Playing Heads-Up Headbands as a unit review

Headbandz is a really fun and easy game to play.  I wanted my students to review the people, places and things which we learned in class this year while practicing their interpersonal Hebrew skills. I prepared sets of 50 cards. (אברהם, יצחק יעקב, לבן, חרן, חברון, כתונת פסים etc. ) The students then played in small groups. When it's your turn you can only ask Yes or No questions:
?האם הכרטיס  בן אדם

?האם הכרטיס איש או אשה

Interpersonal Hebrew Worksheets

I was inspired by Second Language Blogger Senor Howard to try an activity he prepared for his Spanish class adapted to Hebrew for my Students. I adapted it as a post vacation activity where students get up and converse in Hebrew with their classmates about their vacation. You can follow all the instructions given on his blog for this Hebrew activity. Here are the links to my sheets: Student's questionnaire and Student's Data Collection Sheet

Senor Howard's blog: Tuesday's Tips For Staying in The Target Language is an outstanding resource 

for finding  interpersonal activities which can be applied to 

Open snack time: helping my students pick fresh fruit over the empty calorie snack

As a parent, I am often left frustrated when the snacks I send with my kids to school return home untouched. I usually send a fruit or vegetable as well as a processed  bagged snack. Sadly, the chips and pretzels get eaten while the apple or strawberries sit in the bag until they rot. As a teacher I found a way to insure that my students first eat their healthy snack by giving them more freedom and agency! A small change has improved the diet of so many students. 

The designated time for snack in school is 10:00am. Many of the students are not eating a proper breakfast and they are preoccupied with the question: "is it time for snack yet?" This question is usually asked in the same tone children who are stuck on a long car ride ask: "Are we there yet?".

 In my class, snack can be eaten at anytime if it is an unprocessed fruit or vegetable. Sugar loaded Yo Crunch or granola bars are not a fruit or vegetable! The students quickly embraced this change. Students are bringing in bags of carrots and cucumbers. They are eating all their fruit first thing in the morning and if they  still have room for the processed food they can enjoy the official snack time at 10:00am. 

Instead of trying to convince my students to "eat the frog" first. I give them the freedom to eat healthy during class and the students are more engaged in the learning: nurturing their souls while they are taking care of their bodies. 

I have not found the healthy eating a distraction. When one kid takes out an apple the worst thing that can happen is that another kid pulls out his apple. When a student pops open a bag of Doritos his father brought back from Israel the students around him may start salivating and start imagining when he can send his father to Israel to bring back a bag of Doritos. 

When we get to eating fruits and vegetables our bodies learn to seek out those tastes again. My hope is that the students get their morning fruit and later in the day when they feel hungry they will keep heading to the fruit basket. 

For most children the issue isn't a lack of food: it is the lack of nutrient rich food making its way into the children's stomach. we want our children to eat a nutritious breakfast but they often choose the item which will bring the quickest sugar rush and not the food with the highest nutritional density. Making it easier for the students to eat the fruit and vegetables helps give the healthy food a chance of being consumed!

Yom Yerushalayim: PBL

PBL in Hebrew! My students creativity and hard work produced this great display of the history of Jerusalem throughout the ages. In groups students researched and wrote a report on their  assigned time period. They designed and created a diorama and explained what we can learn from their assigned period. I am grateful to the outstanding Tal AM instructors for their guidance!

Breakout EDU Box: Pesach puzzles

 

We reviewed our Haggadah learning by playing a Breakout game. The students had to solve puzzles and crack codes to open 6 different locks to be able to open the box (which had pretzels and chocolate chips which was turned into hot fudge). directional locks, number locks and key locks. This was an engaging educational fun activity for all the boys.

Jteach created a series of interactive puzzles based on the popular breakout.edu model. I modified most of it so that my students can complete it in Hebrew. 


I also added a scavenger hunt component. Students had to find the keys by following clues and finding invisible ink using an UltraViolet Blacklight
which led them to one of the keys.

My favorite activity was the "Which Way Did They Go?" puzzle, using the directional lock where the students had to learn the pessukim which describes the travels of the Bnei Yisrael in the dessert and map out the directions. They then had to follow the same pattern on the lock.

Quizlet Live! A Great Collaborative Game

Quizlet has been my go to flash card platform until I discovered memrise.com. I abandoned quizlet because I wanted my students to keep reviewing beyond the test. Memrise follows what we know from memory science about long term retention of information. Memrise is a paced memorization system which gamifies the learning and puts a higher value on reviewing. – the longer you’ve known something, the deeper its roots are planted in your mind. Once I discovered Quizlet Live, I am back using quizlet to give my students this fast paced social game to help them review and collaborate with each other. 

Quizlet Live is easy to use, you just need to click a button and it automatically creates the game for you from your quizlet study set. it's free and compatible in Hebrew.



https://quizlet.com/196464927/flash-cards/
Introducing Quizlet Live from Quizlet on Vimeo.

