Upper Elementary students at Schechter Manhattan actively dive into study as they continue to acquire the skills of independent learners. Close relationships form among students, as well as between students and the two co-teachers who – as in the Lower Elementary grades – work together to plan and teach all the core aspects of the curriculum, in Hebrew and in English.

Teachers and students work together to create an active and engaging classroom community. The atmosphere in class is full of dialogue and conversation, and the physical space in the room is set up in ways that make it easy for students to use materials and resources independently, to do their work, and to facilitate their own learning. Often students work in pairs or small groups, eventually bringing their problem solving back to the whole group. Work in each subject area is often organized around large projects that simulate real-life scenarios, such as the elaborate bake sale planned in math class or a writing process that is modeled on the ways adult writers express and communicate their ideas in the real world. Similarly, in the co-curricular areas of studio art, music, and physical education, students don’t merely learn about their subject; they are immersed in making art, playing an instrument, and participating in team sports. Throughout these grades, students increasingly become aware of and participate in the extended school and surrounding communities. They continue to be asked to apply what they see in class to what they see in the world around them: their physical world, their social world, their Jewish and ethical world.

Kitah Gimel (Third Grade)

As the first year of the Upper Elementary Division, third grade both continues to build upon the skills and competencies that students bring with them from second grade and, in significant ways, represents a departure and a new beginning. Students use the skills they learned in the lower grades – reading in English and Hebrew, writing, and basic math operations – as tools for acquiring new knowledge. They reinforce and extend their schoolwork with daily homework assignments; they undertake longer-term projects and work, individually and in small groups, with greater independence; and they assume greater responsibility for their own materials and belongings.

Language Arts

Writing and reading workshops are coordinated throughout the year. In writing workshop, students use their own experiences to learn the craft of writing both from the writing of professional authors and by living the writer’s life themselves. In reading workshop, they learn to live rich, literate lives by working from their chosen books to become expert readers and to understand the world complexly. At the same time, their teachers model the thinking, language, behaviors, and strategies of successful writers and readers and build communities in their classrooms in which the students can engage in reading and writing text in active, individual, and personal ways.

In reading workshop, students continue to build upon the comprehension and decoding strategies that they learned in the lower grades. Elements of the reading workshop include reading fiction and non-fiction silently, out loud, in pairs, and in groups (literature circles); discussing issues and insights that arise from students’ reading; writing and drawing relating to their reading; and teachers and students sharing their experiences of successful reading. Junior Great Books is a continuing feature of the reading program.
In addition, they learn new vocabulary; analyze plot, characters, and setting in fictional writing; talk and write about issues that arise in their reading and to share their reading experience with others; and learn about themselves as readers.

In writing workshop, students learn to build upon the writing process that they experienced in the Lower Elementary Division. In a workshop setting, they keep writers’ notebooks in which they record entries from their personal experience; choose writing “seeds” that seem promising; expand, extend, and build upon them with detail and description; share their writing with each other and respond to each other’s writing; and edit, revise, and publish their work. They gain experience in writing sentences, paragraphs, and multi-paragraph pieces; work on developing strong beginnings; and proofread for conventional spelling, punctuation, and capitalization.

Students use many styles of writing in third grade, such as personal narratives, informational books, persuasive essays, reading response, and across-curriculum writing, including writing based on research.

The following routines support and reinforce a mastery of written language: ongoing class work and homework on spelling: weekly class spelling lists, a word wall of high-frequency words, direct instruction in spelling rules and patterns, word puzzles, independent work on personal spelling mistakes, and weekly quizzes.

Mathematics

Third grade continues to place a balanced emphasis on understanding mathematical concepts as well as speed and accuracy in computation. Students work both individually and cooperatively with partners.

Key goals for the year include understanding multiplication, learning multiplication tables up to 12, adding and subtracting large numbers, and explaining solution strategies orally, in writing, and with pictures. To help students understand new concepts, tangible objects, physical models (e.g., number lines, 100’s and 300’s charts), and arrays are used; to help build fluency in computation, students use flash cards, mental math, 60-second challenges, and “mad minutes.”

