This week the Chief Rabbi visited the school for the official opening. He arrived very early in the morning.  He arrived for 7:30 with his security people. The Chief Rabbi then took prayers with about 20 other men from the two shuls Giffnock and Newton Mearns . All the men did prayers then there was a breakfast and the Chief Rabbi gave a little speech.

At 9 all the children came into the hall all the and did prayers together and the Chief Rabbi  made another speech.

After that we all made are way to our classrooms.  The Chief Rabbi then attended then schools official opening ceremony. The choir also sang at the ceremony.

P4 and P5 were very lucky that the Chief Rabbi came to watch some of our Kodesh lesson with Mrs Rosenberg. Then just before lunch the Chief Rabbi  and Rabbi Rubin in front of the whole school went outside put up the front door mezuzah .

We have also been busy in class this week. We have been continuing our work on ‘Thinking Reader Strategies’ and working on identifying different question types. We have also been learning how to show direct speech in our writing and how to write paragraphs. In art today we have been continuing with our grid drawings and it is starting to pay off as some of our drawings are becoming very detailed and accurate.

By Meir and Aydin

In Primary 4 this week we have been learning about…

We have been learning about the plants located in the rainforest. The Pitcher plant is colourful so that it attracts frogs and insects but it is poisonous and kills them. There is a tree called the rubber tree that provides us with rubber. We also learned about cacoa and coffee bush that give us chocolate and coffee! We learned about this from a powerpoint then we had write down and label diagrams about them.

On Thursday we completed morning calculations! Mrs Grubb gave us algebraic equations to solve! To start with we were confused but once we got the hang of it we managed to answer them all.

In maths the Brains have been learning how to add and subtract big numbers. We used the place value materials to make the numbers and physically exchange and carry hundreds, tens and units and then recorded this in our jotters.

In PE we have been learning about football. We were learning about possession and how to keep it close to our feet. We also had to try and make passes through a narrow space and count how many we managed without hitting a cone.

We had an exciting Friday this week. This morning we had a pantomime Jack and the Beanstalk. It was very exciting and the giant was very realistic.

After break we all went into our new committees –Eco, Rights Respecting, Digital Leaders, Road Safety, Health and PE, Mitzvah and Literacy. Each group was a mix of P1-P7 and we all met for the first time to share our ideas about events in the school that we would like to hold. Apparently some of the groups have a few surprises up their sleeves! We can’t wait to find out what those are!

In Primary 4 this week we have been learning ..

About rugby in PE we were playing touch rugby and we learned that we had be quick thinking about where to pass the ball you can only pass backwards and not forwards.

In Kodesh we made challah with Mrs Rosenberg and Mrs Bodenheim. We had to split the dough into 4 then make them into a sausage shapes and then weave them together and then made them into a circle shape then they were baked in the dinner hall. We ate it when we got home and it was yummy!

In social studies we started our Rainforest topic we learned where all the rainforests are located and they are all near equator. The biggest rainforest is the Amazon.

We continued with our class charter and finished our display. We have all pledged what we will do to make sure that everyone in the class will have their rights. We are all excited to show our parents this at the curriculum afternoon.

 This week was maths week and we worked with Primary 5 to do measuring in the playground. We measured the length and breadth of the playground and various different pieces of equipment. We then recorded our findings and compared our answers we noted that some were very different and others were similar – we learned that we should look carefully and double check our measurements.

We all agreed on a class reward system where we can earn dojo tokens and spend them on things in the class. We have all worked really hard to earn dojos and are well on our way to saving up enough tokens to spend them on what we want.

 In literacy we have been continuing our study of Matilda. This week we were focussing on comprehension and finding information we worked as a group to read together and then find the best answer.

In Primary 4 this week…

We have continued studying Matilda and we were focussed on a comprehension task and how to find information in a text. We found this a little tricky and had to go over how to find information in the text and how to write the best answer.

In maths we have been working on our Problem Solving skills by completing our number countdown challenge. Some of us managed to get the target others have been getting closer. We are continuing to improve our mathematical skills.

We were also completing some on our own reading and comprehension tasks to see how well we could interpret the texts on our own.

With Miss Nisbet we wrote a limerick (a funny poem) about Matilda.

We had our first music lesson with Mrs Duggie. We were learning about how to show so, la and mi with our hands and where to place the notes on the stave.

