Fifth Grade

March 2008

Dear Parents,

We hope you have had a fun month! Special Persons Day was a great success. The class really enjoyed talking to Joska and Blanca about their childhoods and experiences immigrating to the United States. The Purim Carnival was fun, as always, and the class did an outstanding job reading their selections from the Megillah. Our day at the Western Justice Center was also very memorable, as the students practiced their peer mediation skills, met a federal judge and the clerk who writes her opinions, and toured the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals. We are hoping to return there before the year is out!

We are nearly finished with our Everyday Math series, having spent this month working with ratios, variables, formulas, and graphs. A great deal of March has been devoted to writing, as we are simultaneously working on five-paragraph essays about important amendments, a project about Israeli artists, a report about Israeli inventors, and various smaller assignments like thank-you letters, summaries, and reviews. We are moving into the nineteenth century in social studies and will be covering topics including Manifest Destiny, which dovetails neatly with the Judaic Studies work about the Herem. Great Expectations is proving challenging, but the class is becoming more invested in the characters and Pip's journey. Next month we will be reading The Merchant of Venice in preparation for our play at the end of May! And as a new project, the students are learning many new skills while creating our school's yearbook; we think they are really enjoying the experience and rising to the challenge.

We appreciate your support in our efforts with the students. And if there are any questions we can answer or help we can provide, please don't hesitate to call or email us.

As always, best wishes!
Laura Sympson