#PRIZMAH17 Chicago Conference

I just got back from attending the Prizmah, 2017 Jewish Day School Conference which, lucky for me, is in Chicago this year.  I only heard about it a few weeks ago, so it was too late to pitch a proposal to be a presenter.  (Maybe next time?)  Instead I attended a most intriguing session:

As far as I could tell, this was the only session (among hundreds) that focused on Modern Hebrew instruction, and many respected speakers participated on the panel.  My goal was to get a read on current thinking in the field, in part, because I am obsessed with the topic, but also to gauge how ‘ready’ the day school community seems for the primacy of Comprehensible Input message.

The session was fantastic and did not disappoint.  Thanks to the wonderful panel of Hebrew leaders.

Here are some of my takeaways:

+Our pre-k-12 Jewish learning institutions, no matter how religious or what their modern Hebrew programming looks like – immersion, foreign language, content-related, lots of or limited instructional minutes – are all struggling to improve the quality and effectiveness of their modern Hebrew programs.  They are fully aware that their stakeholders (students, parents, teachers) aren’t satisfied, and that their Hebrew outcomes are generally…underwhelming.  (I wasn’t sure everyone knew, but they do.  This is very good news, indeed!)

+Our institutions are talking about embracing proficiency-oriented programming for communication.  THIS IS HUGE!   When I was a student, it was rare to question any, let alone the Audio-lingual (grammar drills) or translation teaching methods.  Now, though, our leaders realize that face to face communication does not arise from ‘slice ‘n dice’ methods that chop the language up and explain how the parts work.  Day schools want a vibrant Hebrew culture where the language is a tool for everyday communication – in the library and cafeteria, as well as the Hebrew classroom.

+Our day school leaders realize we need to create a cadre of knowledgeable teacher leaders for ongoing improvement and sustainability.  They believe in quality professional development and common experiences for our teachers.  They realize that a native Hebrew speaker does not an expert in teaching strategies make.  THIS IS GIGANTIC.

+Our day schools are willing to experiment in their buildings, tweaking the program delivery model, scheduling, offerings, team-teaching, coaching/mentoring, teacher meetings and collaboration time, peer observations, curriculum, etc.  They are finding creative ways to re-brand their programs to increase visibility, information, and positive press among the community of parents and students.  And importantly, many are willing to shine a flashlight on their existing program and perform a self audit (by an outside/objective observer) to ascertain weaknesses and opportunities for improvement.  Many are undergoing massive revision-ing.

+Many schools are finding ways to extend modern Hebrew beyond the classroom and throughout the schoolhouse by hosting Hebrew language sports classes (Krav Maga); using Hebrew in the lunchroom, and integrating Hebrew across the curriculum by singing Hebrew songs in Music class; employing Hebrew in Art, etc.

+Hebrew is gaining legitimacy by affiliation with the national parent organization, ACTFL (The American Council of Teachers of Foreign Languages).  Many Jewish schools are looking to the ACTFL proficiency guidelines to set standards.  Hopefully soon there will be a Hebrew Special Interest Group (SIG) within ACTFL, as well as a National Association of Hebrew Teachers, providing more support and resources for Hebrew teachers nation-wide.

+Delet l’Ivrit through Hebrew Union College has a new university program to train Hebrew teachers with their best practices pedagogy.

And the list of innovations goes on!

HOWEVER, I do see some challenges, though I have no doubt we will clear them.

Challenges and caveats:

-Many of the day schools talk about data-driven decision making, the new ABCs of education in a post NCLB world.  But language is different than math and science, in that it is NOT CONCEPTUAL.  There are no formulas or causalities to be learned; on the contrary, language acquisition is unconscious (SD Krashen), and the key ingredient driving acquisition is comprehensible input (CI).  No one knows exactly how much input it takes until a student starts speaking (and there are many variables), but we in the field say, as a rule,  “A flood of input for a trickle of output” (Wynn Wong).  So output-based (speaking, writing) assessments for beginners are inappropriate, because these novices are still building a linguistic foundation.  Would you proctor a speaking test on a 14-month-old?  Assessments of comprehension are formative and ongoing by the well-trained T/CI instructor.  Evaluators can see in class if students demonstrate comprehension of the input; parents can see it in a video of class.  Later, once the students have built a broader linguistic base and have the literacy skills necessary, students can write and even speak more in Hebrew.  According to the research, though, practicing speaking through memorized dialogues and cloze (fill in the blank) activities is not real communication, and does not beget real communication.  (See this article on Principles for Language Teachers from my SLA comrade in arms, Chris Stolz).

