Ringmaster’s Tools for Classroom Management

Let’s start with my norms poster, here.

These are my always-in-draft class norms.  I’ve used them in my Spanish class for a few years, laminated and posted on the board in English (since my students wouldn’t understand if the poster were in Spanish.)

First let me say that these norms were gleaned from many conferences, workshops and conversations, and that retired T/CI legend and mentor from Denver Public Schools, Ben Slavic, provided the content for a first draft.  He has a longer list of classroom expectations, from which I extracted and massaged these nuggets. He has created so many key documents and written about so many issues we Comprehensible Input language teachers need to consider – I highly recommend you check out his website.  He also has a great Professional Learning Community (PLC) blog!circus-tent-pic

 

OK, back to the norms.  The document* is entitled, “!יש,” which Yael Even, an elementary Hebrew teacher in Israel tells me is the best Hebrew slang equivalent to “High Five!”  Listed are 5 classroom norms:

  1.   Not surprisingly, active listening with the intent to understand is a novice language learner’s most essential behavior.  Next comes the tricky part.  Students are requested to signal tScreen Shot 2016-09-02 at 11.23.33 AMhe teacher (I have established a fist pounding the palm action/noise signal) if meaning is not clear.  I used to say, “Signal me if you don’t understand,” but really, folks, the onus is on us, the teachers, to make sure we are comprehensible, so I tweaked my poster language to reflect that reality.  I walk over and fist bump the student who signals me (!יש), reinforcing my standard:  “Thank you for letting me know I was not understandable!  It’s my job to make sure everyone understands!  We’re all here to understand Hebrew messages!”   I translate the problematic word/phrase/utterance, gesture and re-check for comprehensibility.  Alas, you should know that young learners often do not signal when they’ve fallen off the comprehension train, so eager are they to extract meaning that they forget.  So we must redouble our efforts, frequently checking for comprehension:  “What does ‘XYZ’ mean?”  “What did I just say?” and constantly recycle and repeat, reviewing the facts of the story once again before adding on to it.

2.  Paying attention to the speaker’s message is obvious enough however, norm #2 used to read, “Eyes on the speaker.”  I have since learned that plenty of students can and do demonstrate comprehension without locking eyes, and that not all students are comfortable making eye contact.  So while I prefer to see their eyes and confirm that they’re not distracted by their new shoes, the Lego in their pocket, or a scrap of paper on the rug, etc., I do regular and frequent comprehension checks to insure that all kids get it.

3.  Body posture may sound trivial, but it’s part of the attention package.  Since I jettisoned my students’ desks/tables and only have chairs, posture is less of an issue for me, plus I regularly get my students up and moving.  (See my post, Let this groove get you to move).  The older/less interested the student, the more of an issue posture may become.  Posture is a form of nonverbal communication, and if/when there’s an infraction, I matter-of-factly explain this.

4.  Norm #4 is about blurting and interruptions.  Since I’m often inviting story details and suggestions from my students, our conversations aren’t always mediated by hand raising/permission-giving.  This is natural, and it’s a good thing!  However, sometimes excited classmates can’t resist the urge to blurt (They are SOOO engaged!!), often in English.  Norm #4 is a reminder to engage in respectful conversational turn-taking in the Target Language.

5.  Norm #5 encourages students to take the time to come up with cute and clever ideas during story-asking. Younger students often want the chance to offer an idea, any idea, to have their voice heard.  I honor this and use it as an opportunity to get more repetitions, as in, “Class, Jorge says the dinosaur’s name is Billy Bob Joe.  Adriana says the dinosaur’s name is Rainbow.  What does Alexander say?”   If I go around the whole class, I get LOTS of reps on ‘says’ and ‘name is.’  Good, hi-frequency storytelling language!

Finally, I do not ‘go through’ the 5 class norms at the beginning of the school year.  I point to and briefly discuss one behavior at a time, as it naturally emerges, and go back and point to it when it inevitably comes up again.

