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Here are their announcements:

Beth Tfiloh Dahan Community School is pleased to announce that our school was awarded a 2011 PEJE Challenge Award—a $25,000 grant awarded to schools that have developed initiatives to drive increased revenue through innovation.  Beth Tfiloh was selected out of 141 applications from across North America.

“The challenge for applicants was to think innovatively, to defy their status quo, and to initiate bold changes within their school with the intention of stimulating growth in one of their key revenue streams” said Amy Katz, Executive Director at PEJE.

Beth Tfiloh’s application focused on our legacy giving development efforts. Since the launch of this initiative, our expanded planned giving program now includes the Kadima Legacy Society, which recognizes members of the Beth Tfiloh community who have made arrangements during their lifetime to leave a Legacy Gift to Beth Tfiloh. Additionally, Beth Tfiloh offers planned giving education for both our school and congregational leadership, teaching them how to make their own legacy gifts, as well as to encourage other in the community to follow their example. To help inspire future legacy gifts, Beth Tfiloh has profiled current legacy gift donors in various communications throughout our organization.

Special thanks to our Legacy Development Chair, Ricka Neuman, Vice-Chair, Ken Hornstein, and Linda Hurwitz along with Calla Samuels who helped with the grant writing process.  We are so proud to receive this award and wanted you to share in our accomplishment.

Beth Tfiloh Dahan Community School is the largest coeducational Jewish day school in the Baltimore metropolitan area, serving over 900 children representing a broad spectrum of Jewish observance.

From THE DAY SCHOOL AT BALTIMORE HEBREW
December 22, 2011  – Second Day of Chanukah

Yesterday The Day School at Baltimore Hebrew received one of the biggest, best, and somewhat unexpected gifts imaginable. We received notice that we were one of 25 schools in North America selected to win the PEJE Challenge Award-  $25,000 in Chanukah gelt!

The PTO and administration launched the “Dedication to Education” program last spring to achieve 100 per cent giving in our annual fund parents’ campaign.  At the time, we  knew that if the project was successful we would submit it to the Challenge grant contest, in hopes that we would impress the judges with what our school could achieve.  Our parents responded, we succeeded, and they were impressed!   Of 141 applicants, we were the only Reform Day School chosen, and will be honored by PEJE (The Partnership for Excellence in Jewish Education) at the upcoming North American Day School Conference. This was truly a team effort, with full school participation and belief in our ability to achieve our goals.

Here is some of what PEJE said about the winners:

Providing a high quality Jewish Day school education to current and future generations of Jewish children is vital to a vibrant and enduring Jewish future.  In today’s economic climate, attaining sustainability and affordability for our day schools is essential…. The review process was rigorous; the challenge for applicants was to think innovatively, to defy their status quo, and to initiate bold changes…The winners are a diverse mix but share one thing: their determination and optimism.

The school thanks their entire community for sharing in this achievement.

What makes this curriculum different from the traditional American approach?

A New Approach
“In Math in Focus, the lessons progress from the concrete, using manipulatives, to pictures, such as bar-modeling and number bonds, and then finally to the abstract—just using numbers,” says third grade teacher Mrs. Rona Zukerberg. “The curriculum is language-based, as opposed to focusing on rote memory.”

As Mrs. Wand explains, “The students don’t just have to get the right answer… they have to figure out how they get to the answer.” That’s very different for the children, especially for the advanced math students. “They know the right answer, but not always how they got the right answer. Problem-solving is at the core of the program, and provides the essential foundation for advanced mathematics later on.”

Right from the Start
First grade teacher Mrs. Rae Goldberg, a veteran BT teacher of 30+ years, is equally enthusiastic about Math in Focus—especially about its integration of technology, to create a more interactive educational experience. She also finds the focus on multi-step complex problem solving is central to every skill and concept discussion.

“They are visually engaged,” observes Mrs. Goldberg. “Beginning with manipulative materials, then creating a pictorial representation of the word problem, and finally writing the problem in numbers, connecting the visual to problem solving through mathematical reasoning and critical thinking. It’s an opportunity to learn in a wonderful way.”