-Related to assessment, above:  We must be skeptical of written level-placement tests based on discreet vocabulary items and/or speaking/writing output, especially for the novice to intermediate proficiency levels.  In fact, many placements tests, for admission to Hebrew camps, day schools, ulpanim (intensive Hebrew study programs), university and other programs, are outdated and do not align with SLA research.  Check out this study packet for Chalutzim, a 7-week Hebrew immersion camp experience that my son attended.  While he had a fantastic summer, the entrance test likely created obstacles and anxiety for many potential campers.  It sends the message, ‘If you don’t know or memorize this random list of low frequency words, you aren’t a good fit.’  Is that the pronouncement we want to convey to our 15-year-olds?  The study packet asks students to (be prepared to) memorize semantic sets (i.e. – a list of colors, nature words, numbers), but this is not how the brain acquires (Robert Waring); and potential campers are invited to study verb endings for tense formation, but this practice constitutes a focus on form, which is linguistics, not language acquisition.  Many of the language instructional practices once at Chalutzim also lack research-based alignment, and the program as a whole (and others like it) would greatly benefit from an audit and overhaul, to optimize Hebrew acquisition, its stated goal.

-Teachers and administrators must know how humans acquire language (SLA research) in order to establish and monitor an acquisition-conducive program, (as stated in my manifesto, here.)  Otherwise, we’ll be chasing our tails, trying new curricula and materials, substituting one expensive, misguided and ineffective program for another.  Our teaching strategies must align with the research.  We know that humans need comprehensible input to acquire, and that by making the input compelling, the likelihood for attending to messages is greater, optimizing our time and effort.  (Read about SLA here.)

-Many well-intentioned teachers and programs insist that their novice level youngsters speak/respond only in Hebrew, say in the cafeteria or in other school common spaces.  We call this practice, “forced output,” and it flies in the face of what we know about acquisition and the affective filter.  If a student is forced to speak in Hebrew before s/he is ready, (before the utterance comes unprompted, confidently and without hesitation), then we run the risk of raising the student’s affective filter, making him nervous/self-conscious and less likely to willingly speak the next time around.  WE MUST BE PATIENT UNTIL THE LANGUAGE FALLS FROM THEIR MOUTHS, giving students ample invitation and opportunity to speak in more supported and natural ways.  This point cannot be overstated.  Often teachers and schools feel pressure to prove that their Hebrew classes are effective, by showing what the kids can say/do with the language (“using complete sentences!”)  Instead, we must re-educate our whole community on the importance of investing our time and energies in CI, and showing how it works by:  1.  Demonstrating T/CI on parents; 2.  Inviting them to observe Hebrew class: 3.  videotaping our classes so that observers can appreciate just how much Hebrew our kids are hearing, attending to, and comprehending.  There is no research that I know of supporting forced output (“You may only speak Hebrew in gym class”) or language practice, (as in, “Repeat after me:”) as a pathway to proficiency – for beginners.  On the contrary, Comprehensible Input provides the fertile soil from which speaking and writing (output skills) grow.

-Many schools assume that teacher-made thematic units are the way to go, and map their curriculum accordingly.  But we know that young students (and most people, no?)  like to talk about one thing more than any other – themselves!  Therefore, setting a curriculum focused on exploiting the highest frequency words (& verb-containing chunks), while incorporating students’ interests and ideas through story-asking, is a fun, lively, engaging and creative way to customize classes for the group in front of you!  Using hi-frequency verb-chunks to talk about “my house” or “my morning routine” is flat and boring, while collaborative, creative and personalized stories bring light and laughter into a discipline in which the brain is already working hard!  We can decide upon a corps of foundational verbs we want to use, and recycle & add more each year to articulate a curriculum up through the grades, realizing full well that we may deviate while following student interest.  The key to good language instruction is sustaining engagement and attention to the comprehensible message, while using Hebrew all the while.

Clearly I could go on, but I’ll stop here, to bask in the knowledge that great and positive changes are within reach for Hebrew teaching and learning (acquisition)!   Change takes courage, and the Prizmah session was filled with courageous Hebrew leaders.  I believe we are ready to transform Hebrew instruction, and improve the experience and Hebrew language outcomes for our students!

