PHDS/NEAT News. NEAT Production The NEAT production,

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1 Providence Hebr ew Day School/ New England Academy of Torah NEAT Production The NEAT production, Coming Home, will take off this Motzoei Shabbos at 8:00 pm and on Sunday at 2:00 pm. This production is the culmination of hours of hard work on the part of the NEAT student body and the adults in the community who volunteered their time to help. Please join us for an inspiring and entertaining performance and show your support and appreciation for their efforts. We look forward to seeing you there! Professional Development On Thursday, all of the teachers of Grades 1-12 attended the second in a series of professional development workshops on the topic of Think About Thinking: Promoting Executive Functions at PHDS/ NEAT, presented by Dr. Nancy Norton. The next part of this professional development will be Dr. Norton s visit to classrooms. The workshop was informational and thoughtprovoking, and many teachers commented that they look forward to learning more on the topic through Dr. Norton s classroom visits and final workshop. Today s presentation and the other workshops this year are funded through Title II funding from the federal government. The first in a series of workshops for our Pre-K and Kindergarten teachers in the area of fine and gross motor skill development will take place next Tuesday. These workshops will be given by Mrs. Tzippy Shooman, an occupational therapist. February 7, Adar I 5774 Dates to Remember: February 8/9 NEAT Production February 14/17 No School Presidents Day Inside This Issue: School Choice Rally 2 Shabbos Programming 2 Give and Get Update Volunteers Needed! The following volunteers are needed for one-time opportunities: Classroom Chatter 3/4 Student Council News 4 From Rabbi Scheinerman 5 Substitutes in the Early Childhood program: Tuesday, February 11 12:00-1:30 Wednesday, February 12 12:00-3:15 Thursday, February 13 11:45-3:15 Wednesday, February 19 12:00-2:30 Tuesday, February 25 10:45-11:30 If you can help with any of this, please contact Mrs. Weiner at MEWeiner@phdschool.org.

2 Page 2 School Choice Rally Last Thursday, Rabbi Scheinerman and a large group of PHDS parents joined many other private and faith-based schools in Rhode Island at a special rally at the State House to encourage legislators to pass a voucher bill in Rhode Island. School choice is nothing new, said guest speaker Derrell Bradford, Executive Director of Better Education for Kids. Mr. Bradford recently served as the Executive Director and Director of Communications for Excellent Education for Everyone (E3), New Jersey s largest school choice advocacy group. Bradford enthralled the audience with his personal story about how his life was shaped by a scholarship he received. Bradford said that school choice exists today, but only for the rich, who can choose to live in wealthy, upscale public school districts. He stated that President Barack Obama was the recipient of a scholarship that allowed him to attend private school in Hawaii. Pointing to the dismal scores and performance in many urban schools, Mr. Bradford said that status quo is simply not acceptable. Rabbi Scheinerman was selected to present the School Choice Award to two private school recipients. In his brief address, Rabbi Scheinerman mentioned that there are already 13 states that have enacted school voucher laws, and, G-d willing, Rhode Island will be number 14. Rhode Island already has a small scholarship tax credit program which has helped many parents afford PHDS and other private schools. However, due to the nature of the program, it is not a stable source of scholarship funding for families. Jewish day school affordability is a system-wide problem for families, said Rabbi Scheinerman, a strong advocate for school choice. Regardless of income level, families seeking to educate their children are struggling. States where school choice initiatives have been enacted have been successful in recruiting new families to their communities, since tuition payments are either free or greatly reduced. We appreciate Agudath Israel of America, which has been especially supportive of this initiative; the organization sent Rabbi A.D. Motzen to visit Providence, meet with a group of school choice advocates and offer his services and expertise to help us get a voucher law passed. His help has been invaluable. Attendees also heard remarks from Edward Bastia, Business Administrator for Catholic Education in Rhode Island. The Catholic schools of the Diocese of Providence, Rhode Island are proud to join with PHDS and other school communities of Rhode Island Families for School Choice in bringing expanded parental choice in education into focus at the Rhode Island State House. We no longer subscribe to the conventional mindset that educational opportunities should be limited by one s street address. The time has come to empower parents to choose the best educational environment for their sons and daughters. Give parents credit, because they know best. The PHDS Band performed at the rally, and the special partnership of PHDS was noted by many of our colleagues and partner schools. This week Shabbos Programming Likras Shabbos is 4:05. Ateres is 4:55 on Friday night. Bnos is 2:30-3:30 on Shabbos afternoon. Ahavas Yisroel Group is 2:35-3:25 on Shabbos afternoon. Pirchei is 3:15-4:15 on Shabbos afternoon. Avos U Banim is 7:00-7:45 on Motzoei Shabbos. Thank you to Mr. Pinny and Mrs. Elisheva Berlin for sponsoring the snacks for Bnos and Pirchei this week.