Third graders study the following topics:

• Review and extension of basic skills
• Addition and subtraction of large numbers
• Skip counting
• Multiplication up to 12
• An introduction to fractions
• Measurement with standard units
• Problem solving using alternative strategies
• Math puzzles

Hebrew

The third grade is divided into three groups according to Hebrew language ability, and they and the fourth and fifth grade students study together, interspersed among the three classes. In each class, both oral and written Hebrew are emphasized, and class work is reinforced by homework.

In the advanced group, the main text is an anthology of Israeli literature. Students read short stories, non-fiction articles, and novels; write paragraph-length literary and non-fiction responses, as well as longer personal narratives and essays; and speak in full sentences using all tenses. In addition, they prepare and participate in a formal debate and make oral presentations at the conclusion of units of study.

In the other groups, the main focus of reading and writing is an Israeli language series written for Arab Israelis, supplemented by teacher-produced materials. Students read for meaning, write in response to their reading and in response to questions, and express their own thoughts and opinions in full sentences orally and in writing. They learn to conjugate verbs in present and past tense and are introduced to future tense; in addition, they study prepositions and conjunctions and incorporate them in their speaking and writing, and review agreement among nouns, verbs, and adjectives in gender and number. Hebrew continues to be spoken throughout the day in class routines and in the Jewish Studies program.

Thematic Studies, Science, and Social Studies

The theme in third grade is culture and community. The students begin the year by inquiring, “What brings people together?” Looking at both environmental and cultural influences, they explore a variety of constructs, including language, art, religion, and survival needs such as food, clothing, and shelter. They investigate the connections between people and the physical characteristics of the place in which they live. The case study for the class’s explorations is the Native Americans of New York State.

The year’s thematic study begins with a unit on the geography of New York State, museum visits, and group learning based on packets of information about elements of culture and community.
Thereafter, the students research specific topics of their choice in pairs. In their book research, working from a series of individualized guiding questions, they learn to read and comprehend non-fiction, identify the main idea of a paragraph, take notes, cite sources, format a document on the computer, and produce a final product that is several paragraphs long. In the process, they learn to manage time and materials, organize an extended project, and work independently and with a partner.

The children express their understanding of Native American culture in writing, on a poster display of photographs, illustrations, and brief captions, in three-dimensional models of artifacts, and in an oral presentation.

Science units on plant life, animal life, and the environment of New York State complement the social studies focus of theme. Students plant seeds and observe, measure, and record their germination; they dissect fruits and vegetables and observe them under a microscope; and they go on multiple trips to Central Park to observe and record, in writing and drawings, their findings about animal life. They also write paragraphs synthesizing their discoveries about the parts of the plant and their functions and on differences between plants and animals.


Jewish Studies

In third grade, Torah study focuses on B’reshit (Genesis) 18-25, continuing the lives of Abraham and Sarah and moving on to Isaac, Rebecca, and Jacob. Working in small groups and pairs, students read, comprehend, discuss, analyze, and interpret the text, and pose questions about it. The culmination of each chapter involves two activities: preparing and presenting a summary, in writing, on a poster, or in a skit; and sharing the questions that each group posed and inviting members of the other groups to suggest alternate solutions to those proposed by the group that first asked the question. Toward the end of the year, students also begin to read and study commentaries by Rashi, Ibn Ezra, Ramban, Sarna, Leibowitz, and so on, which give additional answers to the questions they asked.

Among the grammatical skills students learn are identifying the subject and verb of a sentence; recognizing direct speech; transforming the tenses of verbs using vav hahipuch (the conversive vav); and analyzing complex verbs into shorashim (verb roots), prefixes, and suffixes.

