Rosh Hashanah

Rosh Hashanah - what is that?

Well, at the beginning of the week we didn't know either! It all came about when we began looking at people whose values and beliefs led them to take action. Each of us chose a from a list of:

Princess Diana, Maalala Yousef, Nelson Mandela, Mother Tresesa, Anne Frank

Some other names came up to. We looked briefly at what cultural backgrounds they came from and the significant contributions they had made in the world. Anne Frank particularly interested us because the word 'Jewish'  kept coming up in the readings. As we had little idea of what the word meant, we decided to research together. To our surprise we found that this week is Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish new year!

All of this was good exercise in reading for information and keeping notes, and so we talked about how best to do that. This is something we have to keep working on.

We also enjoyed a video interview with a friend from Ghana. He talked about the traditional culture of the local people. We had so many questions, and so this was an opportunity to learn how to ask deep questions. We've been learning how to move from brief questions that require a short answer, to forming questions that will start meaningful discussion.

In the area of reading skills, we been working on what to do when the meaning is lost as we read. We make sensible guesses, go back, note the word and check it more carefully at a later time. A great website for this is : www.wordsmyth.net.

A lot of our shared reading this week has been from Epic books. This was shared during our parent meeting at the start of term. If you don't know about it please take time to look at it.

In the photos you'll see us looking for Ghana. Oh, so much to learn! We'll use this world map and the atlases more regularly.