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Kitah Dalet

session 5 10/14/18

10/14/2018 08:46:05 AM

Oct14

Mrs. Deckert and Mr. Chazdon

Dear Kitah Dalet families,

*Today's class began with a discussion about what it means to be a good person. What types of things does a good person do and how do they act? I explained that in Judaism we have a special word for a 'good person.' We call them a mensch! A mensch is a person who uses Jewish values to help them make good decisions. These values are called middot (plural) and the middah (singular) of the day was rachamim/ compassion. Compassion is not simply being kind. It is the willingness to 'put yourself in someone else's shoes' and see things from their viewpoint. We read a story from our tradition, 'Rabbi Abba and the Setting Sun.' Ask your 4th grader what Rabbi Abba did to show compassion when he came to a literal, and metaphorical, fork in the road. We followed this up with a modern day example of compassion in a classroom welcoming a new student. We call these 'fork in the road' opportunities a 'moment of choice,' when we need to decide how we will act. We will use these terms often throughout this unit of study. Please feel free to add the word mensch to your family vocabulary when you spot your children being kind, compassionate, honest, fair, generous....mensch-like!

*Kitah dalet met with Rabbi Jaech to look at the many lessons in this week's parsha, The Tower of Babel. Rabbi admitted it is a difficult story to understand, but explained that we can each find our own connection and meaning in the narrative. It is a story about human ambition and the role of communication. Here is a short video she shared with us: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mha9c3QX5QI

b'shalom,

Morah Betsy Deckert

 

Shalom Kitah Dalet Parents,

 

I’m please to tell you that I really enjoyed working with Kitah Dalet yesterday. This is the point at which the class really starts to “get” the learning stations and starts to benefit from them. Our fifth Ivrit session started off with a review of the most recently learned letters, as well as all of the most common vowels. I gave students a new sheet of vowel tips, using pictures and simple phrases to help them link the vowel sounds to images of everyday objects or actions. I will include this sheet with the home assignment for posting on the Temple website.

 

After reviewing we moved to a refresher demonstration of the carousel station, a device that builds Hebrew syllables and combination one letter at a time. I think that this experience helped raise the comfort level with this station. It was a true joy seeing the students working at the learning stations in small groups fairly independently.

 

The next phase was a presentation of the next group of letters and vowels; ב and פּ , which are sister letters of two letters already learned (בּ   and פ) and the new vowels ֵ (ei) and ֻ  (ooh) .

 

I announced that next week we’ll do an exercise to see how well they know the Alephbet and vowels.

 

L’shalom,

 

Lane Chazdon

 

https://images.shulcloud.com/1336/uploads/CJL-assignment-photos/Chazdon-Lessons-5-and-6-with-translit.pdf

https://images.shulcloud.com/1336/uploads/CJL-assignment-photos/Vowel-Tips-1016180001.jpg

https://images.shulcloud.com/1336/uploads/CJL-assignment-photos/Vowel-Tips-1016180002.jpg

Sun, September 14 2025 21 Elul 5785