Using Technology to Teach Passover

In my Passover unit for second and third grade I am focusing on the story of the Exodus and the items we put on the Seder plate and Seder table.  Students will be familiar with the story, will know what items are used at the Passover Seder and understand how these items are connected to the Passover story.  They will also learn how to use an iPad app to create a final project to demonstrate their learning.

For this Passover, we are still in the process of setting up our school iPads, therefore students are doing their technology work on my iPad in small groups while other students are completing other activities.

To introduce the Passover story, I showed my students a movie trailer that I made in iMovie.  Students used the information from the trailer to make predictions about what happens in the story.  They were then divided into groups to do a readers theatre of the Passover story.  After each group had an opportunity to read the script they were re divided into smaller groups (of 2,3 or 4) to make a Tellagami to demonstrate what they had learned.  Since we are currently only using my iPad, each group was assigned a section of the readers theatre to turn the dialogue into a narrative. (Students did a really good job with this - a very creative group!).  Each group used my iPad to make their Tellagami.  Two groups still need to make theirs and once they are done, I will combine all their Tellagamis into one iMovie by the Gimmel class!  My goal for next year is for each group to make their own movie of the whole Passover story.

Over the course of the spring I plan to introduce the students to some of the more basic apps like book creator, quizlet, popplet and explain everything.

For the Seder symbols portion of my unit (which we might not get to this year), students will do a Webquest to find out about the items used at the Seder.  For this year they will be given hard copies of the resources and will probably need to create a project without technology (either game cards or flip book).  Next year they will use the iPads for the Webquest and will use an app to create a final project.

I look forward to my students completing the class Tellagami if the Passover story!