*Print it on (long) legal size paper to get it on one sheet.

Let This Groove… Get You To Move

Most public school districts in the US offer World Language to students no earlier than 6th grade, often not until high school, so it’s not surprising that as a (rare) veteran elementary-level Spanish teacher (I’ve taught grades 1 – 4 for over 20 years), I get LOTS of questions from other elementary-level language teachers about classroom management and pacing.  “How do you deal with exhausted first graders at the end of the day?”  “How often do you transition activities?”  “What do I do with wiggly kids’ endless physical energy – they CANNOT sit still!?!”

In my experience, it’s all about reading the room.

That flexibility and responsiveness PLUS some norms, routines and rituals in the ole’ tool box can really structure the class and keep it moving along in the target language with minimal distractions and interruptions (not to mention daydreaming.)

Young learners are often subject to their sensory needs (aren’t we all?) – they have to pee, pick, fiddle, diddle, tap, stand, scratch, walk, talk, and move, move, MOVE!  All this while you, the teacher, are trying to personalize, pause & point, teach to the eyes, target verb-containing structures, elicit student ideas and responses, spin a story, contain the blurters…and the list goes on!

So let’s start with some fundamentals in this post.  Practice incorporating these gems in your classes and you’ll be building your teaching sanctuary from the ground up.

  1.  Start with an entrance routine.  Choose from a variety.  A choral greeting in the target language (i.e., Good morning, class!  Good morning, Ms. Shapiro!), a song (i.e., Shalom Chaverim), a ‘move,’ (high fives all around; passing a hackey sack ball back ‘n forth with each kid, etc.) a call & response (“I LOVE SARDINES!”  “THAT’S DISGUSTING!”)- a combination of these – signals to the kids that’s they’re entering the Hebrew Zone.  It can effortlessly glide into a recap of yesterday’s story.
  2. screen-shot-2016-10-11-at-11-40-54-amEnd class with a predictable exit routine.  In my Spanish class, I adopted this courteous call & response from master Comprehensible Input teacher, Bryce Hedstrom:  I say in Spanish:  “Thanks for learning,” and the kids answer,  “Thanks for teaching.”                                                (“.תודה שלמדתם.”  “תודה שלימדת אותנו”)  This signals my students to quietly line up for dismissal.
  3. MOVE!!!  Have your elementary students transition from one zone in the classroom to another during class.  The movement and the novelty of a different location and vantage point help keep class feeling fresh.  I greet my youngest learners outside my room where I settle them at the bench with a series of sometimes silly, sometimes relevant commands, we enter the room and sit at the rug circle, and later transition to the chairs in front of the whiteboard/projection screen.  From there we often move about the room during Total Physical Response (commands; think ‘Simon Says’) time, and when we are dramatizing a story.  Movement can also constitute brain breaks, which I’ll blog about soon.Earth Wind & Fire

With these guideposts in place, you’ll be ready to spin comprehensible stories with your kids as a happy and healthy community.  Your kids will trust that you’ll:  1.  Meet their linguistic needs by insuring that your language is comprehensible and compelling; and  2.  Take care of their developmental & sensory needs, by keeping them stimulated and moving!

Related:   Let’s Groove

Pop-Up Grammar

Novice language learners (acquirers) often don’t even hear and certainly don’t attend to verb endings, as they are focused on meaning.  But we’ll expose them to a barrage of contextualized and correctly spoken Hebrew (that’s what grammar is!), and when their brains have heard and unconsciously patterned the input and are ready to note the subtle differences in word endings, they will…deductively.  After a time, the teacher may even get a student question or comment about different verb forms, like, “What’s the difference between הולך and הולכת?,” at which time she can ‘pop-up’ that specific grammar in 3 seconds:  “Class, why does this one have a ׳ת׳ on the end?’  That’s right, it’s for a girl/female.”

