Section archive - Formal Education

In this article, Sharon Avni argues that educators need to understand the construct of belongingness and how it is enacted in the practice of Jewish education. She then presents an extended analysis of a 7th grade Bible lesson to show how linguistic features “enact the social construct of communal identification.” She views the teaching of Bible as a social activity, and analyzes how a teacher's discourse in the classroom creates a sense of belongingness among her students.

Orit Kent and Allison Cook of the Beit Midrash Research Project at the Mandel Center propose that a special type of instructional activity—the interpretive experience—become the centerpiece of meaningful student work on Tanakh. In years of observation of Tanakh classes in elementary through high schools they have seen that Tanakh learning tends to fall into two major types of student activity: language and/or translation exercises, and personalization. They suggest that the use of interpretive experience can greatly improve students' learning of Tanakh.

Michele Chabin writes about a Columbia University-developed teaching method which is used for promoting literacy in schools with high numbers of Ethiopian-Israeli students. The program encourages children to read and write at every opportunity. Students progress at their own pace, with the help of their teacher and the school’s literacy coach.

The government’s planned exclusion of Hebrew from a list of officially recognized languages for UK primary schools could damage Jewish education, the Board of Deputies warned this week. UK Education Minister announced plans last month to make it compulsory, from September 2014, to teach a foreign language to children aged seven to 11. Schools would be required to offer at least one of only seven recognized languages, excluding Hebrew.