun our second main unit of the year, learning about leadership and connecting the mitzvot we’ve learned about to the values we see in our biblical leaders.
This week students finished working on their Mitzvah Village projects to wrap up our unit on Mitzvot.
This week the 5th graders started building their mitzvah villages out of cardboard and recycled materials.
We’ve spent the first month of 5th grade Yachad learning about Mitzvot(commandments). We’ve talked about what they are, which ones are important to each of us, and how they relate to the High Holidays. Now, it’s time to see where they show up in our world.
This week we continued to talk about the mitzvot associated with the high holy days.
This week in 5th grade, we spent some time reflecting on our year through the lense of Mitzvot(commandments). Students thought about some of the mitzvot they’ve done really well this past year, and they chose a which mitzvot they want to focus on in the new year. Some popular choices for the new year included “Keeping Peace in the Home(Shalom Bayit)” and “Help Repair the World(Tikkun Olam).” We encourage you to ask your students which mitzvot they have chosen to work on in the new year.
In this section you will find info on:
9/30-10/1 Closed for Rosh Hashanah
10/8-10/9 Closed for Yom Kippur
10/14 Closed for Sukkot I and Indigneous Peoples’ Day/Columbus Day
We are excited for several services for Yachad students and families and activities on Monday Sept 30!
Below is info about Rosh Hashanah services. Following the K-2 and 3-6 grade services, we will have snacks, stories, crafts, and a song session in the rotunda!
Stay tuned for info on Yom Kippur services and programming!
K-2 Family Service, 9:30
Led by Rabbi Epstein, Director of Yachad and Family Engagement Tehilah Eisenstadt, and Songleader Debbie Brukman, these services offer interactive and music-based activities, prayers, and stories for children in grades K-2 and their parents.
Grades 3-6 Family Service, 10:00
Led by Rabbi Epstein, these services are designed for children in grades 3-6 and meet the spiritual needs of parents and youth alike.
Rosh Hashanah Inclusive Youth Experience, 3:00
Free & Open to the Public
Stories, singing, apples & honey
Designed for neurodiverse young people: no loud noises, soft lighting, fidgets and noise cancelling headphones available.
Please help welcome fellow families in the Yachad and ECC programs at our Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur services by volunteering to usher at our Family and Tots services. Parents, please sign up and your older children can help out too! Click here to Register Now!
We are thrilled to open registration for our 4th Annual Yachad Retreat for 4th – 7th Grade, Friday, October 25 – Sunday, October 27, 2019! On this student only weekend, 4th-7th graders will have the chance to make new friends, strengthen existing friendships, celebrate Shabbat at URJ Eisner Camp, and build community through fun and exciting activities. There will even be special opportunities for the 7th grade students to lead the group and make this weekend their own.
Registration includes round trip bus transportation from CBE, all meals and linens. The bus will leave from CBE on Friday at 3:30 pm and return around 2:00pm on Sunday.
Once registration is under way, watch your inbox for event specific information like a packing list and other important updates. We are happy to write an excused absence for a religious event if necessary to facilitate arriving to the bus by 3:30. Please contact Haley Breskin at hbreskin@cbebk.org with all questions regarding the retreat.
Our first big unit in 5th grade is all about Mitzvot(commandments). We introduced the topic this week with some lively discussions and debates. We posed the question of whether humans are naturally good or bad. A debate on this led students to form opinions on whether we need mitzvot to guide us. We talked about whether or not we believe people had a moral compass guiding them to know right from wrong even before they received the commandments from God. I encourage you to ask your children what their thoughts were on these topics and continue this discussion at home.
We are also starting to work in our small leveled Hebrew groups this week. Most students are using a program called Let’s Learn Hebrew Side by Side. This uses online lessons to teach/review one letter at a time and build reading skills as the year goes on. Students will be going through the lessons in their small groups with a teacher one day a week and doing hands-on activities and games the other day of the week to reinforce the letters and vowels that were learned. The great thing about this program is that if a student misses a class, they can log in at home and do the lesson on their own so they can be caught up to where their group is when they return. This is really important since consistency is key when learning a new language. More updates on this and login info to come soon!
Students who already have experience reading Hebrew will also be working in small groups with teachers and using some Hebrew storybooks to practice their decoding skills, build a bank of sight works and learn new vocabulary.
We’re so glad to be back for another fun year of learning and building community together at Yachad! In our first week of 5th grade, we’ve been getting to know each other and our new schedule though games and illustrations.
We had a great time celebrating all we’ve accomplished throughout the year. We played jeopardy and shared our proudest moments from the year. We hope you all have a wonderful summer and we can’t wait to see you in 6th grade!
This week we retold the Passover story and focused on the heroes and leaders in each section of the story. Check out the stop-motion video that Michal’s M/W class created to tell the story!
This week in 5th grade, our students got to interview some of the Rabbis at CBE to learn what being a Jewish leader means to them and see how our Rabbis live the Jewish values we’ve been learning about. The Saturday/Tuesday class interviewed Rabbi Green and the Monday/Wednesday class interviewed Rabbi Epstein.
This week we continued our modern Jewish leadership unit by watching the Ruth Bader Ginsburg documentary. We discussed the mitzvot Justice Ginsburg demonstrates, such as loving those different from you and pursuing peace.
We had SO much fun celebrating Purim at Yachad this week with a fun shpiel(Yiddish for play) put on by our teachers, rice krispie hamantashen, creating groggers/ra’ashanim (noisemaker) to use at the megillah reading, singing Purim songs, face painting, mishloach manot preparations (gifts to others to help increase joy on the holiday) and mask making!
This week in fifth grade we are moving onto our final unit of the year in which we will focus on Jewish leaders in our world today. We’ve started by listing all the Jewish leaders we can think of in our lives and we will continue by learning more about some in particular and even interviewing a few of them in person.
After a snow day on Monday, we had two successful Esau v Jacob mock trials this week! In both trials, the jury found Jacob guilty of wrongfully stealing the birthright.
The 5th graders are gearing up for the Esau vs Jacob mock trial and are excited to show you all what they’ve been working on over the past month.
This was our first week using our brand new workbooks during our Hebrew lesson. Students are continuing to work in leveled groups of 2-4 during this time to get personalized attention from teachers and madrichim.
Our 5th grade students are busy examining evidence and developing their arguments in the mock trial case of whether Esau wrongfully stole Jacob’s birthright. Over the past two weeks, in addition to learning about the ancient Jewish court system, we’ve been lucky enough to hear from real lawyers about their jobs and experience.
This week in 5th grade, we wrapped up our last online Hebrew “side by side” lesson. We’ve been briefly assessing students’ progress in order to plan a Hebrew curriculum for the rest of the year.
This week, we continued learning about the story of Jacob and Esau on Monday. The students began developing arguments about whether or not they think Jacob is guilty of stealing his father’s birthright.
This week, we started learning about the story of Jacob and Esau.
This week in class we continued working on our end-of-unit biblical leaders project.