Notice the absence of grammatical terminology, like masculine/feminine, singular/plural, and tenses.  Grammar pop-ups are minimal, provided on an as-needed basis, and employ plain language, often initiated by a student question.  Those (All?) of us who’ve studied grammar must resist the temptation to (squander precious target language input time and) explain how the language works…because those English explanations don’t result in acquisition….Comprehending compelling messages does!screen-shot-2016-09-13-at-11-08-51-pm

Enjoy listening to grammar and rule-related podcasts from Second Language Acquisition professor, Bill vanPatten:   Tea With BVP, especially Episode 5:  ‘Does Explicit Language Teaching Do Anything?’  and Episode 10:  ‘Are There Rules to be Learned?’

Ways and Means

Beginning of the School Year Logistics

Here’s our Hebrew & Religious School schedule:screen-shot-2016-09-13-at-11-13-07-pm

Wednesdays, 4:15 – 6:00pm

Sundays, 9:00 – 12:10 (of which the last hour, 11:10 – 12:10 is dedicated to Hebrew instruction)

Wednesday, September 7 is opening day.   The 3rd-4th grade group (29 kids total), hereafter referred to as Group A, will come see me right away, from 4:20-4:50, then return to their classroom with their teacher for liturgical Hebrew & religious studies.  Then Group B (53 kids, grades 5, 6, and 7)*, who started with liturgical Hebrew/religious studies in their classroom, will visit me from 4:55-5:25.  Eventually, (say, after 2 or 3 sessions?) the 30-minute Hebrew slots will increase to 45 minutes, with each group getting around 15 minutes of literacy extension after the 30 minutes of oral work.  This will eventually fill the Wednesday session.

It will take some coordinated practice (and wrangling) to get everyone settled for a punctual startup and transition between groups.

Class Lists/Hebrew Names:

I have asked the school office for class lists by grade, in the form of a 3-column table, with each student’s full English name in the first column, his/her Hebrew first name in the center (hand-written is fine), and then an empty column to the right.  This will serve as a excellent template for some early personalization and (onscreen?) class survey activities, allowing us to get to know each other as we build our playful community.

We’re also ordering name tags – the reusable vinyl sleeve kind on a lanyard – and will have kids wear their Hebrew name (written in cursive Hebrew) while attending class, until we all learn each others’ Hebrew names.  These will be collected and stored in the Hebrew Room.  If a student doesn’t have a family-given Hebrew name, I believe assigning one is a good idea.  Why?  It’s a great way to:  Establish/reinforce that this is a Hebrew-speaking zone; Practice decoding (the names) in Hebrew – very high interest!;  and introduce common Hebrew/Israeli names, which are part of Israeli culture.  Click here for a list of popular Israeli Hebrew names.

Classroom Environment:

Before opening day, I’ll set up my teaching space, making sure that it’s inviting and appealing, but also posting some of the most basic language I know I’ll need right away.  To start, I’ll probably only hang a few question words, (‘Who?’ ‘What?’ and ‘Where?’) from my printable mini-poster collection of hi-frequency verbs and interrogatives, the Hebrew Word Wall 2016.  (The Word Wall can also be found on the Novice Hebrew Corpus page.)  The walls will start relatively bare, but they’ll grow increasingly text-rich as more Hebrew is acquired and needed in context.  I don’t want to overwhelm the kids with a bunch of words they don’t know yet!  I’ll also make sure the large dry-erase whiteboard & markers are in place, and that my props are sorted in bins for easy access.

I wear a wireless headset microphone when I teach (move over, JLo)- indispensable for those of us who teach multiple daily classes using Comprehensible Input.  It really spares our voices!

My laptop computer will be connected to the overhead projector, and can toggle with the document camera to project images from paper and computer, plus videos etc. onscreen.