I wish to be part of the wave that’s coming.  If I can help you or your institution realize your dream and re-imagine your Hebrew offering, please reach out! and we’ll set up a training for administrators, teachers, parents and/or students.

I’d love to hear your comments on the Prizmah session, and/or the future of Modern Hebrew instruction.

Let’s make it happen!

I’M ALL IN.

Training Wheels

I get it.

For a teacher, change can feel risky.  The admin and the community (parents, teachers and students) have expectations, based on observations, murmurings, your bulletin board, an Open House presentation you gave a few years back….  You have a reputation to uphold.  Plus, for years you have tweaked and streamlined and created ancillary materials to accompany the (pre-fab?) curriculum you currently use.

But it’s not really working.  The kids aren’t interested or engaged, and their language skills, growth and retention are, ahem,…unremarkable.

By now, you’ve grown more familiar with the Second Language Acquisition research, which points to Comprehensible Input as the primary conduit for language gains.  So it’s hard to fathom going back to your grammar-based textbook, or even a curriculum that claims to be new and different…  but when you delve further, it, too, is filled with conjugation charts, rules about masculine and feminine, singular and plural endings, and thematic vocabulary lists, like, “places in the house,” or, “weather expressions.”

But we don’t communicate in lists.

We can’t go back.  We can’t teach letters/sounds with nonsense words, and we can’t continue to teach sets of related nouns, hoping that our kids’ brains will magically fill in the rest of the sentence.  And we can’t slice ‘n dice the language into rules and exceptions, tenses and endings, hoping that our kids will reconstitute it like some kind of powdered astronaut food.  We need to scaffold the language, flesh it out, and communicate naturally,  at the discourse level.  No substitution drills.  No scripted dialogues.

We need to provide TONS of comprehensible input so that our students’ brains can unconsciously and deductively uncover its patterns.  If we’re new to this, we need strategies and guidelines for how to make the target language comprehensible, compelling and contextualized.

We need a roadmap.

What might a Comprehensible Input-based curriculum look like, considering that we are trying to build language based on student interest and ideas, to keep it compelling?  How can we create a flexible course-long sequence to follow (or cherry pick), while laying-in a foundation of the highest-frequency language?  Sounds like a tall order for a teacher who is also trying to change her practices, and learn new teaching strategies herself….

There is a way.  It’s older than cave-painting, yet it constitutes the latest research-aligned approach:

Stories.

We can create collections of compelling mini stories,+- 10- line fanciful tales or scenes, employing a smattering of the most foundational vocabulary combined with cognates and proper names/places.  These could be used to teach our youngest readers, or serve as independent reading for any age group;

We can author interest-based scenes, episodes or chapters for story collections, each with its own parallel readings (different versions),  literacy extensions and activities;

We can write (or translate existing) inviting leveled chapter books or novels, geared to the unique needs of Hebrew language learners, controlling vocabulary and syntax to ensure reader ease, pleasure and success;

All these readings, great and small, provide teachers with curricular content – the students and stories are the curriculum – from which to plan her classes.  Once she internalizes the new T/CI strategies by practicing with these written collections, she may choose to then abandon the pre-written stories, and collaborate instead with her own students on mini-stories and scenes, episodes and extended stories, or a class-spun novel (it’s been done in other World Language classrooms!)  But until then, she’ll feel sustained, supported, and balanced by the training wheels of a story-based written curriculum.

I plan to begin writing such a curriculum.

Students and stories.  Students’ interests and ideas, magically spun to create customized group stories.  Stories, creating an imaginative and magical context for foundational language.

Students, stories, inventiveness and communication.  Rules, verb endings, tenses, and lists.

Let’s call it:  No contest.

An Open Invitation

screen-shot-2016-11-17-at-11-47-16-amI sent this letter of invitation below, explaining my Hebrew educational reform project to family, friends, acquaintances, teachers, administrators, and organizations.  If you know anyone interested in improving the Hebrew learning (acquiring) experience and outcomes for students of all ages, please read and forward this letter!

I hope to get more teachers and decision-makers to explore and subscribe to my blog, become familiar with the tenets of Second Language Acquisition theory, read about Teaching with Comprehensible Input, engage in enlightening conversations, and seek (re-)training for our Hebrew teachers.  Once I have a group of interested ‘stake-holders,’ I’d love to organize a conference and/or workshops to present and train, like I did at my temple this summer.  For more on my temple training, start reading here.

