Torah Day School of Atlanta Home

This Tuesday was Election Day across the United States of America and while our parents were heading to the polls, TDSA's students were too. Ms. Carter's students learned all about and participated in the voting process by constructing their own voting booth and voting on their favorite animal. Other classes even got a chance to vote for their favorite animals as well including Ms. Jenn's second grade students and even some fifth graders. After the voting was complete, Ms. Carter's students practiced their math skills and counted the votes using tally marks. The results, Tigers beat out Elephants and Sharks for favorite animal by a landslide!

In Middle School Writing Class with Mrs. Best, the editing process is a critical part of practicing and improving our students' writing skills. As part of this process, Mrs. Best is teaching her students the important skill of peer review. During the peer review process, students help each other by assessing the clarity, readability and soundness of the concepts they're writing. Doing this helps both students involved to better evaluate and refine their own writing skills.

In Ivrit class this past week, in honor of the first Prime Minister of Israel, David Ben Gurion, the eighth grade students discussed what תכונות אופי/character traits one needs to be an effective מנהיג/leader. After the discussion, the students were asked to construct a מנהיג and explain what traits they are looking for in a leader.

As the weather outside cools down, the learning inside TDSA is heating up! In STEAM this week our students have been learning about how some animals conserve heat and survive the winter by hibernating. The students learned about which animals hibernate, and how they prepare for hibernation, by eating the right kinds of foods and preparing insulated dens. The kindergarten students used leaves they collected to make a cozy den for a hedgehog and the second graders created their own matching games to find the foods that will best prepare a bear for hibernation.

The mood was somber throughout the school as we remembered the fallen Israeli soldiers of the IDF and victims of terrorist attacks. Boys and girls in the Middle school participated in a Yom HaZikaron ceremony that explained the meaning of the day, recited prayers for the z'chus of the fallen and their families, a bracha for the current soldiers, and tehilim for all of Klal Yisroel. Mrs. Kalnitz shared stories about Capt. Dekel Swissa, a valiant young man from Bar Giora who served as a Captain in the Golani Brigade,13th Battalion, and was killed at the Paga outpost on October 7 while saving his platoon. Dekel was TDSA's Shinshin in 2018 and lived with the Kalnitz family during his stay in Atlanta.
The lower school visited a display in the lobby depicting a timeline of the wars since the State of Israel's inception. Tomorrow, the mood swings as we celebrate Yom HaAtzmaut as a TDSA community.

How do you know the agenda for the day? You read it, of course! I walked into this Kindergarten class as they were learning the day's plan through a reading activity. This boy was asked to find a blended sound of "ST" within the letter about their major activity. Can you find it? He did!

Escape rooms involve critical thinking, creativity, and collaboration; all excellent skills to build in an academic experience. 8th grade Humanities is learning about the Cold War. Throughout the hallway and the classroom, small groups of girls were intensely focused on escaping from the communist, East side of the Berlin Wall to the West side of Germany during this escape-room-style learning activity. In this picture, the group is using Google Translate to understand German documents to help them on their journey. It was amazing to see these girls engaged in such a creative and valuable way while learning!

8G invited me to view their Ivrit presentations today. Working in pairs, they thought of rooms that served a useful purpose. Then they wrote about these rooms in Hebrew and put it on a slide show or poster. Each group presented their project entirely in Hebrew! It was amazing to see their pride, creativity, and skill

These 5th grade boys didn't even notice me walk into the classroom - they were so intensely engaged in this group discussion. Mrs. Bendicoff split the class into sections, some worked independently while this group shared their thoughts in a literature circle format on the the historical fiction book: "If I lived at the Time of the Signing of the Constitution". They came up with some insightful ideas!

"Which two arctic animals will never meet?" This is the question a kindergarten girl asked me as I observed them making polar bears, arctic hares, walruses, snow foxes, and the like. Each table featured a slew of arts and crafts supplies for the excited girls to create their cold-climate animals they learned all about during science. The answer - which I was proud to get correct - is penguins and Polar Bears. Each is native to a different pole of the globe (North and South). Ask a Kindergartener which lives where!