In Primary 4 this week we have been learning about

In language we have been learning about characterisation and the five points of it appearance, speech, manner, interactions and actions. To learn about characterisation we studied Matilda, Miss Trunchbull and Miss Honey from Matilda and looked at the ways they were described and portrayed and we also used these to give our personal opinions on the characters.

We also had our meet the teacher this week and were excited by the amount of parents that came to visit our class. During the meet the teacher we got to complete some fun activities on Matilda and we all enjoyed making up new ways to get back at Mr and Mrs Wormwood, we also loved making up a new character for the book and writing a poem or song.

We have been continuing our work on SHANARRI and we can all now state what each letter stands for and state a way that these indicators are achieved in school.

We have been enjoying countdown challenges from Mrs Grubb in Maths and Language where we are getting to practise our arithmetic and spelling in a fun way.

In Ivrit we have been learning the Hebrew words for all of our family members. Mr Guetta has started teaching us a song to help us remember.

In Kodesh we have been learning about the 4 festivals that we will be celebrating. Rosh Hashanah, Succot, Yom Kippur and Simchat Torah.

In PE we were working on different types of movement for fitness with Miss Nisbet.

We started our PE lessons with Mr Fry and we were all very impressed with the size of our new gym hall. In PE we were learning new ball and racket skills.

We had some very important visitors join us from our partner school in Israel they came to chat us about our new school and how impressed they were.

We got a new Torah and had an assembly with Rabbi Ruben and some other special visitors who had helped raised money for the Torah.

We have started a new class novel Matilda by Roald Dahl. On Tuesday with Miss Nisbet we wrote a diary entry as Matilda. We had to use the word ‘I’, thought of good openers, used our ‘WOW’ words to make the entry interesting.

With Mrs Grubb we have been reading more Matilda and completing character studies and discussing how we would describe the characters and justifying our answers using examples from the text.

We are still working to get our classroom the way we want it. First we started to make our class charter which will show what rights we have and how we will make sure that we get these and help others to achieve them. We also made our ‘helping hands’ so that we can start being responsible and having different jobs in the class.

We think we are all settling in to Primary 4 well and are enjoying being part of the upper school.

Primary 3 have been very busy getting prepared for Messibat Siddur. To begin with, we were each given our words we had to learn off by heart at home. Then we had to learn all 11 songs for the night and were helped in doing so by Mr Guetta and Mrs Levern who played the piano for us. Mrs Rosenberg and Mr Fry helped organise where we should be standing on stage and told us when we should move up to the microphone to say our words. Brittany helped choreograph a part of the performance where the dancers come on stage to dance to Yaldahaat.

We are now all super excited for tonight where will perform in front of our parents, families and Rabbi Rubin. We hope our performance goes as well as it did in the dress rehearsal yesterday!!!!

by Logan, Josh and Mr Fry

As part of our topic of Scotland we were asked to design a castle. Our castle had to include: a barbican, 4 turrets, a drawbridge, at least 4 rooms and a unique feature. After completing the design brief we shared our designs within our group before voting on the person we thought had the best design. Hulk’s group voted for Naomi and Batgirl’s group voted for Sheer.

We then began to bring in our cardboard materials, string and tin foil to use to help build our castles. Everyone got into their groups and gathered materials they needed to build their castle. It took us about 4 periods to complete our castles. Our parents then had the opportunity to see our completed castles at parent’s night as they were on display in the classroom.

We used our talking and listening skills to help write, draw and select the design brief. After deciding this we then used our creative skills (designing, cutting and sticking) to help build our castle at our group. We very much enjoyed designing and making our castles.

Mr Fry, Chloe and Noah

During Science lessons this term we have been learning about magnets with Mrs Grubb. We’ve learned about the south and the north poles of a magnet and how if you put a north pole with a south pole they attract. However, if you try to put 2 north poles or 2 south poles together they do the opposite (repel).

We’ve also learned the core of the earth is made up of iron and is surrounded by a magnetic field. We looked at an experiment with iron shavings sitting on a piece of card and placed a magnet underneath the paper. We found by placing the magnet underneath the iron shavings it made different patterns around the magnet poles.

Primary 3 also looked at ‘floating magnets’, this proved to us that north and south poles attract and the same poles repel.

We’ve really enjoyed taking part in science experiments this term and have learnt lots of information about magnets!

by Aviv, Sheer and Mr Fry.