A new subject in third grade is Pitgam (Rabbinic Sayings), which serves as an introduction to Mishnah. During the year, students study a rabbinic saying each week, mostly relating to a Jewish value or a moral dilemma. The value or dilemma is often contextualized by means of a written scenario, a story, or a teacher skit. Students then read and comprehend the pitgam using familiar vocabulary and shorashim (verb roots). Following a discussion about the meaning and possible interpretations of the text, the value or dilemma itself, and its application to students’ lives, the students prepare a page illustrating the pitgam.

In t’filah, the third grade students complete their study of the Amidah, learning the full text of each b’rachah, identifying its main themes based on key words, class discussions, and activities, uncovering its personal significance to them, and writing their individual commentaries on it. In addition to the Amidah, third grade is also introduced to new sections of the Torah service, Hallel, and Kabbalat Shabbat and additional prayers for the high holidays, Sukkot, Chanukah, and Purim.

The third graders’ insights into and knowledge of chagim (Jewish holidays) continues to deepen as they both revisit previous years’ experiences and introduce new aspects: a midrash about God’s role in teaching Moses how to recite S’lichot; going on a sukkah hop in the neighborhood; analyzing the Talmud’s account of the miracle on Chanukah and comparing it with the Al Hanisim prayer; studying the textual basis in the Torah for the seven species of fruit with which the land of Israel is blessed; deriving the four mitzvot of Purim from a verse in the m’gilah; comparing two versions of slavery described in the hagadah, as well as two kinds of historical experience that Pesach serves to re-enact; recognizing both the sacred and secular facets of Jerusalem, as expressed in reality and in the Jewish imagination; and analyzing the structure of the Ten Commandments in preparation for Shavuot.


Kitah Dalet (Fourth Grade)

The fourth grade program is rich in content and emphasizes the development of organizational and study skills. Now proficient in basic reading, writing, and mathematics, students build on these skills to analyze texts and ideas, synthesize information, think critically about issues, expand their writing, and support their claims with evidence from the text. A milestone of the fourth grade is the students’ first experience with external testing, for which they spend several weeks preparing. In addition, students participate in their first overnight experience, an environmental education retreat under the auspices of Teva.

Language Arts

In the fourth grade, reading and writing are fully established tools for learning and communicating across the content areas. They continue, as in previous years, to work hand in hand, facilitating connections with one another, not only as skills, but also, through the workshop approach (for a description, see Kitah Gimel), as coordinated systems of self-discovery and thinking and talking about personal experience.

In reading workshop, key goals for the year include reading aloud with expression, identifying main ideas and supporting details, explaining how a text supports a claim or an opinion, and becoming a supportive learning community in which reading experiences are shared. At the same time, the students review and reinforce previously learned skills of comprehension, decoding, and analyzing plot, character, and setting.

Students continue to read many of the same genres they read in previous years: novels, non-fiction books, and short stories; in addition, they formally encounter biography for the first time. They also keep a nightly reading log and formally study reading comprehension as a test skill.

In writing workshop, students begin with entries in their writer’s notebooks, refine them into personal narratives and personal essays, and eventually produce persuasive letters and essays, literary responses, biographies, and responses to non-fiction reading. In writers’ circle groups, they regularly share their writing pieces and celebrate their finished products as a learning community.

Key skills that are introduced in the fourth grade include the use of topic sentences and supporting details, writing paragraphs that consist of one complete idea, writing multi-paragraph essays that incorporate introductions and conclusions, using text to support a thesis, varying word choice and sentence structure, and using quotes and exclamations. Students continue to work on spelling, punctuation, capitalization, vocabulary, dictionary use, sequencing, and formatting and presentation. The steps of the writing process, with which they are already familiar, become gradually integrated in their writing.

Mathematics

Although the computational skills learned in fourth grade are significantly more challenging than students have encountered previously, the curriculum continues to encourage mathematical thinking and understanding. Students work with tangible objects to support their early learning of new ideas and operations, undertake projects that incorporate real-life applications of the skills they have learned, and create their own games to express and reinforce their grasp of the concepts they study.

