Message from Heather Moore, Head of School
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Dear Parents,
Our students and faculty were so happy to be back to a regular schedule this week! The IB program's transdisciplinary approach provides the opportunity for seamless integration, allowing our students to learn so much within the framework of the holidays. There is so much learning and collaborating happening within our school. You can see some of the wonderful examples in all age groups throughout this newsletter.
Applying best practice to school safety requires practice. Therefore, the campus will conduct a lock down drill on Tuesday, November 12, 2019 at 9:15am. This drill will transition into an evacuation drill for SIA students and infants, JCC babysitting and Kid’s Zone. Children will transit from their respective spaces to the gym in a simulated evacuation. The drill will last approx. 30 min, please remain clear of the affected areas during the drill. During the lock down phase no entry will be allowed to those areas. If you are in the building during the initial lock down you will be required to participate.
Early Years Parents -
Please mark your calendars for
Beyond Early Years Parent Coffee
on Friday, November 15, 2019 @ 8:30 a.m.
We will provide an overall view of Kindergarten through Fifth grade at SIA! You will have the opportunity to meet our K-5 teachers, parents, students and alumni. In addition, we will go over our K-5 affordability program and the JCC Kids Connection after school program.
Please RSVP in ParentSquare.
Hope to see you on November 15
th
!
Below you will see some reminders for next week.
Shavuah Tov,
wishing you all a wonderful week ahead!
Heather Moore
Head of School
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Infants and Toddlers Falling into Shabbat Fall Festival
by Elyssa Brinn, Early Years Assistant Director
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The
Infants
and
Toddlers
held their third annual
“Falling into Shabbat” Fall Festival
on Friday.
The Early Years focuses on promoting discovery and exploration, and the Fall Festival was an amazing way to do just that. Our youngest learners were able to explore, from our Infants sitting in piles of fall leaves for a true sensory experience, to painting pumpkins picked from our very special pumpkin patch.
Using the IB learner profile trait of being
reflective
, this year we added and upgraded some sections of the festival. Last year, the teachers observed the children gravitating towards the sensory tables filled with pumpkins, gourds, and lots of fall leaves. After reflecting upon this being a favorite area, we extended it and created more sensory opportunities that even the youngest infants could participate in.
Pumpkin Bowling
was also added this year after much thought about an activity where the older Toddlers could use some of their emerging cognitive and large motor muscles together.
Since
collaboration
is another integral part of the IB program, we invited the SIA fifth grader students to help with the festival for the second year in a row. They planned together, decorated and then pulled wagons for our
“hayrides”
at the festival. We came together at the end of the festival to bring in Shabbat together as a community. We can’t wait for next year!
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Collaboration, It's a Good Thing!
By Lorna Orleans, Director of the Early Years Program
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Dear Families,
An integral part of the IB teaching framework is collaboration among teachers. I wanted to share and amazing example from our EY4 team. In planning together, our teachers must choose the same major transdisciplinary theme from the six proscribed by the IB program. In the case of our EY4 teachers, they chose
How We Express Ourselves
for this assessment period. But, then the hard work of collaboration happens - How to distill out of this major theme a single, central idea that will drive an inquiry of the theme? The EY4 team meets every Thursday to talk, examine and consider how to approach a theme and a Unit of Inquiry. Together they decided on a broad central idea that each of them could take in a different direction with their students. Their central idea,
Students Express Themselves Through Art
also
branched into three lines of inquiry they agreed upon.
- What are some types of creative expression?
- How do we respond to art?
- How is our creativity inspired?
Through collaboration our three EY teachers developed these three springboards into an exploration of
How We Express Ourselves
. The key, they found, was keeping lines of inquiries broad and open-ended enough to allow for their own individual creativity with their classes.
So, while they developed together the same central idea and lines of inquiry, each class followed a different path to explore them in creating their own Unit of Inquiry. EY4 Lam focused on various artists like Matisse, Pollack and Picasso, EY4 Mones focused on various forms of art expression and media format while EY4 Gamboa focused on artistic themes and how they are inspired and expressed.
I am so proud of the successful collaboration of this group of teachers in bringing the IB planning and teaching framework to fruition with their own unique input and creativity. Bravo!
P.S. News from EY4 Mones: Each friend in this class will be making their own piece of art to showcase in the
Room 12 Museum.
They’ll be exposed to a variety of mediums and choose what they want to make and what materials they’ll use based on how they want to express themselves. They are asking those who would like to view the exhibit to provide a donation. The money collected will go towards
The Dreaming Zebra Foundation.
This foundation provides art and music supplies to those around the country that don’t have the resources like we do to express ourselves.
Shavua Tov, Have a good week!
Lorna Orleans
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These EY 4 friends in Morah Jacquie's and Morah Shayla's class had fun creating Jackson Pollack style art. They even added some Rosh Hashanah embellishment inspired by the themes of the holiday.
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The students in Morah Nicole's and Morah Ellen's class learned that there are many mediums through which to create art.
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These friends used legos to create 3D Sukkot.
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In Morah Nicole's and Morah Jennifer's class the theme for the art above was inspired by a well know book about numbers!
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Sometimes holidays drive the theme for art. After learning that Rosh Hashanah was the birthday of the world, EY friends wanted to create world birthday cakes.
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Second Grade Hebrew
with Ms. Ben Moshe
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The second graders were introduced to a few new concepts in Hebrew. The first is the
Hebrew root system.
Students learned how to identify Hebrew roots and discussed the benefit of using this system. Another concept which is part of our IB unit “How the World Works” is
Gematria
- the numerical value of the Hebrew alphabet. This information is useful, among other things, for telling Hebrew dates and years and numbering bible chapters and verses
.
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Third Grade Mock Trial
with Mr. Cohen
As part of the Who We Are Unit of Inquiry, third grade students learned that individuals make ethical choices based on their values and follow the law of their communities. Mr. Cohen and the third graders planned, scripted, rehearsed, and performed a mock trial.
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Fourth Grade World Studies
with Mrs. Pahl-Cornelius
Stud
ents have been diligently summarizing the search for the passage to spices in Asia by early explorers. They are marking up our map of the world to track the movement of Spanish, Portugese, Dutch, English, and French colonization in the Americas. Next week, they will study a specific explorer and teach the other students in expert groupings
.
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