News

We love learning Parshah at HANC ECC! In Parshas VaYigash, we learned that Serach bas Asher serenaded Yaakov with her harp when he was sad about Yosef. Some of the classes crafted their own harps to make the parshah come alive.

Mazal tov to Hannah Lewin, Talia Loskove, Molly Sigman, Isabella Weisfeld, and Arielle Yarmish – 12^th Graders at the Stella K. Abraham High School for Girls, who were honored with the Yedid Yesha award on Tuesday evening, December 29, at One Israel Fund’s virtual event.

On Thursday, December 24, the whole eighth grade began a project called Names Not Numbers©. In the program, students interview Holocaust survivors and edit the interviews, which are then made into a documentary.

Last week, Metivta Tiferet Torah in Kew Gardens held a special Asarah B’Teves program for its talmidim. The rosh yeshivah, Rabbi Nir Aminov, opened the program with a moving description of the plight and tenacity of our brethren who lived through the Holocaust and their fierce commitment to Torah u’mitzvos. His presentation was followed by a specially-produced video about the heroes of the Holocaust, which was produced by Torah Umesorah.

The Yeshiva Sha’arei Zion girls had an exciting Chodesh Teves assembly last week. The G.O. girls announced the chesed of the month to bring in more ahavas Yisrael!

While January 1 was a day off for the IVDU LI students, the staff went “back to school” for a day of professional development with Dr. Rebeka Gutkind, curriculum coach at IVDU. The workshop title was definitely an unassuming one: “Reading Comprehension in the Classroom: Understanding what it’s all about,” but proved to be a lot more than the proverbial reading workshop. Rookie assistants and veteran teachers alike were challenged to re-approach their whole mindset to teaching reading comprehension. Because many language processing techniques occur simultaneously during reading, Dr. Gutkind first focused on how to be a diagnostic teacher and do a proper task analysis to determine where the child’s skills deficits are occurring. Dr. Gutkind then introduced a model of literacy that applies to learners at every stage of development. Reading comprehension for students at the early stages of exposure helps take the written word which can be highly abstract and teaches kids to visualize and verbalize what they are reading to learn the nuances of language across all subjects. The presentation was well grounded in theory and was based on the five cognitive processes that occur when reading. Drawing upon her decades of experience, real case studies and fun texts, the presentation proved to be highly engaging and enriching.