3 Page 3 Classroom Chatter I Pre-Kers have been having so much fun creating various parts of the kohen gadol's clothing. They made a choshen (different versions for 3s and 4s), a hat, a gold band, an apron and a belt. They really enjoyed making these items, dressing up and having their picture taken! What's better than a hot bowl of soup on a cold wintry day? The preschool children took turns cutting up different vegetables for a vegetable soup. They did a very yummy group project while strengthening their fine motor skills. Good job, Pre-K! Kindergarten students learned about the clothes of the kohen and the kohen gadol. Their challenge was to take pictures of the various articles of the priestly clothing and properly categorize them and put them in the correct pockets. Kindergarteners really knew their stuff! This week, Kindergarteners have been working on the letter H. Horses, hippos and homes are a few of their letter H topics. Even though hippos are enormous animals, they are terrific swimmers. A few of the students favorite stories have been Harry and the Lady Next Door and Harry the Dirty Dog. The first graders have completed their first research paper. The activity surrounding the assignment caused a lot of stir in the classroom as each student found a spot of the floor to spread out his/ her individual, oversized (back issues) of Weekly Readers, Kids Time Magazines and Kids National Geographic, to read and ponder. The issues selected for this assignment all featured articles related to animals and ranged from the discovery of a new minute species of poisonous tree frog in a rainforest of South America to the protection of the endangered giant pandas of China. The students silently read, extracted interesting facts and wrote about them, and then shared and led discussions about their individual topics. Mrs. Hall took pictures throughout the morning. The pictures, along with their research papers, will now be incorporated into the students Autobiographies as a keepsake, since it was, indeed, a memorable day of learning! Toda rabba latalmidim b kita gimmel!!! Ani mitrageshet ki kulchem asitem avoda metzuyenet!!! Mrs. Lipson is extremely proud of the third grade students who, fluently and expressively, performed an original play (based on a Midrash) in Ivrit. Their enthusiasm during the performance was contagious! Wishing their proud parents continued nachas. Third grade students have worked hard learning multiplication strategies for basic multiplication facts. They are looking forward to working with more challenging problems, with rules and variables, as they continue to master their basic multiplication facts. Fourth graders have been working hard on solving twoby more than two-digit multiplication problems. They are looking forward to working with progressively more challenging division problems, now with remainders. The fifth graders were reminded of the significance of each word of Torah when they spent most of a class period discussing the first few words of the Aseres Hadibros (Ten Commandments) in Chumash. They have been studying the mitzvos and concepts of the Aseres Hadibros in detail - with Rashi s help, of course. The Adar Aleph bulletin board, presented by the middle school girls, is a sight to behold. The girls made gorgeous posters depicting ma amarei Chazal, sayings from our Sages, of their choice. Although some students chose the same maamar, each girl portrayed it so beautifully and creatively! Some ma amarei Chazal were Tafasta merubah lo tafasta - When you grab a lot, you do not get anything ; Eretz Yisroel gavoah mikol ha aratzos - Israel is the highest of all the lands ; and Kol haschalos kashos - All beginnings are hard. The girls depicted these sayings marvelously, with drawings, cut-outs and

4 Page 4 Classroom Chatter II even a 3-D project. So when you stop by the school, make sure to take a look! By Ayala Bielory Mazel tov to the seventh and eighth grade boys on being mesayem Parshas Naso. Stay tuned for a report on the upcoming siyum, which will be one of gastronomic significance. Congratulations to the sixth grade Earth Scientists for doing an excellent job with two recent handson projects regarding the theory of Plate Tectonics. Their Seafloor Spreading models were particularly well done. They are now moving on to an important indepth study regarding the forces that cause earthquakes and learning why it is so difficult to predict where and when the quakes will strike. They will also examine the science behind some infamous recent and historical earthquakes. The seventh and eighth grade Physical Science students have Student Council News The Student Council Rosh Chodesh Adar Aleph breakfast was terrific. The room was decorated in a cute way, with colorful tablecloths, streamers and balloons. Place cards with the faces of personalities from the Megillah directed students to their assigned tables. Students chose from a menu of bagels, cream cheese, orange juice, cereal and milk. In the spirit of Purim, we had a goral/lottery to raffle off all of the balloons. Azriel Yudkowsky shared an informative dvar Torah regarding why Adar is always the month that is doubled when there is a leap year. Student Council would like to thank the sponsors been learning about the properties and uses of Thermal Energy, and how to convert between the three common scales in use for measuring this energy. Ask them about Absolute Zero and one funny temperature that is the same on both the Celsius and Fahrenheit scales. Their latest hands-on project is the construction of models representing the five strokes of the typical Internal Combustion Engine. FOCUS ON NEAT CLASSES: NEAT is at the forefront of best educational practices, as it launches its 21st century blended math program, ALEKS. Many students started the year feeling blocked and deeply insecure about their own mathematical abilities, because the traditional classroom somehow had not met their needs and had left them with ever-increasing gaps. This has turned around, and the girls are celebrating substantial increases across the board in core competencies, Algebra 1 and SAT prep. Since ALEKS is an adaptive online technology tailored to the individual and demands mastery in order to advance to new topics, students feel great about acquired skills, about the selfpaced learning process, about the subject and ultimately... about themselves. They have had many online contests to inspire diligence; they use carrels on their desks to support focus; and each girl is highly self-motivated to cruise through the course in which she has been specifically placed through diagnostic intake exams. In fact, they shall be making a siyum within days for the first student to finish her course of over 300 skills. Another student is not far behind. All the girls deserve a hearty mazel tov for learning how to use the online ALEKS tools, for being so dedicated to their own advancement, for taking ownership of their learning and for demonstrating that math outside the box can be amazing! who made our breakfast possible. The Bielory, Gilden and Twersky families sponsored in honor of birthdays, the Goldblatt family sponsored in honor of the Flig family and the Jakubowicz family sponsored as well. Thank you to the many students who helped set up for the breakfast, particularly the middle school boys. In addition, thank you to the teachers for ensuring that the breakfast ran smoothly, Azriel for the dvar Torah and Mrs. Weiner for her constant help and support.