Key goals for the year include multiplying two-digit numbers; understanding division, including long division; identifying and using equivalent fractions and decimals; and computing perimeter and area.

The following topics are studied in fourth grade:

• Review and extension of addition and subtraction
• Arrays
• Multiplication – review of tables, two-digit computation
• Division tables
• Long division
• Fractions, including equivalent fractions
• Decimals
• Line and bar graphs
• Data analysis
• Money
• Measurement
• Geometry – lines, area, three-dimensional (cubes)
• Solving multi-step problems
• Test preparation

Hebrew

The fourth grade is divided into three groups according to Hebrew language ability, and they and the third and fifth grade students study together, interspersed among the three classes. In each class, both oral and written Hebrew are emphasized, and class work is reinforced by homework.

In the advanced group, the main text is an anthology of Israeli literature. Students read short stories, non-fiction articles, and novels; write paragraph-length literary and non-fiction responses, as well as longer personal narratives and essays; and speak in full sentences using all tenses. In addition, they prepare and participate in a formal debate and make oral presentations at the conclusion of units of study.

In the other groups, the main focus of reading and writing is an Israeli language series written for Arab Israelis, supplemented by teacher-produced materials. Students read for meaning, write in response to their reading and in response to questions, and express their own thoughts and opinions in full sentences orally and in writing. They learn to conjugate verbs in present and past tense and are introduced to future tense; in addition, they study prepositions and conjunctions and incorporate them in their speaking and writing, and review agreement among nouns, verbs, and adjectives in gender and number. Hebrew continues to be spoken throughout the day in class routines and in the Jewish Studies program.

Thematic Studies, Science, and Social Studies

The fourth grade theme is habitats, with a specific focus on rainforests. Students look at this theme through geographical, environmental, and cultural lenses and critically and respectfully compare their own life experiences to those of the rainforest tribespeople. They study the ecology and wildlife of the rainforest and explore how this particular geography and environment affect the people who live in it, as well as how the people interact with it or adapt themselves to meet their needs.

Students collaborate on a class research project on the culture of rainforest tribes; in addition, they prepare an individual research project of their own choosing on one of the animals of the rainforest. The resources available to them are primarily books, other printed matter, and, for the first time, the Internet; in addition, the class goes on field trips, listens to recordings, and watches films to help them visualize and think about how people and animals coexist in this habitat.

Also complementing the individual research is a unit on the geography of the rainforest, in which students use maps, atlases, globes, and geography books to locate the countries with rainforests and explore their similarities and differences in climate and topography. In addition to the written research paper, students communicate what they have learned through discussions, dramatizations, and oral presentations, as well as in homework assignments, journal writing, tests and quizzes, artistic representations, models, and poster displays.

The science component of the theme study is also research-based; students extract most of their information about the rainforest ecosystem and the plants and animals that thrive in it from books and Websites; in addition, they take field trips to the zoo and botanical garden to observe, record, and describe their observations.

Two additional science units are experimental in design: weather and insects. In both of these studies, students work in groups to brainstorm hypotheses, test them, and share and compare the data they gather; they work individually to make, measure, and accurately record their observations, draw conclusions, and write up their findings in a laboratory report.

Jewish Studies

The fourth grade Torah curriculum continues the study of Isaac, Rebecca, and Jacob with a close reading of B’reshit (Genesis) 27-32; in addition, it completes the Genesis narrative with a more general overview of the Joseph story (B’reshit 37-50). Students work together to analyze the Torah text and create their own commentary, as well as to analyze classical and modern commentaries that address the same textual problems that they had identified in their own questions.

Key goals for the year include identifying parts of speech in context; recognizing direct speech and imbedded speech and identifying the speaker in each case; and analyzing complex verb forms according to shorashim (roots), prefixes and suffixes, and tense. In addition, students review the use of vav hahipuch (the conversive vav) and ways of recognizing textual problems and anomalies.