We’ll have a chair for each student, arranged in a horseshoe or herringbone configuration (not sure – haven’t worked in that space yet.)  No desks or tables.  This set-up frees up space for dramatization and movement, and affords general flexibility, plus writing will mostly be done on dry-erase lap boards, which can also be used as lap tables when kids write in their notebooks.

I’ll post a separate article/s on writing once we get rolling, and will also upload photos of my new Hebrew classroom digs.

I plan to upload links to video footage of our classes with reflection/commentary after class.  As soon as we figure out the tech requirements to do so, I’ll create a space on this blog where you’ll be able to view and comment on our novice Hebrew classes, both Group A (the 3rd-4th grade group) and Group B (the 5th – 7th graders.)

Please feel free to post questions about my before-opening-day prep or anything else on the blog, or email me at cmovanhebrew@gmail.com!

*ADDENDUM:  With over 50 kids, the 5th through 7th grade group is waaaaay too big and unwieldy to teach all together.  To address this challenge, I will break out the 5th grade group and teach them separately.  So I’ll teach 3x 30-minute sections on Wednesdays, and 3x 20-minute sections on Sundays.  Also, to save time, Hebrew teachers will distribute and collect their students’ name tags and store them in plastic baggies in their classrooms.

If we build it, will you come?

I’m pleased to announce the following professional development opportunity in Chicago with Second Language Acquisition theory expert and author, Dr. Stephen Krashen, on Friday, September 23, 2016.  The logistics, description and registration info are on this Wolcott Krashen Flyer.  Not only will you learn the fundamentals of SLA, but you’ll also refine your understanding of the goals of language instruction and how to reach them.  As a special feature, workshop attendees will attend a demonstration lesson in Mandarin with a master Comprehensible Input teacher in order to experience the powerful strategies first hand.

Plus, you can get professional and/or continuing ed credit!  Space is limited, so please register NOW!  It’s a unique opportunity to hear it from Dr. Krashen, THE GUY WHO DEVELOPED THE FIRST COMPREHENSIVE THEORY OF LANGUAGE ACQUISITION!!!  If that’s not exciting enough, the following day, Saturday, September 24, Dr. Krashen will keynote at the inaugural Comprehensible Midwest Conference, 2016 in nearby Milwaukee, Wisconsin. screen-shot-2016-10-10-at-10-53-48-pm(See flyer)
This full-day conference provides concurrent workshops on topics relevant for Teaching with Comprehensible Input, and also offers a professional credit option.

If you want/need a ride to either venue, please email me at cmovanhebrew@gmail.com.  I hope to see you there!

Our First Hebrew T/CI Training: Day 4

screen-shot-2016-09-14-at-1-14-58-pmOn Day 4 (our final session) we tried to nail down some logistics, though since we’re rolling out an entirely new program, we will have to tweak it as we go.  Some of our challenges are good ones – space is tight, classrooms are full, and we don’t have any spare rooms to dedicate to Hebrew instruction.  We’ve already got a workaround as our awesome cantor and 6th grade teacher, Marla, has offered up her (largest) classroom as the dedicated Hebrew room and she will teach in a smaller classroom.  Marla says she’s so excited about this new direction for Hebrew instruction that she’s willing to do whatever it takes to make it work!!

Here are some other adjustments we’re making to accommodate the new Hebrew program – though nothing is set in stone.