5 Providence Hebrew Day School N e w E ngland Academy of Torah 450 Elmgrove Avenue Providence, RI Phone: Mrs. Bishop - ext. 10 or JBishop@Phdschool.org Rabbi Scheinerman - ext. 21 or PScheinerman@Phdschool.org Mrs. Weiner - ext. 18 or MEWeiner@Phdschool.org Mrs. Silverman - ext. 12 or LSilverman@Phdschool.org Mrs. Schochet - ext. 15 or TSchochet@Phdschool.org Financial Office ext. 11 Dear Parents, This week has been such a hectic one, with a frenzy of activity that could rival schools with substantially larger populations. On January 30, I had the opportunity to attend the RI School Choice rally (see article on page 2), which allowed us to join in solidarity with our partner private and faith-based schools to encourage our legislators to consider a school voucher program. I want to especially thank Ayala Bielory, Chani Schochet and Yaakov Weiner, who manned our booth and made a tremendous kiddush Hashem. I also thank the PHDS band, under the direction of Mr. Norman Rosenfield, for a stellar performance. A number of outsiders watching the show were duly wowed by the skill level of the youngsters and were even more impressed when they learned that the majority of the band members first joined the band this year. I express appreciation also to Mrs. Elisheva Bielory, Mr. Norman Rosenfield and Mrs. Chana Faiga Twersky for driving the members of the band to and from the State House. Check out the Hamodia and other Jewish periodicals to see pictures of the band. The school website is being updated to include an amazing, thought-provoking and inspiring speech by the guest speaker, Mr. Derrell Bradford. On Monday and Tuesday, I watched Mrs. Lipson s third grade Ivrit class as they performed skits, based on Tanach, completely in Ivrit. Under Mrs. Lipson s guidance, our Ivrit classes have focused on an immersion model requiring students to use their spoken Ivrit skills during the entire lesson. The NEAT production crew is hard at work with their final preparations for another amazing show, entitled Coming Home. Battling a snow forecast for this weekend, our students are excited to share their performance with the women and girls of our community. The beauty of a production in such a small school is the sense of camaraderie and achdus that is created within the school. In our school, each girl s role is important and allows her to shine. In a larger school, only the best and most talented are chosen to perform, but in NEAT, every girl has a part: playbill, scenery, lighting, song, dance and drama are just some examples of the many different opportunities our girls have to be involved. I invite all women and girls to support our students at their production on Motzoei Shabbos at 8:00 pm or Sunday at 2:00 pm. Special thanks to Chayala Schwartz and Adena Malka Yudkowsky, who served as Production heads, as well as to the various song, dance, scenery and drama heads who helped make this year s production a great success. Special thanks to Mrs. Tichyeh Schochet, Mrs. Tzippy Kahan, Ms. Janice Kaidan, Mrs. Miriam Peromsik, Mrs. Amanda Pompili and Mrs. Devorah Raskin, who played major roles in assisting our girls with the production. Of course, there are many other community members who assisted in various capacities and we appreciate all of their efforts. Our high school girls will have only a short break as they begin their preparations for the final mock trial of the season before the playoffs; the NEAT team hopes to compete in the playoffs since they are undefeated thus far this season. These activities, as well as the excellent education our children receive on a daily basis, require financial support. The Prize is Right committee is working very hard this year to build on the success of past Prize is Right events and has prepared a new array of prizes, including the Grand Prize of two round-trip tickets to Israel. Enclosed in this week s family envelope is a list of new incentives to help you solicit ticket sales. As you will see in the enclosed flyer, the Executive Committee has passed a motion that allows for a 50% credit towards your Family Fundraising obligation for Prize is Right ticket sales to new buyers in Rhode Island or to any buyers elsewhere. Please visit to view our list of wonderful auction prizes and to purchase tickets. Best wishes for a good Shabbos, Rabbi Peretz Scheinerman Dean

Early Childhood News. Middle School Girls. Middle School Boys

Early Childhood News. Middle School Girls. Middle School Boys Middle School Girls Early Childhood News Preparations for Pesach are in full swing here in the Early Childhood division! Each class is getting ready in their own way for this important holiday. It's hard