News

Classroom Spotlight: A Scene in a Restaurant - Learning About Israeli Food

9/19/2024

Simha Hoze

In our 6-3 Hebrew class, students are learning about food. Israeli food! What Israeli breakfast looks like, typical dishes of the country, vegetarian food, recipes they can prepare at home, and even deserts! In the most recent assignment, students have been working on creating" A Scene in A Restaurant ". Students enthusiastically engage in conversation using their Hebrew food vocabulary, from deciding which restaurant they would like to go to, creating menu, and ordering food in the restaurant while adding an authentic touch to the scene.

Creating Sacred Spaces: A First-Grade Exploration

9/19/2024

by Sandra Menachem, 1st & 2nd Grade Judaic Studies Teacher

Our first graders embarked on a exploration of what makes a space or time sacred. Through the lens of Philemon Sturges’ book, Sacred Places, they discovered some of the world’s most revered spaces, which helped them connect to the idea that sacredness can be found in many forms.

In our Jewish studies class, the students learned that sacredness is not limited to specific times or places but can be deeply personal. They illustrated their own sacred spaces—whether it’s a cherished spot like a grandmother's home or a special moment spent in their parents' arms. Each drawing represents their unique personal connection to sacredness.

Unambiguous Loss

9/19/2024

Like many of you, I am sure, I spent last weekend reading the terrible news about the six hostages killed, and especially Hersh Goldberg-Polin: our own, a Bay Area boy, who became a kind of avatar for the indiscriminate horror of October 7th. I watched videos of Israelis surging into the streets, the shock and fury, the helplessness of individual parents and loved ones trying with all the might in their small bodies to array themselves against the disinterested, disembodied state. I watched Rachel, Hersh’s mother, courageously stand in front of the world as she has over and over for eleven months and put her pain into words. One section of her eulogy really caught my ear:

Classroom Spotlight: Photographers Head to the Zoo

6/7/2024

Evan Spiler

With the end of the year finally upon us, our 7th and 8th-grade photographers were excited to take their culminating trip to the San Francisco Zoo. The students have spent half a year in their photography elective learning deep technical skills with their SLR cameras.

Brandeis 2024 Today - A Remarkable Community

5/24/2024

Dr. Dan Glass, Head of School

Hello from New York, where I am representing Brandeis at The Covenant Foundation’s annual project

director’s meeting, and meeting with some of our alumni at Columbia and other New York colleges and universities.

We had a beautiful, joyful 60th-anniversary community celebration this past Sunday—I wanted to share in this space the welcome address I shared there.

Hello and welcome! It is such an honor to have you all here to celebrate this amazing school’s sixtieth anniversary. For those of you who I haven’t yet met, my name is Dan Glass, and I have the good fortune of being the head of school here at The Brandeis School of San Francisco, in my ninth year in that role. And if we have not met, please come introduce yourself today—whether you are an alum, a former parent, a friend of the school, if you are here to celebrate Brandeis then you are someone I would like to know.

Classroom Spotlight: First Grade Science in Nature

5/24/2024

Carly Cheng and Crystal Brown

Since the beginning of school, our wonderful first graders have put on their scientific hats and have been having a blast learning about the natural environment that surrounds us. This includes learning about sound and light, air and weather, and most recently plants and insects. We have been studying observing the general features of plants and insects as well as their life cycles. Most recently, this unit of inquiry culminated in the raising and release of Painted Lady butterflies!

Classroom Spotlight: Open Art in the Art Studio

4/19/2024

Cathy Withrington and Rebekah Goldstein

“Open Art” is a beloved part of the art program at Brandeis. Beginning in third grade students have the opportunity to spend recess or study hall in the art room.

Classroom Spotlight: Lab Reports!

3/7/2024

Sarah Goldrath & Rachel Klein

We are excited to share what our 2nd graders have been up to lately in the Writer’s Workshop pinwheel group - they've been working on Lab Reports! Lab Reports are a combination of non-fiction writing integrated with learning about scientific writing and procedures.

Linear Regression Modeling with Supply, Demand, and Market Equilibrium

3/7/2024

Alison Frank

8th grade students are using their knowledge of positive, and negative correlations to create a Market equilibrium for a needed product. Students created a good they felt was needed in the world, and created supply and demand curves to go along with their product. Products ranged from a pill that can do anything, to an animal translator, to a magic closet that picks your clothes for you each morning based on the weather forecast!

Classroom Spotlight: Legos Teach Active Listening and Overcoming Adversity

1/25/2024

Eitam Kohen, 5th Grade STEM

Four days a week, 5th graders begin their day with advisory. During this time, we take the opportunity to greet each other, play fun games, and build a sense of community. On Wednesday mornings, 5th graders enjoy an extended advisory session. During these sessions, we, as teachers, design lessons that aim to develop specific social-emotional skills. Last week's activity focused on practicing active listening and overcoming adversity.

