JCast Network

A previous post (8/18/10″ On-Time Oreos”) featured a weekly treat. In addition, throughout the year, the Jewish Holiday cycle offers a delicious array of foods that nourish mind, body, and spirit. Apples and honey for Rosh Hashana; donuts and latkes for Hanukkah; dates, raisins, pomegranates, carob chips, and Fig Newtons for Tu B’Shvat; macaroons, charoset, […]

Sometimes, it’s the smaller elements that contribute in a significant way to the overall classroom environment. For the past few years, my students have enjoyed “on-time oreos.” This snack began as an incentive for students to arrive at Hebrew class on time. With only 60 minutes of class time, a student who is 10 minutes […]

I went to my classroom today to prepare a classroom scavenger hunt sheet (Post 8/3/10 “Classroom Scavenger Hunt”) for the First Day of school. There are a number of different types of maps of Israel on the walls. Seeing these maps reminded me of a display and lesson that a friend, a very creative Jewish […]

Regardless of the textbook series we use, teaching prayers includes developing students’ basic translation skills. We expect students not only to decode (pronounce words accurately and fluently), but to demonstrate a level of understanding of the prayer text. To achieve that outcome, we teach word roots, prefixes, suffixes. The text books usually provide the English […]

Shavuah Tov! Many of my recent posts have described display models which can make you classroom walls an asset to every lesson. There is another type of display which is quite versatile – the project display board or tri-fold board. When opened up, these corrugated boards can stand alone on a table top or on […]

Shabbat Shalom! Cue the theme from Twilight Zone. Grab a four-leaf clover. Watch out for black cats. It’s Friday the 13th! Wait! Stop cowering in the corner. Put away that rabbit’s foot. You’re Jewish! Can Friday, Yom Hashishi, ever be unlucky? On Friday, we prepare to welcome Shabbat. We polish the wine cup, bake a […]

At one of the stops on my journey as a Jewish educator, I directed a community Jewish Teacher Resource Center housed in the basement of a Day School. We had a basic collection of resources, and coordinated a number of worthy events and programs. However, our main attraction, by far, was a laminating machine. The […]

As part of your classroom displays, include Hebrew labels for classroom objects – shulchan, sefer, aron, kiseh,ritzpa, luach, keer, tikra, chalon, delet, etc. Providing labels encourages students to learn a whole set of vocabulary informally, as they repeatedly see the label and hear objects called by their Hebrew names. Even during Judaic Studies, students may […]

In organizing a Teacher Resource Center for our synagogue, I came across religious school texts that dated back to the 1950’s. They were printed in black and white and the contents were rather bland and a bit stuffy by today’s standards. An important development in Jewish education over the past few decades has been the […]