Mrs. Sheinfeld 8th Grade Math

In Mrs. Sheinfeld's 8th Grade accelerated pre- algebra class, students explored real life situations and studied the patterns and sequences that emerged. Working cooperatively in pairs, they followed the illustrations of the sequence, and pictorially predicted the next image. Next, they described the change between one outcome and the following one verbally. After translating their findings onto a numerical function table, students were able to naturally derive their own equations, both direct variation as well as linear, without ever even having been taught those terms. The last portion of the activity had them creating a line graph of their finding and plotting the resulting point. Take a look at what we've learned without even "learning"!

Mrs. Sheinfeld 8th Grade Math - slideshow

Best Middle School Oneg Shabbat Ever!!!

MS Oneg Shabbat - slideshows

Glogs in 8th Grade English Mrs. Wasserman

The 8th grade worked on glogs, multi-media collages, as a culminating project for their literature circles.  Each group read a historical fiction book focusing on the early 20th century, and used post its throughout their reading to gather information both about the setting and the themes of the novels.  Then, they worked with the chrome books to create visual and audio representations of their novels.

Glogs in 8th Grade English - slideshow

It's always good to check progress...

It would be an understatement to say that there's a lot going on with technology at Yeshivat Noam. Our Chromebooks, iPads, MacBooks and computer labs are all seeing heavy use as students take notes, answer questions, complete projects and communicate with their teachers and peers digitally.

On top of that, I meet almost daily with teachers, students, parents and administrators about considering new tools, piloting new initiatives and exploring whatever technological marvel is just around the bend.

For example, just in the last week, we have begun to try out some new technological tools in our math department.

Mrs. Sari Sheinfeld has begun to flip her classroom by creating videos to introduce new concepts. Using a wireless microphone and her SMART board, Mrs. Sheinfeld can record her presentation and make the recording available to students.

Her students can then watch the recordings at home, pre-loading themselves with the content before coming to class to apply what they have learned on their own. This frees the teacher from the front of the classroom, allowing Mrs. Sheinfeld to coach students while they work together on problems in class instead of lecturing to the group and sending them home to practice alone.

Meanwhile, in the room next door, an Ipevo document camera allows Mrs. Deena Bloom to project work up onto the SMART board so that students can dissect the problem-solving methods in real-time and learn from each other interactively.

Using the camera together with the SMART Notebook software, Mrs. Bloom and her students can annotate right on top of real-world materials without needing to photograph or scan them first. This low-cost, intuitive device removes the barriers between the conceptual math Mrs. Bloom teaches and the real world in which her students live.

We've got more coming, too. The entire Middle School faculty met recently for the latest session in the year-long, differentiated professional development series on Educational Technology Integration and 21st Century Learning. Teachers are working with content-area experts to increase their technology skills and will soon pair up so that those more comfortable with technology integration can mentor their less experienced colleagues.

With so much innovation on the horizon, it's easy to overlook what we have already accomplished but, earlier today, two members of our Science Department, Mrs. Aliza Chanales and Mrs. Barbara Sehgal, showed me a dramatic reminder. They were filling out an application to join a cutting-edge curriculum-development project for the National Science Foundation and ran across a question asking them to identify what technology tools were available in their classrooms... and, as you can see, they were able to check all of the available boxes because, here at Yeshivat Noam, these tools are all already available to our students!

Yes, there are exciting, innovative, revolutionary things ahead. But we must remember how far we have come already and how lucky our faculty and students are today.

Mrs. Bloom 6th Grade Math

Other than Bar and Bat Mitzvah invitations, what could household mail have to do with 6th grade math? For our recent graphing unit, students were asked to categorize and tally their family’s mail. At the end of two weeks, they not only wrote a paragraph describing their findings, but also used online technology to construct a graph they felt could best display their results. While some students used circle graphs for the display, others used line and bar graphs. Our classroom culminating activity Friday was the best part. Students were divided into teams of two and asked to respond to the following challenge: “The United States Postal Service is having a budget crisis. It has been proposed (suggested) that in order to make the mail system more cost effective, they decrease mail delivery from 6 times per week to 5 times per week. Using your graph and the graph of your partner, determine the day they should stop mail delivery in your neighborhood in order to save money. You will have 90 seconds to present and prove (based on the information contained in your graphs) your suggestion to the class.” Students had 5 minutes to prepare their mini-presentations. Using a document camera to display their tally information and graphs, the student pairs made suggestions using their data. Using “presentation language”, students responded to a “real-life” problem using data, technology and grown-up presentation skills!

