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.

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.