Learning in the Great Outdoors!

Wow! What an exciting week we had exploring, learning, and working together in nature! Our week started with our adventurous trip to Reidsville at the Betsy-Jeff Penn 4h Center and yesterday we visited the Hemby center at the YMCA to celebrate Lag B’omer! Several times this week, the guides working at these centers stopped me to say how impressed they were with the way our students will drop everything to give thanks and say their prayers. We davened on the bus, in our cabins, in our makeshift kitchen, and in a dugout! The students were able to say their prayers without their siddurim, and even could tell me what page they would have been reading if the book had been in front of them! They were truly living Jewishly in the great outdoors and it was such a joy to watch!

I edited the 788 pictures I took on our overnight trip down to about 200 pictures. 🙂  You can see some of our favorite moments below!

Click to play this Smilebox slideshow

Our Lag B’omer celebration was the perfect chance for the 2nd graders to practice their teamwork! We played many games, with the help of our guide Miss Trio, that focused on collaboration. Many of the games we played were impossible if students didn’t communicate positively and support one another. We learned that pointing out who was making a mistake didn’t help the team. Instead we had to voice our own needs in a constructive way. For example, one of the games we played required the students to pick up a long tent pole using only their pointer fingers and the students could not curl their fingers around the pole. This game took us 30 minutes to master!  The activity was a great chance to practice making “I statements” like, “I need everyone to go slower,” instead of, “You are all going too fast and messing me up!”

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Here we are playing a game called Chocolate River!IMG_3993 (3)

Davening in the dugout!

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Untangling the human knot!

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We loved playing “Ga ga” and “Larish!”

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More chances for teamwork!

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Our celebration ended with roasted marshmallows around a campfire!IMG_4026 (3)IMG_4028 (3)IMG_4022 (4)IMG_4013 (3)IMG_4003 (3)IMG_4002 (3)

On Monday, we will hold our Grandfriends’ Day Celebration! The students will dismiss at noon following the celebration.

Math 
Mrs. Tracey and I were blown away with how much of unit 10 the students already knew based on their pretest results! One of the concepts we will study next week is solving equations using parenthesis. For example: 5 + (12 – 7) = ____  The students will learn to always solve the math in the parenthesis first! They will also learn how to insert parenthesis into equations to make them true, like 500 = 400 – 100 + 200.  500 = (400 – 100) + 200. We will practice math test taking skills like checking your answers to see if they make sense, working neatly, and using the strategies we have learned in class.

Reading
Next week, the students will review test taking strategies to help them feel confident and successful when taking assessments. The students will work on eliminating answers, rereading questions, underlining key words, etc. We will focus on using the text to support our answers, and learn when we need to think deeper than what is directly stated in the text. The students will get to participate in game show style lessons and work with teams as we review these important skills! The CTP4 test will be the following week.