Using this innovative approach, each topic is covered in greater depth, reinforcing the concepts and utilizing multiple strategies to understand the same equations. By staying on the same topic until it’s fully mastered, students develop a thorough understanding of core mathematical concepts and develop an automaticity and fluency that underpins their future success as math students. This operates in stark contrast to the traditional American math programs, which often use a “spiral approach,” exposing children to a broad range of concepts at several points in their education, but without any emphasis on mastery.

Parents See a Difference
At the Nov. 18 Parent Visiting Day, they got a hands-on introduction to Math in Focus, when students taught their parents how to do their math assignments. And excitement about this new curriculum is spreading…

Ellen Shevrin is impressed by her daughter’s progress with the new curriculum. “Meghan always had a challenge with math…up until this year,” observes Mrs. Shevrin. While doing her homework, Meghan is now “able to explain what she’s learning – the whole process. It’s definitely teaching her a different way of looking at math.”

Mrs. Wand agrees. “It’s been an amazing change so far,” she notes.

Ready to give it a try? Download this sample Math in Focus lesson PowerPoint, developed by Jessica Kresky and her Third Grade Team.

Watch this Fox News video: FOX Focus: Singapore math

Reading Multiple Books

I just had a flashback to an image of the end table beside my grandfather’s reading chair. He loved to read paperback mysteries and westerns (they used to call these books “oaters,” because they had horses in them and horses like to eat oats). He would always read about ten books at a time, and would stack them in a small tower, each book face down, spine split and open to mark his current page. My preference was to stay with one book at a time, and read it all the way through. I was amazed that my grandfather could read so many novels at once, and still manage to keep track of all the characters and plots.

Maybe he had the right idea. As students, we take several subjects at a time. Our English and history and math and science textbooks could be stacked the same way, at least metaphorically, as we go through different subjects according to the day’s schedule. If we watch any television shows with repeating characters, the experience can be similar to switching among different books after we’ve read a chapter (unless we rent the DVD of a show’s entire season and watch it all in a marathon).

With the new eBook reading devices, I’m surprised to realize I’ve switched to reading several books at the same time. The electronic device saves the place where I last read (just like my grandfather’s technique, but without damaging a book’s spine). I might be reading a horror story, a mystery, and a comedic self-help book, and I can switch among them according to my interest or mood. It’s a different approach to my “pleasure reading” time, but I like it because it ensures that I’m never bored.

And if I get really interested in a specific book, I can always switch back to my old one-at-a-time strategy until I finish!

–Dr. Norman Prentiss
Instructor, English Department Chair

Read more about Dr. Norman Prentiss, at www.shoshanascardin.org or www.normanprentiss.com

Day School at Baltimore Hebrew students learning with their iPads

Last spring, the CJE (Center for Jewish Education) and Apple teamed up to offer day schools a set of iPads, a synch cart and apps, along with a day-long professional development workshop, for an attractive price.

The Day School at Baltimore Hebrew responded to the offer, ever eager to bring best practices in education to its students. After a marathon workshop in August, the iPads were rolled out during the first week of school. Children in Kindergarten through eighth grade are now learning to use these tools to enhance their experience.

Head of School Gerri Chizeck says, “The children are loving the iPads, and of course are more tech savvy than the faculty, but we are learning together. We are making sure that they are not just a gadget, but something that increases collaboration, creativity and problem-solving abilities. We can also personalize and differentiate curriculum with them.”

So far, the children have:

• Made documentaries on the birth of the universe
• Introduced themselves to one another with recordings and interviews
• Found their homes on maps
• Created graphs
• Studied math vocabulary, and
• Written letters in Hebrew to friends in Israel

Mrs. Chizeck visited the students in the seventh and eighth grade and asked how they felt about the iPads. Here are some responses:

“They are really fun and portable. It’s great to have access to the Internet right at your desk. And because we share them, I get to see the cute photos and things the first grader who shares my iPad made.”

“I love them! They make learning so 2011.”

“We adapt to new ways of learning—more fun, more technical, more interesting.”

“It’s good for our minds that we learn to use different technologies and tools, learning how to use them while learning material.”

“We’re having fun while learning. I think if we never had them we’d be learning more out of textbooks and on computers, instead of something new and enjoyable.”

“We can teach our parents who have them all the great things you can do.”

