Ivrit B’Brooklyn - Hannah Senesh’s Hebrew-Immersion Day Camp
Source: The NY Jewish Week
Julie Wiener writes about Hannah Senesh School's K-4 Hebrew immersion day camp. Here in New York’s (and possibly the Diaspora’s) only Hebrew-immersion day camps, all the activities — from music to drama to playing in the sprinklers — occur in Hebrew.
During the school year at the Senesh School, as at most Jewish day schools, Hebrew is, for the most part, an academic subject, with the Hebrew teachers mixing English into their lessons. But at this day camp the counselors, most of them Senesh faculty members, stick to Hebrew — and lots of body language, pictures and pointing.
Launched in collaboration with Hebrew at the Center, a nonprofit focused on improving Hebrew instruction in North America, the camp, which opened last Monday and has 50 children in grades k-4, is an outgrowth of Senesh’s efforts to strengthen its Hebrew curriculum, at a time when more and more parents of all backgrounds are seeking foreign-language exposure for their young children. The camp also comes amid an emerging Jewish communal consensus that camp and experiential education in general can be equally, if not more, effective than the traditional classroom model.
While this summer’s Hebrew camp at Senesh is two weeks only and limited to Senesh students, school leaders hope next year to open it up to the wider Jewish community, possibly adding more sessions and grades.
Read the entire article at The Jewish Week.