Our classroom visit by Svetlana

Shavua tov!

We had a wonderful visit with Svetlana on March 19.  My Siddur Hebrew 2 class (Grades 4 & 5) has been learning the songs from the Haggadah.  We took the opportunity of Svetlana’s visit to inaugurate iPad use with a wonderful interactive app called Passover Karaoke, which can display original Hebrew as well as transliterations of the song text in English, Russian and other languages.  We chose Hebrew and, although the students were concerned at first that the letters were written in scroll script, without vowels, they easily got past this because they could simply sing along with the Israeli-accented vocal track.  We sang several songs and tried with and without instrumental accompaniment, and we also bravely sang without the accompanying vocal track.  The students especially loved the images that join and dance along with the singing.

After gaining confidence in singing “Ma Nishtana” – always a favorite! – we used GarageBand to make our own recording.  Some of the students were already very well versed in its use and were eager to help with some of the technical difficulties.  We layered a rock drum beat loop and the students sang with great gusto!!  It was the best class ever!