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.