  1.  I will teach/model Modern Hebrew lessons on Wednesday afternoons and Sunday mornings until…I don’t need to anymore, because the classroom teachers are confident & solid in their T/CI skills.  At that point, I will coach and mentor!   We will divide the 5 grades (3rd, 4th, 5th, 6th, 7th) into 2 large sub-groups.  I will teach the 3rd-4ths together, and then the 5th through 7ths.*  Each combined group will get around 30 minutes of story spinning/oral language, followed by another 20-30 minutes of literacy extension.  As more scheduling details are available, I will post them to the blog.
  2. Teachers will teach liturgical Hebrew (prayers, etc.) and holidays, etc. when their students are not with me.
  3. While it’s scary to start without any text/book in hand, I’ll model how we gather information about the kids’ and class’ interests, hobbies & lives, and start to weave this info into our story spinning and later, into reading & writing.   I may do the same story/structures with both groups, scaling it up or down as necessary.
  4. Reading/literacy will start slowly.  Some teachers are concerned that their students really don’t know how to read/decode Hebrew letters/words well yet, especially in grades 3/4.  Not to worry!  Students will get several hours of aural input before being invited to read extended texts.
  5. We will video-record each class and with parent permission, post these class videos to my blog for teacher reference/training and for absent students.  I hope to write & post reflections about (some of) the recorded classes.
  6. We (teachers & Lori, our education director) will have regular feedback & planning meetings (monthly?) after class, to be determined.

I then walked the teachers through this blog so that they could independently refer back to my core documents and our 8 hours of learning together.

Finally, to reflect on the training experience, the teachers responded to these questions:

“What strikes you about these learning strategies, and how do you think your students will respond?”

Here are some of the teacher comments:

“I’m so glad the focus will be on high-frequency (HF) words.  The textbooks don’t really focus on them, and they’re [textbooks] really all over the place with the language.”

“I can see this as being very engaging and enjoyable for the kids.”

“I like that we’re connecting the oral sounds to physical movement with TPR (Total Physical Response).  The repetition of the hi-frequency verbs will embed meaning into their brains.”

“I’m very excited about this.  In the past we went very fast and we tried to do too much!  Now we’re going to take a step back and really make sure we’re doing it in repetitive chunks and make sure everyone understands what they hear and read.  This will really improve the reading quickly!”

“This approach will help them tie everything they’ve learned together…they’ll finally be able to understand it.”

“I can see how it’ll work well with the 4th graders, but I’m interested to see it with the 7th graders because they’re notoriously jaded!”screen-shot-2016-10-10-at-10-48-12-pm

“I feel very energized.  This is going to be a lot of fun to teach!  I feel like a lot of these practices are intuitive and I feel like I’ve tried some of them over the past few years, but I’m excited to watch and learn this fall so that I can get more comfortable with it.”

Well.  My first Hebrew Through Comprehensible Input training is behind me, and the challenges and thrills of teaching Hebrew lie ahead.  Opening Day is Wednesday, September 7.  Stay tuned!

*I’m teaching 3 groups:  3-4; 5th; and 6-7th.  The original 5th-7th group had over 50 kids – too big.

Our First Hebrew T/CI Training: Day 3

During training day 1 or 2, Lori, our education director suggested integrating aspects of modern Israeli life/culture into our language instruction, and while I’m not convinced of its role for novices, (and I’ll probably blog about that topic sometime soon), I took up her challenge…sort of.  I decided that our week 2 extended story-asking demo in Hebrew would be based on a cute Israeli TV commercial.  It would serve as my inspiration and qualify as an authentic resource! (Oy.  Don’t even get me started on that topic!)  I planned to ask a story, dramatize, read, and finally show the clip – as a nice Social Studies-esque tie-in.

This phase of ‘lesson planning’ is critical for T/CI teachers:  Choosing a prompt or storyline or just some high frequency and/or compelling structures, and deciding what other language they will use with their students to talk and ask about.  Often we teachers go way too wide, stuffing a simple storyline with 6 or 10 verb structures or forms, lots of glue and transition words, some rejoinders and other new-sounding vocab.  But we must err on the side of simple and narrow, (I say this to remind myself, too!) especially for novice learners.  In the case of our temple students, we will assume they are all absolute beginners in Hebrew, even though some are ‘sloshers’ (this is Terry Waltz’s excellent term), who have isolated words and phrases, songs, poems, prayers and other memorized chunks from past instruction sloshing around their brains.  Because they have not been exposed to comprehensible, compelling and contextualized extended discourse in Hebrew, we will start building their Hebrew foundation slowly, from the ground up.

