I have been teaching at the local JCC for a year now. I have had the same students the entire time (I taught third grade last year and am teaching 4th grade this year). This class is a challenge because the fourth grade is split up for its Hebrew class based on behavior and ability. I love my kids, but it takes them a while to learn what we are doing and sometimes it gets frustrating to be learning the same material each week. The problem is that they do not reinforce what I am teaching in class at home during the week, so each class I start over again re-teaching the same material as before.
But today was different. We are working on learning Yotzer Or, a prayer that praises G-d for the formation of light and the creation of darkness. It is a prayer said during the morning service and parallels a prayer said during the evening service. We went quickly through the evening service prayer because I could sense that they were getting tired of reading the same lines over and over again.
I took a different approach with Yotzer Or though. Instead of reading the entire prayer over and over again, I've broken it down into smaller sections, adding one line at a time until they build up their confidence. Rather than waiting for the student to complete the sentence or the word to correct them, I'm trying to give more than just corrective feedback. Meaning that instead of telling them which letter or vowel sound they mispronounced, I am giving the class general "you did this line really well, but started to mumble at this line." I'm working with individual students to make the class successful.
In our previous class, we had read through 6 lines of this 16 line prayer and I was really happy with that because it sounded as if they knew those 6 lines really well. When we got to class this morning, they started to mumble on the third line. So we worked today from the third line through the 8th line. That's not the amazing part. Here's what is: they asked for homework. The students who complain about coming to Hebrew school every week asked for homework. They want to practice this prayer at home so that they can move forward in class. I was shocked, amazed and in awe when I heard this. I have been battling attendance issues since I started teaching them and now they are asking to practice at home.
What I think happened was that my students could see the short term goals. I was not expecting them to know this prayer in one day. I was asking them to add two or three lines a class (about a sentence of Hebrew). The goals were explicit, and more importantly, the students felt that the goals were attainable if they had a little bit more practice. Boy did I jump on that opportunity. As soon as I got back from the synagogue, I found a link with the text and an audio track and emailed it to their parents explaining what happened in class today with the hopes that the parents would encourage their children to keep up the good work.
I was so excited, and I'm looking forward to my next class to see how many of them actually practiced this week!
But today was different. We are working on learning Yotzer Or, a prayer that praises G-d for the formation of light and the creation of darkness. It is a prayer said during the morning service and parallels a prayer said during the evening service. We went quickly through the evening service prayer because I could sense that they were getting tired of reading the same lines over and over again.
I took a different approach with Yotzer Or though. Instead of reading the entire prayer over and over again, I've broken it down into smaller sections, adding one line at a time until they build up their confidence. Rather than waiting for the student to complete the sentence or the word to correct them, I'm trying to give more than just corrective feedback. Meaning that instead of telling them which letter or vowel sound they mispronounced, I am giving the class general "you did this line really well, but started to mumble at this line." I'm working with individual students to make the class successful.
In our previous class, we had read through 6 lines of this 16 line prayer and I was really happy with that because it sounded as if they knew those 6 lines really well. When we got to class this morning, they started to mumble on the third line. So we worked today from the third line through the 8th line. That's not the amazing part. Here's what is: they asked for homework. The students who complain about coming to Hebrew school every week asked for homework. They want to practice this prayer at home so that they can move forward in class. I was shocked, amazed and in awe when I heard this. I have been battling attendance issues since I started teaching them and now they are asking to practice at home.
What I think happened was that my students could see the short term goals. I was not expecting them to know this prayer in one day. I was asking them to add two or three lines a class (about a sentence of Hebrew). The goals were explicit, and more importantly, the students felt that the goals were attainable if they had a little bit more practice. Boy did I jump on that opportunity. As soon as I got back from the synagogue, I found a link with the text and an audio track and emailed it to their parents explaining what happened in class today with the hopes that the parents would encourage their children to keep up the good work.
I was so excited, and I'm looking forward to my next class to see how many of them actually practiced this week!
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