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.