Come see our iPad program in action! Visit us online at www.thedayschoolbh.org.

The most exciting new experience for me this year is being able to teach the 11th grade U.S. Literature class in conjunction with the U.S. History class. When two disciplines work so well together, it’s very exciting to be able to teach both!

Though we pride ourselves on integration throughout the curriculum, doing it within two classes that one teacher is teaching can be a unique experience. While learning events that occurred and how people handled them over the course of history, we refer to texts from English class that are expressions of those feelings and events. Understanding the historical context of writings, as well as their literary devices and styles, has truly enhanced the learning within each of these classes and I’m excited to see how it continues over the course of the entire year!

View A Taste of Krieger Schechter Middle School from Krieger Schechter on Vimeo.

From March until June I studied the Holocaust. I read Night, watched Schindler’s List, and read assorted readings about Poland and the Holocaust. The day finally came that I left. My family and I drove to New York and met the group there, and I was then on my way. After a six-hour layover in Austria, I was finally in Poland. There was no time to waste; we went straight to our first site. It was a cemetery in Warsaw. The first thing we were told when we entered was to not be sad. This wasn’t a sad cemetery like all the other ones that we had ever visited. This cemetery had survived the Holocaust. A lot of stones were still there and there was a wall made of all the stones that had been destroyed. This wall was made to honor the memory of the people whose graves had been destroyed.

After that, we stayed our first night in Warsaw. We stayed in Warsaw for two days, then Lublin for one, and Krakow for Shabbat. One of the most memorable sites that we visited was the Rema Shul and his grave. As my tour guide, Moshe Gold, told us about this, a light bulb went off in my head. I had learned about Rabbi Moshe Isserles in school the year before. It was ingrained in my head who he was and why he was important. When my tour guide asked my group if anyone knew who he was, I knew. I felt proud that I was among people who had been going to day school their whole lives and I knew something that everyone else’s schools didn’t cover.

Through the whole Poland trip this happened to me. I was very knowledgeable about the sites that we went to because of my time at Cardin. I was very grateful for this and I look forward to another great year of learning and growing as a student at Cardin.

Adina Golob
Class of 2012

Hoping to take arts integration to the next level, Cardin invited Mrs. Heidi Miller, a consultant from Lincoln Center Institute for the Arts in Education to visit our school.

She was impressed by the spirit of inquiry and openness in our classrooms and told us that Cardin seemed like an excellent match for LCI.

In September 2008, the Shoshana S. Cardin School inaugurated its partnership program with Lincoln Center Institute supported by a generous grant from the Herbert Bearman Foundation.  Artist-in-residence, Jerry James, from Lincoln Center introduced the  students to the works of Matisse and Gauguin and helped our students to increase their ability to and willingness to enter the art experience; to notice deeply and articulate their noticing; to analyze a work of art and their own artistic process; and, ultimately, to express themselves through their own art making.

In September 2009, Ann Zaiman established a Judaic Studies Fund to support a yearly artist-in-residence program in order to ensure the centrality and continuation of arts in the curriculum. Our first artist-in-residence was renowned New York illustrator and artist, David Wander. During the fall, he helped our students imaginatively respond to Jewish texts with visual images.  The students created over 25 original works inspired by a Talmudic text and displayed them in a show entitled: “Views from the Mountain:  New Images from an Ancient Story”.

In the fall of 2010, our second artist-in-residence, Betty McIntire from Los Angeles, introduced our students to her collage making technique and walked them through the process of writing found poetry using the Torah portions they chanted when they became b’nei mitzvah.  The students had an amazing four days and saw Torah, art, and poetry come together in a magical way.

According to Lincoln Institute, “engagement with the arts is how we build imagination.  Education establishments whose responsibility it is to prepare the next generation of world citizens must provide an entirely new level of learning that has at its core three words:  Imagination, creativity, and innovation – essential skills no teaching organization can afford to ignore.”

Not only do the arts tap into the imaginations of students, they create the deepest kind of involvement in Jewish learning.  They create a unique entrée into the material, generate new ways to uncover and translate the meanings of our tradition, and provide students with the opportunity to produce amazing art of their own, thereby, continuing a tradition, started by the biblical Bezalel and his students.