I also plan to submit proposals to present at Jewish educator conferences, and, if accepted, seek sponsorship to attend and share my work.  I am aware of the NewCAJE conference in San Francisco in August – please email me with information on other relevant conferences!screen-shot-2016-11-15-at-10-38-46-amHere’s the letter to circulate, and thanks in advance for helping get the word out on improving Hebrew instruction:

October, 2016

Dear Friends,

This summer, I embarked on a new project that I want to share with you.  In a nutshell, I am reimagining Modern Hebrew language instruction.  I believe my vision is timely, and doable with community support.

With the goal of improving our kids’ Hebrew learning experience, I received a grant through the Community Foundation for Jewish Education (CFJE), which allowed me to start training Hebrew teachers in teaching with comprehensible input (T/CI).  Comprehensible Input (CI) refers to brain-friendly language instruction that is understandable to the learner, and focuses on meaning and interest.  Aimed at beginning-through-intermediate-level students, classes are conducted almost exclusively in conversational Hebrew.  T/CI is engaging, fun and effective, employing collaborative ‘story spinning,’ improvisation and acting, and exploits Hebrew’s most practical, high- frequency words.  

I’ve started a blog to share my instructional resources and reflections at cmovan.edublogs.org.     I invite you to follow and join the conversation by posting responses and questions!   Also, please forward this letter to as many friends, acquaintances and contacts you may know who are involved or interested in Hebrew instruction, whether they are affiliated with temple-based supplementary school, day school, ulpan, university or adult conversational classes. This list may include rabbis, classroom teachers, educational directors, administrators and students, etc.   

I hope to foster enlightening discussions around Modern Hebrew language instruction, through this platform, wherever my readers reside, and whatever native language they speak.

In the few short weeks I’ve been teaching Hebrew classes to 3rd through 7thgraders at my temple, the response has been overwhelmingly positive from kids, parents, teachers and the community.  I’ll continue to model teacher lessons, until our faculty feels sufficiently confident to take over.  I will also coach and mentor our faculty throughout the year.

I hope to train additional groups of Hebrew teachers who are interested in learning to teach with comprehensible input in the coming months, hopefully in a workshop or conference setting.

Thanks in advance for your support in helping me spread the word, and feel free to contact me directly at this special email address:  cmovanhebrew@gmail.com.

 

Sincerely,

Alisa Shapiro-Rosenberg

Comprehensible Hebrew, כמובן

cmovan.edublogs.org

cmovanhebrew@gmail.com

The Horse and the Cart

Some say the aural-input-based Hebrew instruction I’m championing may very well represent a departure from our 4,000+ year old Jewish tradition of prioritizing literacy – of teaching Jewish content through Hebrew texts.screen-shot-2016-10-13-at-8-45-53-pm

Not so, I protest.  It’s just that starting with Hebrew writing is putting the cart before the horse.

My father and his father before him attended a Hebrew school (or ‘cheder’) whose sole purpose was to get the students decoding Hebrew, well and fast enough to daven (pray) from a siddur (daily prayer book).  It’s purpose wasn’t explicitly to understand the prayers therein – not even their main ideas – and certainly not their constituent words.  It was to engrave the order and content of daily and holiday prayer into the collective memory of the next generation.  Not a small or insignificant undertaking.  And it was quite effective.  My father, Saul Shapiro, ז׳׳ל, davened fluidly and could read the prayers accurately, even though as a busy doctor and parent of four he rarely attended synagogue.  I used to love watching his whispering lips as he sailed through the quiet, meditative prayers during high holiday services.screen-shot-2016-10-13-at-8-48-05-pm

But we must ask ourselves now, what do we want from our kids’ Hebrew/Jewish education?  And what do our kids want and need?

We have the benefit of brain science and evolving language pedagogy, not to mention a vast cultural shift, allowing and inviting us to search for meaning in our Hebrew and religious school offerings.  If we want only to prepare our students for traditional life-cycle events such as as bar/bat mitzvah or confirmation, and how to blast through a holiday מחזור, then the status quo of starting (and ending) with Hebrew texts gets the job done, I guess….  But many a Hebrew school student (and traditionally taught French, Spanish or other World Language student) complains about taking 4+ years of language class with NOTHING – NO USEFUL RETENTION to show for it.

