CJP TTF

 

The Goal - A Proposal for Hebrew Practice  /Waky

 

When I moved from teaching 2nd grade to 3rd grade, I was amazed how much more could be done in 4 hours than two (K- 2 come only on Sundays at our school, and 3-6 twice a week).  But, of course, my excitement was short lived, because there is NEVER enough time.

 

Over the years, I have tried to "add" more hours by pushing some of the learning into the home and the community. I encourage kids to participate in many out of class congregational activities, such as family services, jr. Choir, Purim Shpiel, Shabbat retreats, student council, Klezmer band, because, as one of the educators we read about wrote, “…often we ask students to learn about something that they can make no personal connection which makes it very challenging to be engaged”.  I want them to have a relationship to the Jewish people, not to learn a bunch of facts which are not in a context of who they are.

 

And, in addition, I want to draw the parents in to the learning, both for their own edification, and as a model to the children of the importance of Jewish study.  Aside from one morning a year when they come in to do Family Ed, my hope was that they would partner with me to enhance the children’s Hebrew school experience.  And I wanted the parents to be accountable for their piece of the partnership. 

 

That being said, there were two specific functions that I wanted to push into the home.  One was homework.  I didn’t know it was a “flipped classroom” then.  I have always asked the children to prepare the work at home, so they could join me engaging in the material once we were together.  And, for all the reasons above, I ask them to do this with a parent.  For the most part, this involves reading a lesson on Torah or a holiday, and doing a very small exercise.  I told the parents that I hoped this would spark a discussion at home that could be shared in class.

 

The other activity that I hoped I could push out to the home, was the practice of Hebrew reading.  I introduce key letters and vowels and their sounds, as well as vocabulary, in class, and do a bit of practice, but hope that there will be more practice at home.  Language acquisition can only happen with use and reuse.  Repetition bring confidence and fluidity.  But the reality is that the parents are, for the most part, not able to provide help in this area because they may not have the skills, and I never want them to be embarrassed about this.

 

So I have been on a quest to create tools to help.  Let me start with one restriction that I find few people understand: the practice of content in Hebrew sounds must match the progression of a curriculum.  If we know 6 letters, the practice cannot include letter # 7 or 8; it has to be specific in this way, so store bought, or even misc. online Hebrew practice pages will not work. Now I am a very practical teacher, and don’t think out of the box well, but this has been my experience. 

 

I have a Hebrew textbook and like it pretty well.  Early on, I simply asked the kids to practice reading from the book at home, and the parents would initial a page indicating that their child had read “5 minutes a day”.  Then the publisher of my book came out with a CD that matched the book.  It was funny, and engaging and had games.  The kids loved it.  The administration of acquiring the CDs, initializing them per student and using them was a nightmare.  And lots of parents were very frustrated with their “only worked sometimes” mechanics. And they only worked on PCs, not Macs…  And as more families acquired tablets, the use of CDs was no longer viable.  So my director changed textbooks, and publishers so that the practice could be online, rather than physically inserted.  But as we are learning in this class, engaging a product without playing with it is ill advised.  The textbook was horrible, and the software, though delightfully focused on Israel, was not an ideal practicing tool at all.  So I went back to the textbook I liked, but “Hebrew 5 minutes a day” went back to paper…

 

At a faculty meeting several months ago, the principal asked us how we used technology in our classrooms.  The answers ranged from parent communication to “not at all”.  She had us try and think of something we’d like to use it for, and I timidly mentioned “Hebrew reading practice” once again.

 

And here we are, almost graduates of the 6^th CJP cohort on technology, learning to use the iPad, with 8 shiny new tablets waiting at school.  I’ve seen a lot of very slick and exciting products and plans.  My partner, Maya, created a lovely and simple Havdallah lesson.  But I’ve stuck to my plan; I want to create a tool to help my students supplement what they are learning about Hebrew reading at home, in a way that doesn’t suck up all my classroom time, so we can do the many, many other parts of our curriculum in the time that is freed up. 

 

Of course, I don’t want to throw them in the deep end without a life vest, so I want to make some of the tools we have in class available to them at home.  I can use pictures of their actual textbook, so the letter progression is not an issue.  And I want two specific references at their finger tips.  One is a Letter Lookalike helper, with little ditties we have learned which I have found helps distinctions (and maybe the students can participate and can add to them!), such as Bet has a bellybutton and with Vet, the dot is Vacuumed out.  I have lots of these, and the kids find them helpful.  The other tool is for vowels; we have a chart in the room which has all our vowels on backdrops of colors which have that vowel sound in them.

 

I would like them to be able to read along, perhaps even with my voice helping or repeating, but with the ability to call up these two help charts as resources…

 

It sounds so easy, and I’ll bet with the right “programmer”, it could even be made to be fun.  What a time I have had of it… I will review in class what I tried, how I stumbled and that I do not have a product to show you. I spent a lot of effort to make a new Wikispace, but was not successful.  My partner suggested I try Explain Everything, and I did end up being able to work in that app better, but was not able to create links, per se.  The Hebrew program I bought for iPad is limited, but seems to be the only thing out there with vowels, so I did make up some of the tools there.  I have spent a lot of time playing and learning, and I will continue to work on making this happen.  I found some awesome iPad tools for all kinds of things while I was struggling and am already passing them along to my colleagues in school.  My hope is that we, in this CJP cohort will continue to be able to share and discover.  I am blown away by all the posts of your projects and I’m looking forward to seeing you test drive them on Sunday.