A new subject in fourth grade is Mishnah. Students study several mishnayot from Tractate Avot, which are similar in style and general topic to some of the pitgamim (rabbinic sayings) they studied in third grade, followed by a more extensive study of Tractate B’rachot, culminating in the completion of a full chapter of mishnah, chapter 9. Students work in small groups to read and understand the text by identifying key words, verbs, and nouns, compare parts of the text to each other or to parallel texts, and ask and answer questions on the text, and come together as a class to brainstorm and to relate the text to their own experience. A highlight of the year is the study of a modern Hebrew poem by Leah Goldberg based on one of the mishnayot.

In t’filah, the fourth graders continue to fill in the full texts of prayers that they have already studied in excerpted form. The focus this year is on completing the Sh’ma and the b’rachot preceding and following it. Students identify the main themes of each prayer based on key words, class discussions, and activities, analyze the text, relate it to their own personal experience, and writing their individual commentaries on it. In addition to the Sh’ma and its b’rachot, fourth graders also learn new b’rachot for other occasions, arising out of their study of mishnah, as well as new sections of Hallel and Kabbalat Shabbat.

In the fourth grade, students encounter new material and ideas that build upon what they already know: they formally study the laws of Rosh Hashanah, Yom Kippur, Sukkot, Chanukah, Purim, and Pesach from an Israeli schoolchildren’s compendium of Jewish law, Kitzur Shulchan Aruch – M’kor Chaim; in connection with Tu Bish’vat, they look at the surprising ubiquity of trees in the B’reshit narratives that they already know; prior to Purim, they learn how Maimonides transformed Amalek from a biblical tribe into a timeless concept; they study the multiple symbolism of matzah and the related Talmudic concepts of lechem oni; they learn about the role of non-Jews in rescuing Jews from the Holocaust; and they take a first look at Israel’s Declaration of Independence leading up to Yom Ha’atzmaut.


Kitah Heh (Fifth Grade)

As the final year of the Upper Elementary Division experience, fifth grade marks a transition toward more independent learning. A key milestone of the fifth grade is a major research project and presentation on immigration, which serves as a steppingstone to the exhibition-based assessments students will undertake in the Middle School. This is also the first year in which all students are expected to participate in portfolio conferences with their teachers and parents and reflect knowledgably about their academic progress. As well, the fifth grade marks the students’ first formal exposure to Jewish history and health education.

Language Arts

Reading and writing in fifth grade are fully integrated ways of learning and communication. In their writing and reading workshops, students learn to share both personal and social experiences.

Writing workshop begins, as in previous years, from a writer’s notebook containing personal experiences that are the seeds of personal narrative; it quickly moves on to an author study, in which students learn to write in the style of a published author; writing in response to non-fiction reading, triggered by document-based questions; essay writing; the short story; and, finally, a full-length independent research project.

Students learn to expand their writing from several paragraphs to several pages, use colons and semicolons correctly, and make effective use of craft moves, such as strong beginnings, transitional sentences, details and description, and similes and metaphors. They continue to use the writing process effectively to plan for narrative and expository writing, edit for conventional spelling, punctuation, capitalization, grammatical usage, and word choice, and revise both independently and in peer conferences.

In reading workshop, key goals for the year include achieving high levels of literal and inferential comprehension and an appreciation of literature. Students learn to be actively aware of narrative sequence, character motivation, and literary techniques; to read between the lines; and to understand the structure and style of book reviews and write in that genre. In addition, they read several newspapers and magazines and study journalistic writing about current events. During read-aloud sessions, teachers model for students the thinking, language, behaviors, and strategies of successful readers.

Mathematics

Fifth grade students perform mathematical operations and understand mathematical concepts at a high level. Contributing to this balance of thinking and doing are two extended real-world applications and numerous briefer real-life problems; regular work in pairs and small groups as a complement to independent work; and a continuing emphasis on communicating mathematical ideas verbally.