Most of us want more, and more importantly, our kids want more.  Not more work or aggravation.  More meaning.  Less drudgery.  Inherited traditions and liturgy are cloaked in a veil of Hebrew mystery to less-observant Jews who don’t attend day-school.  So how can we make them more visible, comprehensible and meaningful?

We need to front load tons of oral Hebrew understandable input before setting our kids to the task of Hebrew reading.  This is the proverbial horse.
Just as our toddlers were drenched in oral language before we taught them the letters, their sounds and words they form, so we must flood our Hebrew school students with interesting and understandable aural messages in Hebrew, if we want them to recognize, and attach meaning to the words and sentences we later ask them to decode and read.

Will the simple, high-frequency-verb-filled scenes and stories we create and later read in Comprehensible Input-based Modern Hebrew class transfer to comprehension of ancient prayer texts?  Not entirely – but there will be some overlap.  Students may begin to see other forms of familiar verbs (i.e. אומר – ויאומר) – and deductively make connections based on verb roots.  They’ll see familiar prefixes & suffixes, articles, connection & transition words.

But my practical question, as a Modern Hebrew language enthusiast and instructional reform advocate,  is this:  What are the odds that someone who can decode the prayers but not understand any of them, will continue seeking more comprehensible Hebrew input, which will inevitably lead to more acquisition?  Will they even see a connection between the prayer words they can read, and the living breathing Modern Hebrew language?screen-shot-2016-10-13-at-8-53-28-pm

Compare those unfavorable odds to the kid who’s been exposed to plenty of comprehensible auditory input, and has enjoyed pleasure and success in a meaning-centered Hebrew CI class, chock full of conversational exchanges.  Put a prayer text in front of her and ask, “Do you understand this?”  Depending on the CI-taught kid’s ability/level, she may extract some nuggets of meaning.  Even if she doesn’t yet understand the antiquated and stilted prayer text before her, she’ll still come back for more CI, because it’s fun, its effective and success begets success!  Keeping our kids in the Hebrew game is crucial.  Getting exposure for only an hour or so per week (in supplementary school) or 3.5 hours (in a public high school elective program) is slow going toward proficiency.  I’ll opt for Plan B, with Comprehensible Input instruction affording a greater likelihood of longer-sequence and more pleasant engagement with my students.

Hebrew text is important and, many would argue, the epicenter of our tradition.  Reading is the single most effective way to grow one’s language acquisition.  But the order is crucial, particularly for beginners:  Slather on the aural input – drench and soak in quality, compelling comprehensible messages.  THEN, read, rinse, and repeat.

Let’s put the listening horse back where it rightfully belongs:  Before the reading cart.

 

Hebrew School and Religious School: 2 Parts of a Harmonious Whole

screen-shot-2016-10-10-at-10-36-23-pmHumans acquire languages one way only:  By understanding messages, aka, Comprehensible Input  (Krashen, Foreign Language Education The Easy Way).

By the time they’re 5 years old, most kids have racked up around 15,000 hours of quality comprehensible language input.  So our 200-400 hour total, after 5 years of supplementary Hebrew school programming, is paltry to say the least.  All this suggests that we must be clear and realistic about our language-outcome expectations.

What kinds of student results can we anticipate from our twice-weekly Hebrew program in grades 3 through 7 (about an hour or so total per week)?  Unlike World Language classes in public school, our kids do get some additional Hebrew input through literacy (reading & writing) instruction as part of the liturgical/lifecycle curricula, which together with Modern Hebrew, makes up the Hebrew supplementary school offering.  Though our supplementary schools have traditionally seen these two domains – Modern Hebrew and Religious Hebrew instruction –  as mutually exclusive, I argue that they can and ought to purposefully inform each other, to fortify the overall program.

screen-shot-2016-10-07-at-4-07-15-pmOur rich and diverse liturgical/lifecycle/holiday curricula – hereafter called religious school – explores prayers, songs, religious artifacts, images, communities (including Israel), food, customs, and some texts.  Let’s discuss the texts.

Until now, when our children first formally learn prayers at religious school, they do so by rote memorization, often with the support of predictable melodies.  The prayers are reinforced in temple music class, through assemblies and special events in the sanctuary, through attending services outside of religious school, and perhaps at home or summer camp, as well.  But we can easily put the written Hebrew words into our students’ hands right away and help them develop at the very least, a right-to-left concept of print, as they didscreen-shot-2016-10-07-at-3-52-52-pm as pre-schoolers (or even earlier these days!) with their native English.

