As a teacher and an educational director, I frequently grapple with the problem of how to teach Hebrew in the afternoon supplementary Jewish education setting. I have determined that two main goals of synagogue education are to make students able to live Jewish lives and to feel comfortable in the synagogue service. Therefore, I prioritize the teaching of siddur prayer based Hebrew first and then modern conversational Hebrew secondary to prayer book Hebrew. I would love to know what texts others are using.
There was a great deal of information on the website, but a few specific things from the reading struck me. One is to devote more "time on task" to the Hebrew reading and allow students more time to decode, read to one another, and read to the group. Also, with teaching siddur based Hebrew, students need the opportunity to practice it in real settings, such as an in class tefillah service. Also, it is important for students to practice at home with parents. So, I might provide transliteration of prayers or have parents use an on line program for the prayers, assuming they are not Hebrew readers.
A curriculum for middle and high school students using the work of photographer Zion Ozeri to explore diverse Jewish communities and their traditions. Students then focus on their own communities - documenting their communal values on film and curating on-site exhibits of their work. The project culminates with an exhibition that ties together the work of students from all participating schools. For educators and students, the website provides links to the sites of world Jewish communities, American history, the Talmud, Jews and photography and photography for social change.
This is the wikispace created by students at Temple Chayai Shalom in Easton during their expeditionary learning project on helping people with disabilities.
Two of the teachers who helped run this expedition were in Cohort 3 of TTF!
Ron Berger is the Chief Program Officer of this organization and this website is chock full of information and student work from project-based learning in a network of schools.
Videos of EL core practices can be found at: www.vimeo.com/channels/corepractices
Storyboard That is a cutting edge Web 2.0 tool for rapidly creating amazing storyboards, no art skills needed. Great for business meetings and in the classroom for students to express their creativity.
LL Note: If you want to print out the free version storyboard, it puts a big digital watermark across your pictures. I found a work-around for that: take a screen shot, then edit that picture as you need to. Short term, for small projects, it's workable. If I were going to use this on a regular basis, I'd ask my school to get us a subscription.
It calls itself a storyboard program, but it really works much more like a comic strip. But it could be very useful for brainstorming in class. You can make 3 free storyboards a week, which might be enough for many of us. It's really easy to use, and you can customize some of the features with your choice of color.