Hello SSJS 6th Grade Families, I enjoyed our class today so much! As usual, the students were thoughtful and engaged. During the first part of class, we studied the vahavta prayer. This prayer is a little bit of review, as they have likely done it in other years of curriculum too, however I felt it was important to discuss it again! The vahavta is about the theme of love which is particularly timely with the current US holiday coming up this week. Additionally, we talked about the theme of community in the second half of our class today. This too was done with the idea of the Thanksgiving holiday and discussing the relevance of our own communities in this different year. As a reminder, we won’t have any class next week due to the holiday weekend. The following weekend, on December 6th, we will be having another supply pick-up! Please refer to Michelle’s email from last night for more information on that. As always, if you have any questions, feel free to reach out! Best, Arinn

Hello families, 

It was so nice to see your students in class today! Each week they are a joyful, thoughtful, and passionate group of learners! 

Our discussion today focused on the Roman Empire and how Jewish life was impacted by that time. We then played a game — that is typically played by children in Israel. In this game, we emphasized the power of change and adaptation in our lives which they had to deal with during the Roman Empire (and we are dealing with a lot now too!). 

For Hebrew, we focused on reading words and how to put the words together. Each Hebrew group did some practice with words that were transliterated from English into Hebrew to help make the learning take on a new lens. 

 I look forward to seeing everyone next weekend! 

 As always, let me know if you have any questions, 

 Arinn

Hello 6th Grade SSJS Families, It was so nice to see all of your students in class today! They were particularly engaged and motivated today. We opened our day with a quick game. We connected this game to the theme of community and teamwork — two important Jewish values to study. The main portion of our class we spent discussing modern Jewish heroes and role models. A few weeks ago we discussed our own personal role models, but this time we looked at national Jewish leaders and how they translate our values to the public. Students shared famous and inspirational people that have connections to Judaism. I was impressed by how many people the class was able to come up with and the large range of people too — from athletes and actors to comedians and politicians. We also had our individual Hebrew groups. Both groups today focused on letters in the context of words. Hebrew 1 practiced individual words while Hebrew 2 branched out to see if they could build a sentence. I look forward to seeing everyone back in class next week! As always, feel free to reach out with any questions, Arinn

Hello 6th Grade SSJS families,

Today in class we had a fun and lively discussion about what it means to be a leader. We connected this theme of leadership to Jewish leaders that we have discussed from the Torah so far including Moses, Joseph, and the matriarchs and matriarchs. In order to delve deeper into qualities of a leader we made a cloud poem together. You can see the piece of work that we made attached to this email.

We also spent a long time talking about strength. We discussed the idea of mental versus physical strength. In order to shift up Sunday School as a place where we normally focus a lot on mental strength, we practiced some physical strength today. We did some stretching and brief exercises to become a stonier community together.

During Hebrew groups we also focused on putting letters together into words today. In Hebrew 1 we focused on writing words while in Hebrew 2 we practiced reading the words of the Sh’ma prayer.

I look forward to seeing everyone next week for class! As usual, if you have any questions, feel free to reach out.

Best,

Arinn

Hi 6th Grade Families,

It was so good to see everyone on Sunday again! It feels nice to finally be getting in the swing of our classes being weekly after all the holidays that started our year.

This past week during Hebrew groups we did some letter review and also worked on decoding and practiced writing. Make sure that your student has paper and something to write with every week for Hebrew!

Last Sunday, we focused our discussion on family and familial values. As a case study, we looked at the Torah story of Joseph. Later on in class, we had our first ethical dilemma discussion. I was incredibly impressed with how thoughtful the students were during this first complex conversation.

Next Sunday we will again be in Hebrew groups. The groups are:

Hebrew 1 (9:45-11)	Hebrew 2 (10-11:15)
Ben	Olivia
Kira	Nathaniel
Lucas	Nathan
Ivy	Charlie
Chelsea	Sammy
Jude	Enzo
Nate

As always, feel free to reach out with any questions!

 

Best,

Arinn

Hello SSJS 6th Grade Families, Yesterday in class we had some great discussions about what it means to be a matriarch or a patriarch of a community. We also got to know the early lineages of the matriarchs and patriarchs in the Torah. We then connected this idea to how one might work to create sukkat shalom, or a house of peace. During Hebrew times we worked to review letters and get prepared to focus on being able to read prayers later in the year. Next week we will be reviewing some more biblical stories, particularly as they relate to Jewish leadership and communal values. Just a reminder, your student should only be coming to class for a total of one hour and 15 minutes. The Hebrew groups are as follows:

Hebrew 1 (9:45-11)	Hebrew 2 (10-11:15)
Ben	Olivia
Kira	Nathaniel
Lucas	Nathan
Ivy	Charlie
Chelsea	Sammy
Jude	Enzo
Nate

I look forward to seeing everyone next week! As always, if you have any questions, please feel free to reach out! Best, Arinn