Mrs. Bloom 6th Grade Math - slideshows

6th Grade Trip to Branchburg Sports Complex

6th Grade Trip - slideshow

Yeshivat Noam Wins First Place in E2K 6th Grade Math Competition!

Dear Parents, Grandparents and Friends,
We are so excited to announce that our 6th Grade E2K Math Team won 1st place today in a virtual math competition competing against 11 schools.
Special recognition to our outstanding students and their dedicated teacher, Mrs. Sari Sheinfeld.
With pride,
Rabbi Chaim Hagler

Click on this link to view : Video of Moment the Students Found Out They Won

E2K - slideshows

7G Morah Shira

Just in time for Chanukah, 7G learned about the Chanukat HaMishkan in Sefer Bamidbar, which makes up the Torah readings for the days of Chanukah. We have just moved on to learning about the kohen gadol's honored task of lighting the menorah in the Mishkan.

In an effort to minimize our mix-ups between Chanukah's chanukiah and the Mishkan/Mikdash's menorah, (from left (starting with the new candle)), Leora, Avigayil, Michal, Eliana, Avigayil, Noa, Abby, Kayla and Amira demonstrated the makeup of a kosher chanukiah.

 

Mrs. Solomon's 6G English Literature Circles

In 6th Grade English, students are grouped according to reading level and assigned a novel to read. The students are given 3 weeks to read their book and complete an assignment that focuses on reading comprehension, summarizing, creating thought provoking questions, and extracting golden lines. Each group meets once a week to discuss their books. In addition to this regular assignment, the students include an additional skill to each novel that is being taught in class.The year began with identifying conflict in short stories, and then, the students applied that same skill by identifying conflicts in their literature circle books. Presently, we are identifying direct and indirect characterization in our novel read aloud, The Cay, by Theodore Taylor. The students are applying this skill by identifying direct and indirect characterization in their literature circle books as well. The students really seem to enjoy their weekly meetings. Golden lines are shared and questions are discussed in detail. Our goal is to complete 10 books by the end of the year!

Modeling and Mapping in Science Class

The middle schoolers have been using a new kind of "interactive" interactive whiteboard in their science classes. These whiteboards don't play videos and they aren't sensitive to touch, but they do allow students to interact with each other and ideas. The whiteboards are about 2.5" by 2" and are big enough for groups of 2-3 students to write on them at the same time. In 6th and 7th grade, students used them to review for their tests. Groups of students took key words and terms from their units and built concept maps. They connected each word to others related to it and, in dry erase marker, made connecting arrows or wrote connecting sentences that allowed them to express relationships and nuances among the many connected ideas. In 8th grade, students worked in pairs to develop mathematical and visual models of diffusion. Using what they had experienced in the lab and read about, pairs of students modeled their ideas on the whiteboards, refining and revising as they went. Later, they drew 2-D drawings of plant and animal cells, which emphasized the structure and function of organelles. The whiteboards are more effective than chart paper because of the ease with which students and teachers can edit their understanding. It's easy to move a card or word from one side of the board to the other, to erase an arrow and change its direction, or to add more detail to a model. Rather than focusing on making it look nice, students focus on getting the ideas they right. The emphasis is on simply and effectively communicating relationships and diagrams. Because the boards are big, students can work collaboratively on their models and maps. They also can easily see how other groups' models or maps are similar to or different from their own, which sparks deep conversation about the ideas on the table. Whiteboarding allows students to express their understanding in visual, linguistic, and mathematical ways. Mistakes and revisions are an integral part of learning and the erasable whiteboards allow students to feel at ease with that. We have only scratched the surface of modeling and mapping in science class and we are looking forward to many more uses throughout the year.

Science Concept Mapping - slideshow

Follow up in 8th Grade this week : This week we used the white boards to create concepts maps to review and study for this weeks science test. The students really felt they benefited from creating these in class but were sad when they had to clean up and erase the boards. So the second part of the activity was to use the website https://bubbl.us and the students were able recreate their maps and share them with me and each other!.

Seventh Grade is Getting Ready for Election 2013!

 Mrs. Kurtz's seventh grade students spent this past week learning about the major New Jersey and New York races. They studied the differences between the major candidates, and they learned what made each of them unique. The true highlight of the lesson was watching the different campaign ads and seeing the different tactics the candidates used. For homework, they read an article about a candidate, summarized it, and created their own campaign poster. They are looking forward to November 5 to see if the candidate they chose won!