Our talented 8th graders have just completed an exciting and creative assignment: a lip sync video challenge! Each student was assigned a very popular Argentinian song to lip sync called “Corazón” (heart) giving them the perfect opportunity to showcase their creativity, confidence, and unique flair. This engaging project turned out to be a highlight for the students, combining both fun and learning in a memorable way.
Since we are in October, we have entered into our Throwing Unit beginning with underhand throwing. Our main learning targets include controlling their fine and gross motor skills through underhand throwing and accuracy and distance in throwing. In order to reach our targets, a proper underhand throwing technique was taught to the students in three simple steps: 1) STEP (step with opposite foot), 2) TICK (swing throwing arm behind to 6:00), 3) TOCK (swing throwing arm in an underhand motion to 3:00).
Your participation in The Brandeis Fund makes a meaningful difference in every student's journey, which is why we're striving for 100% family participation this year.
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.
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:
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.
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.
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!
“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.
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.
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!
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.
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.
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.
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).
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.
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.
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.