Key goals for the year include mastery of all four operations in multiple digits, fluency in all basic operations, an integrated understanding of fractions, decimals, and percents, facility with standard English measurement and metric measurement, and increased independence in problem solving.

The following topics are studied in fifth grade:

• Measurement – standard English and metric; ruler use; an understanding of scale in maps
• A review of multiplication and division
• Computation and estimation strategies in addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division
• The use of the scientific calculator
• Problem solving
• Fractions, decimals, and percents, and equivalencies among them
• Probability and statistics
• Real-world applications (sukkah project, marketing survey)
• Communication of mathematical ideas orally and in writing

Hebrew

The fifth grade is divided into three groups according to Hebrew language ability, and they and the third and fourth grade students study together, interspersed among the three classes. In each class, both oral and written Hebrew are emphasized, and class work is reinforced by homework.

In the advanced group, the main text is an anthology of Israeli literature. Students read short stories, non-fiction articles, and novels; write paragraph-length literary and non-fiction responses, as well as longer personal narratives and essays; and speak in full sentences using all tenses. In addition, they prepare and participate in a formal debate and make oral presentations at the conclusion of units of study.

In the other groups, the main focus of reading and writing is an Israeli language series written for Arab Israelis, supplemented by teacher-produced materials. Students read for meaning, write in response to their reading and in response to questions, and express their own thoughts and opinions in full sentences orally and in writing. They learn to conjugate verbs in present and past tense and are introduced to future tense; in addition, they study prepositions and conjunctions and incorporate them in their speaking and writing, and review agreement among nouns, verbs, and adjectives in gender and number. Hebrew continues to be spoken throughout the day in class routines and in the Jewish Studies program.

Thematic Studies, Science, and Social Studies

In fifth grade, the theme is New Beginnings, which parallels the students’ own growing need for independence and self-sufficiency. The students begin by studying Colonial America. Students explore the backgrounds of different groups of people before they set sail for the New World; they consider both the conditions they were seeking to escape, as well as the freedoms they were intent on finding. In small groups, they look more closely at the challenges the new settlers faced in each of three regions of the colonies – New England, the Middle Atlantic, and the South – and the ways in which they adapted and found solutions. Special attention is given to the Native American peoples they encountered and the relationships they established with them. For this study, students consult non-fiction texts, visit a museum, keep a journal, and conduct a simulation of Colonial life.

Later in the year, they begin a more extended study of immigration. The students read non-fiction accounts and answer complex comprehension questions. Additionally, museum visits, field trips, guest speakers, and an extended intergenerational oral history project broaden their knowledge of the topic. Moreover, interdisciplinary connections to math and art enrich their understanding. The main focus of the unit is independent research. Each student chooses a topic of his or her own interest related to the wider theme of immigration. Some topics come out of personal or family experience, while others are based on prior reading, discussion, or acquaintance; for example, in the past, topics have included the emigration of Syrian Jewry and the immigration of Holocaust survivors to America.

The research project extends over four months and is divided into stages with interim deadlines to help students plan, manage their time, and keep organized. They learn new research strategies, including highlighting keywords and important information, recording them on note cards, organizing the note cards into an outline before beginning to write, writing, submitting, and receiving feedback on multiple drafts, and preparing a bibliography. Upon completion, they submit their finished paper, as well as a poster display; they present their project to classmates, teachers, and parents; and they field questions from the audience at the conclusion of their presentation.

The fifth grade science curriculum is designed to dovetail with the social studies topics in a series of mini-units. These provide another perspective on the topic and help students understand history and the world around them in a fuller way. The curriculum focuses on problem-solving and categorization, skills that provide the foundation for more advanced study in the Middle School.