Back to the story and the clip.  It’s about a guy who’s sleeping.  He gets up and sleepwalks to the fridge, which is empty, then to the supermarket, which is also empty.  Bingo!!  We have a classic storyline – someone wants or needs something and goes from location to location to find it!

We began asking and dramatizing the plot in our training session.  I instructed one of the teachers to lay down and pretend to sleep…then open her mouth in search of something to eat.  We had her sleepwalk all over the temple library – we even had her open the fridge in the adjacent kitchen!  On my cuing, she considered but rejected several of the offerings on the breakfast buffet – the yogurt, the banana, the bagel – until she found something she liked, “woke up,” and pretended to eat it.  The end.

According to Terry Waltz’s Cold Character Reading (CCR) protocol, the students must hear and comprehend target structures around +- 70 times apiece in an oral class, then have the written version reinforce these target structures another 30 times or so.  I wrote up the Hebrew story, What’s the problem?  but with slight variation for interest, matching the action of the as yet un-screened clip.  I tried to get dozens of repetitions on my targets: ‘is sleeping’ and ‘walks’ as well as the words for ‘There is/are” and “There isn’t/aren’t.”  (A few other verb forms in the story, like ‘gets up’ aren’t really targeted – let’s assume students already know ‘gets up’ from beginning-of-year Total Physical Response [TPR] – Get up, sit down.)   ?מה הבעיה  (What’s the Problem?) is an example of a simple story line stretched out and massaged into an episodic extended block of text with lots of patterned repetition.screen-shot-2016-10-10-at-11-00-44-pm

BTW, I count the following # of reps on my targets in the reading:  Sleeps = 12; walks = 12; there is = 18; there isn’t = 13.  I’ll try to double up next time!  These ballpark numbers are for the decoding magic of Cold Character Reading to work; if students are already decoding well in Hebrew, then this is a fine classic CI story with adequate contextualized reps to boost comprehension and retention!

The teachers found it so satisfying to read, and deepened their understanding of how the earlier barrage of comprehensible, compelling and contextualized auditory input prepares their students  for successful reading (more input).

Oh, and here’s the YouTube link to the commercial for Yotvata Chocolate Milk.  Enjoy!

Our First Hebrew T/CI Training: Day 2

As I mentioned previously, teachers really seem to dig the Novice Hebrew Corpus, as it affords manageability, making story-asking feel less…daunting and unwieldy.  Combining question words with high frequency verbs and cognates or proper names/nouns feels do-able, and I demonstrated lots of engaging circling with these few key ingredients.  With the corpus in hand, we can start to imagine storylines and lines of questioning to ask stories!

Before embarking on the Foundational Skills of T/CI, we explored existing Hebrew ‘legacy’ materials that I’d brought along – basal readers, texts and workbooks commonly found in Hebrew supplementary schools.  Our teachers are now armed and able to recognize the shortcomings of these published textbooks:  They are unappealing – the pictures don’t reflect our students lives or interests; they are boring – nothing really seems to happen in the brief scenes and scripted dialogues; the Hebrew itself seems randomly chosen or focuses on religious holiday vocabulary, not basic face-to-face communication, and is not controlled for frequency or massive repetition.  It’s all over the place!  Furthermore, the beginner level basal readers invite students to decode lists of nonsense words and isolated syllables (in order to practice the Alef-Bet)…an activity long since abandoned in Language Arts classrooms, and definitely not a respectful task!

Session 2 ended with teachers brainstorming an extended scene based on  2 onscreen target structures:  ‘Sleeps’ and ‘hears.’  Imagine the possibilities!  Someone (Who?) is sleeping and suddenly hears a noise.  What is it?  An ambulance?  A dinosaur?  His telephone?  What happens next?screen-shot-2016-09-14-at-1-21-01-pm

 

The collaborative story-spinning possibilities are limited only by our (students’) creativity!

