November 20, 2023

General (Ms. Carla,the lead teacher, is speaking)

Elliot absolutely loves coming to school. He flies into the room. He loves to socialize and tell stories. He’s made so many friends. Heloves his time on the playground with them. He consistently polite and respectful to his teachers. If i say, “oh Elliot, you forgot to put your name on your paper” he says, “oh, I’m so sorry,” and I say he doesn’t have to be sorry.

One area we are working on, emotionally, is sometimes Elliot will talk about nightmares that he’s having. He’ll talk about some of the video games he watches, maybe with his older brother. One time i think we had called mom: He had presented weak, tired, just lying around, saying he was weak. He fell asleep in the nurse’s office. Karolina picked him up that day early from school. That happens from time to time. When he’s presenting tired or weak, it gets in the way of the curriculum. Keep an eye on what he is watching with his older brother at home. We wanna keep an eye on it. Elliot presents as very tired and very weak some days.

Elliot is empathetic. He says sorry too much. His heart is in the right place. He wants to please his friends.

Ms. Becca was there and commented on this and getting him play therapy.

Literacy (Carla Zimmer speaking again)

Elliot is doing a fabulous job in literacy. Upper and lower case recognition without hesitation. He has mastered all sounds. he is solidly established in phonemic awareness. He blend sounds well. He can isolate beginning sounds in CDC words (like “R” in RAT). He is beginning to isolate the last sounds (like “T” in RAT). He does a very nice job in reading.

Elliot is ready to move on to small group level reading books. When I assessed him on heart words (sight words), he knows all 10 of them automatically. So if you are reading to him, have him be a detective. Point to a heart word and get him to name it.

Elliot is in a really beautiful place for literacy.

In writing he’s doing a beautiful job. He is still working on his name. He’s able to copy sentences from the board. He’s able to write letters when I sound them out. He’s fun to teach and doing a beautiful job.

Math (Ben Huston speaking)

I did assessments on patterns, shape, matching numbers, writing and recognizing numbers – all of it was perfect.

He did 75% good on “adding”, which has not even been taught yet, so that is awesome.

Sometimes it is hard to read what he has written, but it has gotten significantly better since the beginning of the year. Now i can tell his numbers apart and his answers, which is awesome.

He’s doing really good in math.

He’s able to do almost any task we ask; sometimes we have to remind him of the task. He gets half way through and may ask again for the instruction (not right from the beginning). This is not uncommon for two-page assignments when the instructions are different on the 2nd page. It should disappear once he can read more.

Hebrew (Esther Bellinsky speaking)

Elliot enjoys the opportunities he gets to be in front of the class (like calendar helper), or just playing in games or being part of the classroom community. He knows 1-10 in Hebrew (actually he knows 1-12). He knows the weather in Hebrew. He’s been a sponge.

Elliot really likes his Hebrew name and is connected to it. He knows 7 colors in Hebrew. Letter recognition: we’ve done 4 letters so far. He did great. First assessment: 2.5. out of 4. Second assessment: 3 out of 4 (confused bet and vet which is very common). Elliot is very bright, as all the other teachers are saying.

Judaics (Rebekah Kochavi speaking)

I love having Elliot in my class. He’s enthusiastic. He loves to learn. he’s a joy to have in class. He asks questions. He’s engaged.

I feel like elliot really enjoys the Judacis part of the day. The community of it. After singing, we move on to a game (like a memory game). I hope you got the creation book he recently made. Elliot takes his time. He’ll ask friends or me what to do.

On Fridays, we have Kabbalat Shabbat in the classroom. That’s one of his favorite times, maybe because of the community feel.