"Prayeraoke"

For years I have enjoyed my Hebrew teaching but found it to be challenging.   As you well know, those of us who teach in after school programs have very little  going for us.  With only an hour a week per class, students arrive to us tired, hungry, stressed and certainly not at their best.  On top of all of this, they have no incentive to do a great job or study at home,  since no one has given students the sense that we are giving them a skill that will be useful to them, outside of classic Bar Mitzvah preparation fear.

So naturally, teachers like us quickly realize that one way of motivating students to learn some Hebrew in the classroom is to make it fun.  There are lots of kitschy Hebrew games to play in the classroom, however the mileage varies with such games and usually we sacrifice content or leave someone behind as we give in to the feel-good.  We acquiescence to the begging for games.  In essence, we water down our efficacy by avoiding what really works for mastering Tefila skills.  Repetition, repetition, put it away, then repetition.  Did I mention repetition?

As a long time bar mitzvah tutor and Hebrew teacher, it has been proven to me time and time again that this is the simple formula for learning prayers and melodies.  Repetition scientifically contributes to short term memory,  and returning to it often contributes to moving knowledge to our long-term memory.

My final project started out with the intent to create a Hebrew prayer version of karaoke, called Prayeraoke. I have had this idea for years, but have never found software or a person that could create it for me. This remains in my list of things to do.  (Please feel free to use my idea, in return for free rights to use it!)

Quickly realizing that I wasn't going to fulfill my dream of creating real Prayeraoke, I started to think about my use of music in the classroom and out.

In many places that I go, I consider my guitar and my song leading skills to be tools that not too many other people have. So when GarageBand was introduced to me in TTF, I naturally gravitated to it.  I layed down a few tracks, using only a quiet room, the iPad and my musical ability (which is mediocre) as tools.  Very quickly and gratifyingly, I produced something that sounded decent and could be used in order to tell a digital story.

Once the audio was complete,  I was able to export it to iMovie and smash it with a little bit of ExplainEverything and Drawing Pad.  iMovie seems like an appropriate app to bring it all together because it is versatile and accepts virtually any media as an import.

I ended up using the final product to tell a digital story (visual and audio) with key values intertwined in the text and subtext.  Students were asked to sing  along with the intermittent prompts on the screen to snap them back to attention, if needed.

Below, I'm including the 5W's and an H as to why one might use this combination. While it lacks refinement that I would want to use it for REAL humans, here is the link to the beginnings of the project:  http://youtu.be/_TKSYYDpbRc

Stop reading here or read on to learn why this might be an interesting medium:

Using Music and Digital Story Telling to Teach Values 5 W's and H

Why?  

• Digital story telling may be a medium that better catches attention of our kids, due to conditioning and maybe wiring?
• It is a way to combat students' desensitization to the teacher talking all the time
• It may allow for greater creativity and encourage students to take on similar projects of their own
• May appeal to different learning styles due to use of visual and auditory sensory input
• Can be repeated more than once to reinforce, if needed

Who?

• Teachers or students can create edit, embellish, or just be receivers of media
• Parents can receive exactly what the kids saw via electronic media or email, blogs, etc.

How?

• Can be used in a flipped classroom, PBL, Philosophical inquiry, or other modalities
• Knowledge of the medium and software/apps can be part of the discovery process or part of a prerequisite
• Assumes that materials are available for presentation:  ie internet access, projector, smart-board, iPad, etc.
• Work toward goals and check in frequently on progress toward goal.  Don't use it if it will not help.

When?

• When you need a change of pace in your classroom
• When the goals of the lesson support using it
• When you can create or find appropriate materials
• The technology will not work against you
• You need to reach more or different students than you might usually
• Someone in contact with your material  (students, educators, parent) will  appreciate  the work

Where?

• This sort of materials can be used in informal settings, home, school, etc.  Important to use in appropriate setting.  (Example:  video around a campfire may not be the mood we are looking for)

What?

• We can create a digital version of almost any lesson.  Content can be anything
• Engagement is key - ask how often in your presentation people are asked to do something. Is it appropriate for your goals?

Values planned for this lesson:  Shalom and g'milut chasadim.

Shalom:  Lo Yisa Goi - Nation shall not lift up sword against nation  (Isaiah 2:4, Michah 4:3)

G'milut Chasadim:  Story of Two Brothers

Thanks for reading!

What I've learned...

Next year, I am teaching an 8^th grade comparative religions class.  I feel that this is the perfect age group to try out what I’ve learned in the fellowship.  I will be creating a webquest that I will start the year off with.  Through the webquest, students will learn the basic beliefs of Judaism, Christianity and Islam.  After being taught the origin of the three religions, students will be grouped and assigned one of the religions.  The task assigned will be to find out the connection each of the three religions have with Jerusalem.  Each group will then present that information to the class by creating a movie trailer (or another option by choosing from the technology they are familiar with).  These trailers (or other presentations) can be used on the schools website to encourage future classes to attend 8^th grade.  At our congregation, enrollment tends to drop off after bar/bat mitzvah years.  The key technologies I would use are the iMovie (movie & trailer options), a webquest, green screen and any other technologies that the students are interested in using.