Consider Pat the Bunny or Good Night Moon.  Kids who heard these early favorites on their loved-ones’ laps eventually came to predict and recite the tender words, and many kids began to develop letter-sound correspondences, too!  If they didn’t begin to decode the words by discreet sounds, then they often learned them as sight words, recognizing the combined letter shapes and contours as a whole chunk.

I contend that even with the first 6 words of most standard Hebrew prayers, (ברוך אתה __אלוהינו מלך העולם) our kids could be internalizing nearly half the Hebrew alphabet’s letter-sound correspondences!   After all, these 6 words contain 12 distinct Hebrew letters, including some final-letter forms.  And, BONUS!  One of the words is mega-hi-frequency (conversationally):

אתה means you!

Once the kids are literate in English, we ought to matter-of-factly present the additional modality of Hebrew reading to support and fortify our instruction, specifically AFTER our kids have had ample aural Hebrew comprehensible input of the words in question:   Students’ Hebrew names (a very personal and therefore powerful way to recognize letters and their sounds); prayers and song lyrics; the names of religious objects being studied, etc.  It’s a missed opportunity to refer to such Hebrew words as Shabbat or challah, or תפוחים ודבש  (i.e., apples & honey) screen-shot-2016-10-07-at-4-00-13-pmwithout simultaneously presenting their written Hebrew counterparts in context.  But I’m not advocating for isolated word labelling, like we used to see in so many bilingual classrooms in the 80’s – 90’s.  I’m talking about contextualized chunks of written Hebrew language, chunks that will be repeated orally throughout the normal course of class.

My original question was, “What can we expect our kids to be able to do with Hebrew after 3rd through 7th grade supplementary Hebrew & religious school?”  I just explained how the religious/liturgical/lifecycle studies can reinforce our kids’ Modern Hebrew acumen through increased exposure to contextualized Hebrew text, the more comprehensible & compelling, the better.

As I wrote in my manifesto (here) to our temple’s Education Director, Lori Sagarin, back in November, when I first embarked on this mission to reform Modern Hebrew language education, “By the end of 7th grade, we could realistically hope to graduate students with a strong ear for Hebrew, a great Hebrew accent, resulting from copious auditory input, excellent listening, decoding and reading comprehension within the limited high-frequency Hebrew corpus in which they’ve been immersed, discourse at the paragraph level…, and, in the upper grades, some writing skill beyond simple sentences.  Most importantly, we will bring our students to a proficiency level at which they can seek more language input independently.  We call this early but impressive skill set, ‘micro-fluency.’ (term coined by Terry Waltz, PhD).”

If, by 7th grade, our kids feel that their Hebrew journey thus far has been enjoyable and worthwhile, if they feel confident in their growing Hebrew communication skill set, in their ability to understand and produce comprehensible messages, then they’ll be more inclined to continue their Hebrew trajectory.  In high school, college, travel, ulpan…wherever.screen-shot-2016-10-09-at-9-00-44-am

And we know that mutual understanding is the foundation of trust and peace.

!יאללה    Let’s get going!  There’s work to do in 5777!

Finally, a class video!

Quote

I won’t bore you with my technological woes.  Suffice to say that it ain’t easy pulling a 10-minute iMovie off your iPad (unless it’s one with ginormous memory), let alone converting it into an unlisted Youtube movie.  (I lost my first completed version of the movie and had to re-create it!!)  It’s a huge time investment to edit and caption a short video…but here’s the result.  It’s Day 1 of Comprehensible Hebrew – from September 7 (around 3 weeks ago).

Let’s (see if I can) get beyond my Coke-bottle spectacles….  I’m living just beyond my comfort zone, trying to expose Hebrew teachers everywhere to another (and I believe better!) way, unflattering haircut be damned.

I don’t know this group of kids, other than my daughter, who is a current fourth grader.  (You’ll meet her in the video).  This is our first encounter ever!

A teacher recently commented to me that, “it’s like kids are allergic to languages other than English.”  And I started thinking about that metaphor.  It’s pretty apt!  When I was getting allergy shots in the 70’s, as I understood it, tiny bits of pollen and other environmental allergens were introduced, so that my blood would get used to the foreign material, and be sensitized over time.  And that’s the way it is with a new language!  The students aren’t familiar with the discreet sounds, the melody, the cadence, not to mention the grammar, syntax and morphology of Hebrew.  They don’t know the meaning of the words.  But rather than injecting Hebrew in a scary and painful shot, I have them swimming in a shallow pool of it.  And there are inflatable duckies and treats along the deck!  They will slowly be sensitized, and the familiar and acquired Hebrew will eventually feel as automatic and mindless as English!   No sneezing or swollen bloodshot eyes!

