6th Grade Curriculum
Students in 6th grade are at an interesting point in their young lives: trying to better understand their own identities, working out the complexities of their relationships with others, figuring out how they fit into this world, determining how to react to challenges they face. The 6th grade curriculum allows students the opportunity to learn that Jews throughout time have struggled with the same questions! Over the course of history, Jews have faced challenges, adapted to new situations, and made a special mark on the world. We want our students to see themselves not only as the recipients of a rich history and heritage, but also as the people who will create the next chapters in our story. In the Hebrew curriculum, 6th graders add to their base of prayer knowledge and become more comfortable reading the prayers and understanding their meaning. Our goal is to have confident Hebrew readers who are excited to apply their skills when preparing to become Bar and Bat Mitzvah. It is our hope that this 6th grade year is not just a completion of several years of Jewish study, but the doorway to lifelong Jewish learning and experiences.
Books/Materials
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Judaica
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Hebrew
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*Teachers’ Guides for all series are located in the office. Please consult these guides when planning lessons as they contain specific teaching objectives and a variety of suggested learning activities.
Essential, Guiding Questions
1) How do our lives compare with our ancestor’s lives throughout history?
2) What have different generations done to adapt Judaism to their own realities?
3) How have Judaism and Jewish communities changed over time and space?
4) How do our tefilot (prayers) help us connect to God and to our Jewish community?
5) What are the ways that our tefilot express core Jewish values?
Evidences of Understanding/Experiencing
Upon completion of the year, students will be able to:
- Explain different situations in Jewish history when our ancestors were faced with challenges and their response was either resist, assimilate, or adapt
- Describe how Rabbinic Judaism emerged after the destruction of the Temple and explain its legacy to the Judaism we know today
- Articulate differences between Christianity and Judaism and explain the historical circumstances of those differences
- Compare and contrast Sephardic and Ashkenazic traditions within Judaism
- Give examples of persecution in Jewish history and how people dealt with those challenges
- Explain how Reform Judaism emerged
- Describe Zionism and explain the dream of having a Jewish State in Israel
- Compare immigrants’ Jewish experiences with their own Jewish experiences
- Analyze the role of the Holocaust as related to the birth of Israel
- Express different ways that they see their role in writing the next chapter of Jewish history
- Read the following prayers fluidly: Torah blessings, Shalom Rav / Sim Shalom / Oseh Shalom, Yotzer Or, Maariv Aravim, V’shamru, Aleinu, Kaddish
- Identify and explain the core theme of each prayer studied
- Recognize and define key shorashim (roots) from each prayer studied
- Define key vocabulary words from each prayer
- Reflect on the characteristics/role of God in each prayer and compare to their own understandings of God
- Express, either verbally or artistically, the meaning of each prayer (through the Siddur Sheli portfolio projects)