Classroom Spotlight: Sparking Curiosity in 8th Grade Science with Potato Batteries

1/23/2024

Cassandra Burger

As we transition into the spring semester, the 8th-grade students have successfully concluded their exploration of chemistry concepts, seamlessly bridging the gap to their new unit: physics. In a recent hands-on demo titled "The Potato Battery Experiment," students actively participated in constructing potato batteries using copper and zinc electrodes, marking a captivating initiation into this physics-focused phase.

Classroom Spotlight: Social Studies, Language Arts, or Both?

12/18/2023

Madeleine Mackenzie

This year, 5th graders have been engaging with news more than ever, thanks to our new class subscription to Time for Kids, in partnership with the Mifgash Project. Each week, students get to peruse the magazine of the week, answer comprehension questions and do activities that come along with the articles. Each issue has a different theme, including artificial intelligence, global travel, animals, and charitable giving.

Classroom Spotlight: 7th Grade Practices Empathy and Critical Thinking with JCAT

12/6/2023

Our seventh-graders are participating in the Jewish Court of All Time (JCAT), a web-based simulation for middle school students, developed at the University of Michigan School of Education by their Interactive Communications and Simulations (ICS) group and designed in collaboration with RAVSAK (the Jewish Community Day School Network).

Classroom Spotlight: The "ish" of Perfectionism

11/17/2023

Doug Pierce, Kindergarten Teacher

Perfectionism is tricky for many kindergarteners (and adults.) Learning requires risk. If we’re not willing to make mistakes or discover we’re wrong, it’s hard to grow and learn.

There are many ways we normalize “making mistakes” in kindergarten. Our pencils do not have erasers - if you make a mistake, you can just cross it out and keep on going. We share the mistakes we make that lead to learning. As teachers, we draw attention to the mistakes we make throughout the day and talk about how that’s OK.

News From The Specialists - October 2023

10/29/2023

News From The Specialists - October 2023

Classroom Spotlight: 8th Graders Analyze the Structure and Emotion in Short Stories

10/19/2023

Having spent the last five weeks reading and discussing short stories, the 8th grade are now ready to apply all they have learned and write their own stories. As we read, we spent time considering the usual literary devices and became quite detailed in analyzing sentence structure and word choice. Identifying the different techniques is a review of work in previous grades, so in 8th grade we consider how the different devices interrelate. We have studied how setting can create the tone of the story; how Edgar Allen Poe unnerves the reader so deftly by simply inverting protagonist and antagonist, and how shifting to a first name can create sympathy in the reader.

Classroom Spotlight: A Day In Our CREATE Space

10/5/2023

Sandee Bisson, Maker Educator and Lower School STEAM Curriculum Designer

It is Thursday in the CREATE space. I generally get to campus early and enjoy watching the sun slowly fill this beautiful classroom with light. I have a little morning time to prepare my materials. This morning I am running some chipboard shapes through the laser cutter to use in an upcoming second-grade project. The faint smell of campfire smoke always accompanies running the laser, I love this smell. It reminds me of fall campfires back in New Hampshire. I do a quick classroom clean-up and then it’s time to start teaching.

Classroom Spotlight: Body Movement and Control

9/22/2023

Our beginning unit in PE is on Body Movement and Control. Our main learning targets are
understanding correct footwork, having spatial awareness, moving safely while under control,
and remaining balanced when landing after jumping. In order to reach our learning targets,
students were taught proper running form which led to various chase and flee games. They also
learned proper jumping form, which allows them to explode with such force and land with
balanced feet. Since the start of school, I can already see so much progress in the students’
footwork and running form and it’s been amazing to watch!

Brandeis 2023 Today - The Purpose of Challenge

9/15/2023

Dan Glass

In my welcome at lower school Back to School Night this week, I shared a piece of an invocation from Rabbi Saul White, one of the founders of our beloved school. I had a chance to sift through his papers some years ago, held in a special collection at UC Berkeley, and was stunned by the beauty of the words he shared on a variety of public occasions. I love sharing his thinking with our community, because, especially in celebrating this 60th year, I find great strength and inspiration in recognizing throughlines between the concerns of his era and our own. His affirmations of the value of democracy, equity, empathy, and justice—all of them resonate with our own contemporary hopes for our students and our community.

Classroom Spotlight - Shofar Workshop

9/15/2023

Sandra Menachem

In honor of Rosh Hashanah, our first graders participated in a shofar workshop led by Rabbi Gedalia Potash of Chabad of Noe Valley. This workshop enhances the students’ knowledge and understanding of Rosh Hashanah. Before sanding and varnishing their own shofarot to take home, students listened attentively to Rabbi Potash, who taught the students about the different animal horns used to make a shofar.