This phenomenon reminds me of a language quote I love:

“One must be drenched in words,

literally soaked in them,

to have the right ones form themselves

into the proper pattern at the right moment.”
-Hart Crane, American Poet

Back to the clip.  In this demo video I caption some of the foundational practices of Teaching with Comprehensible Input (T/CI), including:

*Pause, point & S-L-O-W

*Training the kids in the ‘Rules of the game’

*Careful listening

*Teaching to the eyes (-Susie Gross)

*Scaffolded questions

*Frequent comprehension checks

*Narrow, hi-frequency language

*Valuing effort to make meaning

*Choral responses

*Movement

*Fun!

Feel free to share the video with other Hebrew teachers and/or anyone interested in World Language instruction.

Drenching kids in comprehensible, compelling and contextualized Hebrew is my goal.

How’d I do?  I’d love your feedback!

Comprehensible Hebrew on Opening Day!

Chicagoland is sweltering under a September heat wave this week.  It was nearly 90 degrees in my (day job) classroom with similar humidity (no A/C).  I taught in that before coming to teach my first ever (air conditioned!) class at TBI.  The afternoon’s festivities kept me jittery, and amid the sweaty freak-out lead-up, I realized that 30 minutes for absolute newbies would go by in a flash.  I had waaaaay over lesson-planned, so I chose to prune & snip, thereby shedding some anxiety.

screen-shot-2016-09-13-at-10-58-46-pmI wanted our kids to walk away feeling encouraged.  And successful.  And smiling.   Those were my ‘curricular goals’ from which I decided to backwards-plan.  No worries about hi-frequency structures, circling, repetitions, or the like… yet.  Just a fun, informal meeting & intro with some back-and-forth Hebrew communication.

The first group of 20+ 3rd & 4th graders included my own daughter (and #1 Hebrew cheerleader!)  I started by introducing myself to the group in Hebrew:  .אני עליזה.  אני מורה לעברית.  I wrote nearly everything I said, as it came up.  On the dry erase board in cursive/no vowels, in black, and with the English translation in red below it.  I went back to slowly pause ‘n point at it frequently.  I will be experimenting with Cold Character Reading (CCR), but these kids have also had exposure to the Alef Bet starting in 2nd grade.  So I was getting a baseline on their decoding skills.  Some were stronger than others, but it looked as though many could read the short Hebrew words and phrases on the board, when repeated, prompted and in context.  

Next, I distributed their lanyard name tags.  Most kids recognized their Hebrew names orally, but their English first & last names were pencilled on the back, just in case.  I jotted, ‘אני פה’ [‘I’m here’] on the board, and after a few repetitions, they got the hang of responding, ‘אני פה’  when they heard their name.  I modeled courtesy with ‘תודה’ [‘Thank you’], and I could feel the excitement rise as the kids could readily produce these short and appropriate utterances upon hearing their name and taking their tag!  They were proud to share what they knew.  By the time all the tags were distributed, we were nearly halfway through class!  The remainder was spent doing Total Physical Response (TPR) – the kids responded to my commands, demonstrating comprehension (or not) by doing as I requested:

Stand up/sit down.  Boys stand up.  Girls sit down.  Boys sit down, girls stand up.

Next I folded in ‘slowly’ and ‘quickly.’  Boys stand up quickly;  Girls sit down slowly…  This side [of the room] stands up; the other [side] sits down….  Just as the kids were about to ease back slowly into their chairs, I commanded them to quickly stand up!  We played unpredictably like this for a few short minutes…and they LOVED it!

When time was almost up, I asked them to reflect in English about how it felt to hear Hebrew this way.  The kids pointed out that the gestures and acting supported their understanding, that they relied on the gestures.  This was a great place to teach them the ‘stop signal’ – one fist pounding the opposite palm noise that tells me, “the meaning is not clear.”