Flipped Classroom with Nearpod using Audio Visuals

Nearpod has been my go-to app for teaching and reviewing content with my students. I have now discovered that I can use Nearpod as a good way to pre-teach or flip my classroom. It is very similar to using Educanon/Zaption to have students stop and answer questions while they are learning. I like using Nearpod because of the flexibility it gives. I have the option to use it as a flipped  classroom activity as well as an in-class activity.

Here is a Mishna (Hebrew)I prepared:

(Note the play button on each content slide)

Here is a Gemara I prepared: Kiddushin 6
(I started with Rabbi Avi Wasser's Power Point and I added the questions and audio)

Get up and move while learning the tenses: עבר, הוה , עתיד

At the Tal AM Winter Institutes, I learned a great way to help my students learn דקדוק in context.  My students are exposed to פעלים by seeing how the שרש can be written in many different ways. Students are introduced to a new שרש. In groups the students fill out post-its with many different variations of the שרש.

Today, we worked on the verb שמח. The students wrote שומח, שמחתי, שמחנו, אשמח תשמח and many more. Then, the students walked with their post-its to the posters and they placed the post-its in the proper שם גוף. For the עבר words the students go to the back of the room (behind them-the past) for עתיד they go to the front of the class (ahead of them-the future and for the הוה words they go to the middle of the room (right next to them-the present). In this short 5 minute activity the students are quickly exposed to an entire cluster of words which are built on the same שרש. The students are moving and they are learning from their peers as they check to see if they need to move any of the post-its which were already placed in the boxes. Following this short activity I then make sure to activate the new verb, להפעיל את המילה,a word which I use as much as possible in the instruction of the unit and I embed the word in the assignments, so that the students are exposed to hearing and using the word in the different tenses.

A Siyyum on Parshat Vayeshev

This is how we celebrated the completion of Parshat Vayeshev. We all put on the hat of the שר האופים! We prepared scrumptious Babka! and we made delicious Sushi!

Tu Beshvat Seder: Song and Food

On Friday my students' celebrated Tu Beshvat with a Seder. The students tasted all of the  שבעת המינים they sang songs praising Eretz Yisrael and learned the importance of making ברכות.

Snow Day Learning: Nearpod Conference Call

With school closed due to the snow storm I gave my students the opportunity to connect and learn Torah together. My students joined a conference call (Free Conference) and logged into a Nearpod lesson. The Students shared Nearpod slides with each other and discussed and shared what they are doing to celebrate the snow day.



I then sent them slides and explained the different Brachot and exceptions to the rules. Nearpod gives me the ability to control the students screen. Every 3-4 minutes I send out  a few multiple choice questions and I get immediate feedback on their participation and comprehension of the material. Teaching 30 students at a time is so easy over the phone! I press *7 and I enter presenter mode, all the user are muted and they share feedback on Nearpod. My students were excited to try this mode of learning and it worked!


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Learning from ACTFL: 90%+ in the Target Language

Keeping my students in the target language has been the challenge I have undertaken this year. The American Council on the Teaching of Foreign Languages (ACTFL)  has guidelines and standards for foreign language teachers. When I first read about the 90% in the target language standard, I thought to myself that I am approaching that standard, but when I read further that the 90% standard refers to all conversation even the students communication with each other I learned that I have a long way to go 

To reach that 90℅ Mark, I set out to find ways to help my students become  committed to speaking to each other in Hebrew. It was not easy, our impulse is to revert to what is easiest and switch to English. At this point in the year we are reaching the 90% mark and at times we are exceeding it. Having regular conversations with my students about the process in which our brain acquires a new language, and how the teacher can only help them understand the language but to become bi-lingual and to become a Hebrew speaker,they need to be the one doing the talking,  has helped change the students perceptions. In the immersive environment, students  are given time in and out of class to play and converse in Hebrew. Conversation is a requirement for language acquisition.

This ACTFL  article has been instrumental in the changes I made.




https://www.actfl.org/sites/default/files/pdfs/TLE_pdf/TLE_Oct12_Article.pdf

Staying in the Target Language: Student Self Reflection Rubric

Language teacher struggle with the challenge: How do we keep our students talking in the target language (TL)? Many of my students are intrinsically motivated, they are excited to become fluent Hebrew speakers,  they see the results in their Torah learning, and they understand that the way to learn a new language is by speaking it. Not all elementary school students are there yet,
 and I have tried many different incentives to encourage my students to overcome the impulse to revert back to English. With the help of Becky Katz, a specialist in Blended Learning, we created this student self assessment rubric where students can reflect on their participation in Hebrew conversation. Students can earn points to be redeemed each Friday.

 Self reflection rubric

Hebrew Immersion at home: Call a friend!

As a Meaningful Immersive Hebrew homework activity, my students have been calling their friends at home to converse and connect in Hebrew. Here is the worksheet  I created to help guide the conversation. Many new play-dates have been initiated as a result of this homework!
Here is how it works:

• In school students are paired up with a partner (students receive a new partner each time they are assigned this homework)
•  At home, Student's call their assigned partner taking turns asking each other the questions and filling in the answers their partner gives.
•  Students continue talking in Hebrew and record how long they continued conversing
• Students fill out the short reflection on the experience.