Our First Hebrew T/CI Training: Day 1

We recently completed 8 hours of Teaching with Comprehensible Input (T/CI) teacher training at Temple Beth Israel (TBI).  I presented 2-hour sessions on Monday and Wednesday mornings, for 2 consecutive weeks.  There were (usually) 9 participants, including 6 TBI teachers and one teacher from another temple, Lori (the education director), and me.

Lori made sure we had a lovely breakfast spread for each training segment, and we shared a bite around the table together before transitioning to our presentation space in the cozy temple library.  On the first day, I briefly explained ‘How I got here’ and we went around the table answering the question, “What do I hope to get out of this Hebrew instructional training experience?”  Not surprisingly, everyone was looking for ways to spice up Hebrew school, get and keep our kids interested and engaged, and of course, impart real-world Modern Hebrew communication skills.  screen-shot-2016-09-14-at-1-25-27-pm

As I launched into Reimagining Modern Hebrew Language Instruction, I saw my ‘students’ nodding their heads, finding the concepts to be quite intuitive, especially the moms in the room who had observed their own toddlers’ evolution to speaking.

The friendly breakfast and pre-training chit-chat had helped establish a cooperative tone for our first foray into story-asking.  My subjects were readily ushered into a short & silly Spanish demonstration-story about a princess who went from place to place looking for her beloved…chocolate.

We debriefed the strategies they observed, and ended the session by perusing my Novice Hebrew Corpus, so that my ‘students’ could see for themselves the wealth of Hebrew/English cognates available to exploit, not to mention the other hi-frequency target language.  I’ve found that providing teachers with a list of words – and this one is around 10 pages long! –  they’ll be using in class, can be an effective way to start rethinking curriculum!

How I got here

Last fall (2015), our temple’s intrepid education director, Lori Sagarin, invited the parents of 3rd graders to a חגיגת עברית (Chagigat Ivrit), a ceremony celebrating the onset of Hebrew study at our temple’s supplemental (Wednesday evenings and Sunday mornings) school.  As a Hebrew devotee and World Language teacher myself, as well as a Hebrew school mom, she was preaching to the choir about the benefits of language study and its value in exploring Jewish identity.  This was an exciting journey my almost 9-year-old daughter was about to embark upon!  But more intriguing to me, though, was Lori’s mention of a recent article she’d written in the journal, The Aleph-Bet of Israel Education.  In her piece, Modern Hebrew in Personal Identity Development, screen-shot-2016-10-10-at-11-15-12-pmLori not only rejoices in her own Hebrew trek, but also bemoans the sorry state of basic Hebrew communication skills among K-12 diaspora Hebrew students.
This was my opening, my moment, my invitation to try to make a difference and offer a hopeful and practical alternative to Hebrew school as usual.  My recent re-tooling after over 20 years as an elementary Spanish teacher on Chicago’s North Shore would certainly apply to Hebrew instruction at my temple!

I sat down to answer Lori’s impassioned plea.  It took me days…. (See a version of that lengthy response to Lori, here.)   screen-shot-2016-09-13-at-11-20-16-pm I waited…and thankfully, Lori was excited and inspired by my reply.  Within weeks, I came to her office to present on Comprehensible Input instructional strategies.  To Lori it felt intuitive and exciting, and she was ready for the next step.  Soon afterwards, the two of us wrote a “Best Practice” grant proposal to the Community Foundation for Jewish Education (CFJE) entitled, Fortifying Hebrew Instruction with Comprehensible Input Strategies, and the temple was granted funding in the spring of 2016.

The grant funds cover some materials – a document camera, a digital projector, a set of dry erase lapboards & markers – plus some classroom props and posters, but most of the funding will go toward teacher training, ongoing coaching and mentorship.  I will use this blog – C’movan – כמובן – to document and share our work.

I welcome you, and invite you to join me on this journey, and contribute to our learning, ביחד – together!