The 5th-6th-7th grade class (50+ kids) was WAY TOO BIG.  I had a challenging ‘lift-off’ due to the sheer numbers.  Passing out  nametags and meeting the students felt long and boring, and allowed English chit-chat to erupt.  Once the Comprehensible Input got going though, we steadily got our craft aloft.  During the last several minutes of this class (from +- 5:30-6:00pm), I acknowledged how hungry we all were (patting my belly and gesturing eating).  We launched into a mini-scene with one boy walking (running?) quickly to Poochie’s (local burger joint) – I’d posted a mini poster with the restaurant’s logo on one wall – while a girl walked slowly to Portillo’s (a competing local burger joint).  I asked those who liked Poochie’s to run to that classroom location s-l-o-w-l-y; and the Portillo’s-lovers to walk to theirs quickly.  Much narrated walking and running between restaurants ensued.  By the end of class, the kids were standing in their respective restaurant zones, stimulated, energized and, well, HUNGRY!

Just before the bigger kids left, I asked them to reflect on today’s Hebrew class:

“All the gestures and acting helped me understand what you were saying.”

“I understood all your Hebrew words!”screen-shot-2016-10-11-at-11-33-25-am

“I could read the words on the board.”

“That was really fun!”

Encouraged, successful and smiling.  Not a bad way to end the workday.

PS:  I will try to edit and post parts of the videos of these classes soon.

PSS:  Here’s the link to the video!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pn7rsc7xDNA

Back-To-Public-School

Since I’ll be teaching Hebrew supplementary school starting on Wednesday (Oy!!  That’s in 4 days!!), I’ll refer to my Spanish teacher day job as Public School from now on.

As I’ve mentioned elsewhere on the blog, during the day I teach Spanish as a ‘special’ class to 1st, 2nd, 3rd and 4th graders in suburban Chicagoland.  I see each group 3 times/week, for 30 minutes per class.   We just closed out our first week back at school.

I was delighted to see how much Spanish my 3rd and 4th graders have retained even after the 2-month break!  We eased into Personalized Questions and Answers (PQA) around the topic of summer vacation.  My students are fortunate enough to have some pretty spectacular experiences, including European jaunts, hiking the national parks, and accompanying their parents on trips to Asia, Australia and beyond.  To extend our Spanish discussion and incorporate literacy, I typed their fabulous summer destinations into a simple table.  Next to the student (Spanish) name column sits the “I went to….” column.  After hearing the info orally for portions of our first two classes, the class helped me fill-in the table in real time.  I asked; they answered, I typed it into the table which was projected onscreen.  Once complete, I asked questions about who went where, I compared students’ trips, and even allowed a tiny bit of English to creep in if the student simply HAD TO share something special.  “I saw Old Faithful!”  “I went to Hamilton on Broadway!”    “I saw the changing of the guard!!”   I hope to use these fabulous tidbits and locations in our story-spinning this year, as they are important and compelling personal details and help each child feel known and honored.

My second graders were the most challenging.  Classes are larger, and the kids are exhausted by the end of the day.  We (adults) often underestimate the effect of the transition back to a full day of school for young children.  I was sure to revive fascreen-shot-2016-09-13-at-11-03-09-pmmiliar routines (i.e., greeting/goodbye song) which provide much needed structure for the wee ones.  But alas, my classroom is sweaty (no air conditioning); the chairs are hard (transitioning from the rug and  plenty of stretching and movement can only help so much!) and the kids are tired, hungry, need a Band-Aid, want a drink, have a tummy ache, just lost a tooth…in short, they find it hard to stay focused.  This will change as they grow accustomed to the new school year and schedule, but it means that I can’t expect or push too much…yet.  Limited language input, no full-on circling, lots of movement (we did some modified yoga poses) and plenty of props.  We picked our favorite (plastic) snacks and using “want” and “looks for,” we pretended to eat them.

First graders were mesmerized by their first week of Spanish.  The groups are tiny, and I’m visiting them at the rug in their own classroom, at least until the groups ‘gel’ and they’re ready to transition to my Spanish classroom.  THIS MAKES A HUGE & POSITIVE DIFFERENCE!  They’re beyond excited about their new Spanish names.  It’s like they’re in a trance when they hear me speak – you can hear a pin drop!

Takeaways for my upcoming Hebrew lessons:

•Start slowly and don’t push too hard.  Don’t expect (hardly any) output.

•Limit the input.  Short, in-bounds sentences and questions.

•Predictability and structure, especially important for younger groups.

•Inject humor with props, funny images, costume elements, etc.  This lowers anxiety (i.e., The Affective Filter).

•Observe closely:  Change it up when attention flags.  Outta the chairs and Move, Move, Move!

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