The discussion of the early American colonists is paralleled by a unit on physical geology: where rivers and mountains form and how they shape their surroundings. The colonists’ interactions with the Native Americans leads into a unit on classification of living organisms, including viruses and bacteria, culminating in an understanding of how the most potent weapon the Europeans brought with them was illness. Later on, Benjamin Franklin is a central character as the students learn about the scientific method and apply it to a study of different materials and their properties. Some experiments with electricity are included, though not nearly as dangerous as Franklin’s famous kite-playing escapade.

Following the study of the American colonies, students study the scientific principles of energy, force, and motion. These abstract concepts are then applied to the study of immigration as different modes of transportation are discussed and students come to understand how a large amount of weight – people, supplies, and animals – was transported across oceans. As Pesach approaches, the class returns its study of microscopic organisms to examine the illnesses that plagued new immigrants and the role of yeast in making bread rise, as seen from a scientific perspective.

Jewish Studies

A new subject in fifth grade is Jewish history. In a two-week mini-unit, students look at Jewish life in Europe in the nineteenth and early twentieth century, using both history and literature.

The fifth grade Torah curriculum focuses on the exodus from Egypt as related in Sh’mot (Exodus) 1-12. Students work primarily in study pairs (chevruta) and small groups to negotiate the text, comprehend it, answer text-based questions ranging from basic comprehension to close analysis, empathize with the biblical characters, pose interpretive questions, and answer them. In so doing, they create their own commentaries, which they share with other groups of students, invite them to offer their own interpretations, and together read classical and modern commentaries on the same questions that they posed.

Students also learn to teach each other passages that they studied in small groups, using group presentations, dramatizations, writing, and artwork.

In Mishnah, the curriculum incorporates a number of mishnayot and related sources from the Talmud on topics relating to interpersonal behavior. In small groups, students negotiate the text with the help of a glossary, think about the situations and concepts that the mishnah presents, ask interpretive, text-based questions, apply the ideas they discover to present-day situations, and argue and debate the questions, much as the rabbis of the mishnah did. Highlights of the year include interviews with parents concerning the mutual responsibilities of children and parents, and a simulated beit din (court of Jewish law) which the students convene to try a case of assault.

In t’filah, the fifth graders add new prayers to their daily liturgy, including birchot hashachar (the first morning blessings) and several chapters of psalms from p’sukei d’zimra. As in previous years, each new text is not only recited with correct intonation and melody; it is also mined for meaning, interpreted, personalized, and placed in the context of the overall structure of the prayer service. The highlight of the year is a siddur ceremony in which the students celebrate their completion of the matbe’a shel t’filah (the main prayers of the liturgy) by reviewing all the prayers that have learned over the years and reminiscing about the impressions that these early prayer experiences made on them. They also receive their first published siddur at this ceremony.

In anticipation of students’ approaching bar and bat mitzvah, a key goal of fifth grade is for all students to learn Torah cantillation and to take their place as Torah readers in the school’s twice-weekly Torah service. In addition, they extend their knowledge of birkat hamazon (Grace after Meals) to include the full text of the first b’rachah, in addition to the excerpts of the remaining b’rachot that they continue to recite, and they learn a new b’rachah to be recited after eating snacks.

The fifth grade chagim (Jewish holidays) curriculum incorporates most of the experiential elements that students encountered in their earlier years, thereby reinforcing an emotional attachment to each calendar event. At the same time, new concepts and texts are introduced to deepen students’ knowledge and enrich their experience: prior to Rosh Hashanah, Yom Kippur, Sukkot, Chanukah, Purim, and Pesach, they complete their study of the laws of these holidays by reading portions of the Kitzur Shulchan Aruch – M’kor Chaim (code of Jewish law) not studied the previous year; in addition, they learn the structure of the musaf prayer on Rosh Hashanah; they learn about challenges to Jewish unity during the Hellenistic period by simulating the responses of different sects to the events of the time; they learn the mishnah which presents the agricultural basis for the Tu Bish’vat holiday; and, in preparation for Yom Yerushalayim, they look at the events leading up to the outbreak of the Six-Day War.