Bring the HQ Trivia Craze to your classroom!

My students, my children, and my friends were all talking about HQ.  If I create an HQ game for my students with questions which are relevant to the learning, I knew that II will have buy-in!

HQ Trivia, the  live trivia game show with cash prizes in which anyone can win if they stay in until the very end! For the first Torah Champs event, I prepared a HQ Game and the energy was amazing! The kids were playing using paper  "score slides" with the questions being presented on the TV screens with me trying to impersonate the comedian Scott Rogowski, the famous HQ host.

Here is the HQ Presentation I had on the screen. 

I downloaded the Google slides presentation into Power Point and I printed 3 slides on a page with the question number and only the answers. that way students need to wait to hear the question.

The students knew the material really well so almost everyone made it to the end!

Learn Trop on Quizlet

My 4th grade students are ready to learn Torah with trop. I prepared this Quizlet course to help them master the טעמי המקרא the most common notes and combinations. With Quizlet Teacher I am able to add a voice recording so that student can see the term a picture of the music note and hear a recording of  the note being sung.
https://quizlet.com/_4hawbt
https://quizlet.com/_4hawbt

Basketball In Hebrew

Recess is what is on the minds of so many students while sitting at their desks waiting and dreaming of the opportunity to get up and run around. What if some of the learning can be done more effectively by having the students  run around? Well, in an article in The New York Times, titled: 

How Exercise Could Help You Learn a New Language, the article presents:

 that working out during a language class amplifies people’s ability to memorize, retain and understand new vocabulary. The findings provide more evidence that to engage our minds, we should move our bodies.

The article then laments that movement isn't always practicle because schools don't have the budget to provide stationary bikes for all the students.

Well, my school has beautiful basketball courts and leaving the indoor classroom to the great outdoors on the rare warm day in February was  a real treat. We played a 5 on 5 for 30 min with designated callers to remind everyone of the new basketball vocabulary and the students stayed in the target language throughout. We played basketball in Hebrew!

Here is the sheet I prepared:

Hebrew Twister

I added a game to my Ulpan game box:משחק פלונטר Plonter-Hebrew Twister.
Learn the colors, body, directions and emotions. Just print the card add a spinner to it and students can independently play with each other giving Hebrew instructions. Advanced players can add emotions: יד ימין על אדום עם פנים כועסות (the player has to make the face while playing).

Game to learn Directions: הפרה העיוורת

Student's have a blast playing this challenging game! In pairs, players  find tickets and Hershey kisses dispersed all over the field. One player is blindfolded and the other player is the guide. The guide is NOT allowed to pick anything up, the guide can only give instruction to his or her blindfolded pair. The guide uses the direction terms we learned in class (the "cheat" sheet I prepared for them can also be used.) 

החיים שלנו תותים! Rewriting the song

My students have rewritten Chanan Ben Ari’s hit to express the challenges in their own life and try to reframe it by saying “thanks” for all the good things. I prepared this sheet to help the students reflect.

Playing War in Hebrew: New Playcard

War is my go to entry-level game to help students learn how to converse in Hebrew. They already know the rules! Between each turn they need to use one of the phrases on the sheet. They also practice their numbers in Hebrew. I upgraded my old play-card:

Quizlet Diagrams

Quizlet added a diagram future (to create your own you diagrams  need a paid account: $35 a year and well worth the cost if you want to track your students progress on Quizlet).

I have been using this diagrams as a way to connect my students to the Avar/Atid posters on the walls of my classroom:

Avar:

Atid:

Uno game for switching between Zmanim

For the past two years I have been creating for my students play sheets  with the Hebrew words necessary to play  familiar games in Hebrew. The goal was to help my students express themselves in Hebrew. Following the learning at the Institute of Play, I started thinking about how can I have my students continue to play in Hebrew while learning and reviewing areas of learning the students might find confusing and  tedious.

The Uno game, which my students were already playing in Hebrew, seemed to be a good game to modify. (the colors were in-line with the colors I have been using in my classroom. I went through many modifications. at first, I put in all the possible combinations of prefixes and suffixes but it became to difficult to find a set. At this stage I am limiting it to only אני/אתה this makes it easy enough to find a set but still challenging.

 

Goal: Students  work on building words in the different tenses. 
Students become familiar with the location of prefixes and suffixes depending on the tense. 
Students collaborate by helping each other build words. 
Students speak in Hebrew while playing the game

Rules: 
Follow the basic Rules of Uno with some modifications:

1. Players lay out their cards for all players to see. 
2. On your turn: you can put down any set of the current color being played. 
for example: if the starting color is red=עבר you can put down a full set (3 cards)
card 1: אני
card 2: any Shoresh/פעיל card
card 3: the suffix: תי
3. If you don't have a full set you can take cards from other players decks to help build your set (therby helping yourself and the other player)
4. You can change the color by having a matching number or action card.

5. Action cards are played the same as in regular Uno (draw 2, skip, draw 4, wild, reverse)

6. The three colors played are: Yellow: הווה Red: עבר Blue: עתיד
Green are the verb cards which are used to create the sets. (every set has a verb card but green is never played as its own color)

 

Core Mechanics: 

Space: Classroom or at home

Components: Brain power, recall, Uno cards, stickers for the cards, a color coded chart to help students with difficulty recalling

Stickers: Here is a link to my google folder with all the stickers.

 

Ulpan station-

I recently added a station in my blended learning station rotation classroom with a focus on Ulpan-Hebrew conversation for the everyday interactions. Students learn new words and they immediately integrate the words in Hebrew conversation.

I created an Ulpan course on quizlet for my students to keep track of the new words being learned. Once a new word is introduced I activate the word in my classroom by using it in as many different contexts as possible.