May 23
There is quiet focus new understanding of old text synthesis of the main idea naming our learning, and what was really important about our work this year. It’s end of year final project time. We have two days left to finish our project, the project that prompts us to revisit text, sort memories, determine what …
May 17
It’s May! In May, kids are bursting with energy. They start trying things they’d never have done a few months ago, and not the good stuff, either. (I didn’t catch a photo, but yes, those were our mature, responsible fifth and sixth graders playing a “game” of stealing crackers off of each other’s napkins yesterday.) The month of May can challenge …
May 10
Social relationships are PRIMARY in middle school. Kids care a lot about who they work with. Yet, this week, when we launched our year-end project, something beautiful happened: middle schoolers paired up based on the content they were excited about, not with their closest friends. Pairs who’ve been working together all year split up, and new pairs formed – without …
May 04
Hey. Just because we can think critically and have long, respectful conversations to hash out our point of view (and absolutely adore doing it), doesn’t mean it’s the only way we like to learn. Please nurture the whole of us. We love to learn in so many, many ways. We like to learn outside. We like to ask our own …
Apr 27
This week, our Tuesday group of 5th and 6th graders studied gemara. Argued by the ancient rabbis 2nd – 6th century CE, the text has its own distinctive, cryptic style. Gemara is HARD. And it was SO FUN. First we studied the text in pairs to try to figure out the topic sentence, who’s talking, and …
Apr 19
A father and son are hunting together. The son accidentally left his safety off and the dad accidentally shot his own finger. Another time, the father and son are hunting again, and the boy says, “Oh, I need to put my safety on.” The dad replies, “Yeah, we don’t want a remake of last time.” …
Apr 12
By the time you’re in middle school, you’ve got a lot of examples of things that aren’t nice to say. And, you know not to say them. So our new theme, אוֹנָאַת דְבָרִים (Ona’at Devarim – hurting people with words) isn’t about figuring out what words might hurt each other. For middle schoolers, our theme is about …
Mar 30
It came up casually, as part of a different conversation about Pesach, and immediately, it grabbed our 5th – 7th grade children’s attention: some Jews sell their חמץ chametz (leavened foods) for Pesach. What?! How? Why? So we did what we usually do when children have questions: we started researching. We turned to the Torah, to …
Mar 02
Do middle schoolers still play? Not, play organized sports games, or board games, or video games. But do they still want to let their imaginations run and use their hands to create and get silly together? Just a quick look around the middle school room this week said it all. Here we are… …making a rocking chair, …
Feb 23
It’s great to be a middle schooler! So capable, so responsible, so caring of everyone around them. And SO engrossed in their projects that we couldn’t drag them away at the end of the day! We got right to work drafting our projects. We tested out building ideas. Here’s the part where you …