Here is my outline of my project:
https://3monothesticreligionswebquest.wikispaces.com/Monotheistic+Religions+Webquest

Kitah Alef Year-long Technology Based Torah Project

I am excited to integrate a few different apps into my classroom next year. I am still working on each of the individual pieces, but the goal throughout the year is to capture the Torah stories, and all of the work my students do in learning about the stories, in a cohesive video to send home and share with parents in May.

We will start the year with an update to my usual parent/student activity of drawing Bereshit. Instead of having paper drawings I will ask each child and their parent to draw their day in the creation story on the iPad and narrate it. I can then link each of the stories together to create one cohesive Bereshit video from the class. I also plan to have my students draw their own versions of stories such as Abraham and Sarah’s hospitality or Jacob and Esau on the iPad and then have them narrate their pictures using Explain Everything. We can also integrate some of the stories using iMovie – for example a “breaking news story” about the Macabees, explaining what happened in the temple, and the steps the Macabees are taking to fix it. “They put the oil in for one day and prayed. I never thought it would work, but today is the 8th day that oil is burning!” Here is an example of what I plan to do for Pesach. There are 11 separate slides in this example because there are 11 students in my class. The ideas is for each child to create one slide and then I would merge them all. The 10 Plagues

At the end of the year I will have different videos for each Bible story and holiday that we covered in Kitah Alef. I will be able to merge all of the videos together and send them home with my final monthly newsletter so that my students will be able to relive the stories and work that they have done as well as share all of it with their parents.

New Reel/Movie Trailer Assignment Idea

One of my ideas for an assignment for my class this coming year is to have the students make news broadcasts or movie trailers on the iPads about significant topics in the history portion of our sixth grade curriculum. I plan to divide them into groups and allow them to choose their topics. Once they have chosen a topic I will allow them class time and homework time to do research into the event, movement, etc.
Hoping most of the reading and research will be done at home (utilizing a flipped classroom set up) and the students can use class time to interact and create their videos I would allot a fair amount of time for them to get to know the apps in the iPads and allow them time to edit their footage together. I would encourage them to utilize videos found online to splice into the footage they are shooting of their group members for added interest.  I would have the students use iMovie or Green Screen to create the news reels or movie trailers.

Once the videos were completed I would have the students share each group's work with the class and present a lesson on their topic to teach the other class members about their topic. After this work is shared with the class I would post the students work on our class' website Popplet.
The Popplet will be utilized to share the ever evolving and expanding curriculum with the students and parents. By posting the work on the website the students will be able to share their hard work with family members at home to instill a sense of pride. By consistently showcasing the work the students have done in this manner it will encourage them to put more effort into their classwork and constantly encourage them to strive to do better.

4th Grade Aliyah Video Project

My 4th grade classes are really really different. In one class, I have a group who feel much more traditionally spiritually connected (most believe in a more traditional concept of G-d, they really enjoy and buy into more traditional prayer) my other class has a more diverse range of opinions on both G-d and Jewish practice. Our core curriculum focus this year is "What does it mean to be a part of the Jewish people?" for both groups this is a tough question, especially when thinking about Israel, a country that most of them have never been to but have learned so much about.

In our Israel curriculum this year, we are focused on some of the recent Aliyot to Israel: Yemenite Aliyah, Ethiopian Aliyah and Aliyah from the former Soviet Union. However, the idea of moving to Israel, Lashanah habaah is still really foreign to all my kids. Yes, they have heard of the Holocaust, but most of them have been lucky (depending on how you look at it) to grow up in the Boston area never having heard, seen or felt antisemitism.

In planning how I wanted to teach this, I sat down with one of my coworkers to brainstorm our goals.

• Students are able to empathize with those who faced antisemitism and oppression
• Students understand although they do not need to agree, with the Jewish concept of Lashanah Habaah
• Students are engaged and excited to learn about the process of making Aliyah from each country
• Students work with two or three other students and work well as a group
• Students are able to creatively present their findings in a 3-10 min video clip
• Students have a better understanding about the need for a Jewish state

To do this, we decided to break our three classes of 4th graders into nine small groups and assign them to topics as follows:

4B will focus on the culture of each country (Yemen, Ethiopia, former S.U.); what Jewish practices were like there, etc 

4C will focus on the reasons that the Jews left that country; oppression, isolation, general conditions

4A will focus on the Journey itself, what did it take for them to make it to Israel, how did they get there? Who helped, etc

In making movie trailers for this project, it was helpful to suss out each student's current tech abilities and resources in addition to other talents so that making the groups can be as successful as possible. Students will be able to play around with animation, documentary style productions and pretty much anything else that they can come up with that still will convey the process of Aliyah in a respectful way.