CSJO_2013-Educators

=Grade 8 Educators 2013 CSJO Presentation (Template)= CSJO Grade 8 CSJO Supplemental Material

Presenters

 * **Barry Dancis** is a retired bioinformatics software engineer and curricula developer for secular Jewish Sunday Schools. Along with the other presenters, he is developing lesson plans for the comparative modern Jewry sections of Folkshul's 8th grade. He is the former chair of the Folkshul Education Committee and has represented Folkshul at CSJO Board meetings. He lives in Maryland where he is a member of Machar (SHJ) and was instrumental in getting their Sunday school to add post b’nai mitzvah classes. He is available for presentations on Jewish History and Secular Jewish Sunday School Education.
 * **Michael Prival** was raised in a secular family in the Bronx in which Jewishness was solely political and culinary. After moving to Washington, D.C., he and his wife, Joan, joined Machar, the Washington Congregation for Secular Humanistic Judaism. Michael soon found himself reading the Bible for the first time in his life in order to teach Sunday School. He has been studying it ever since, and has even been seen reading it in the Washington, DC subway. His book Learning Bible Today is posted on the Internet and he currently teaches a course in Machar focused on Bible, Talmud, and other rabbinic commentary. He has, in recent years, expanded his areas of study to include the texts of Islam.
 * **Julia Dancis** is the eighth grade teacher at Jewish Children's Folkshul of Philadelphia, the same Shul she herself attended. She is a recent University of Maryland graduate, where she double majored in English and Psychology. While attending university, Julie taught the Kindergarten- first grade class at Machar, as well as coordinated Machar's youth group. Julie is in the process of writing a curriculum for Camp Gesher, a Habonim Dror camp in Ontario, where she will be the educational director this summer.

===Synopsis: This workshop provides a model for teaching comparative modern Jewry by exploring how organized Jewry evolved over the last 200 years in response to modernity. This teaching model focuses on the continuing tensions over how much tradition to incorporate and how much to leave out, how much to assimilate into the larger culture and how much to stay separate from it. The historical circumstances leading to each change are emphasized. This approach to teaching provides a better understanding of non-secular Jewish beliefs in comparison to secular Jewish beliefs than can obtained by attending religious services and/or listening to religious representatives.===

Outline
>> >> All Lesson plans are meant as suggestions for teacher use. Using them ensures that the material intended for the class will be covered in an age-appropriate way and consistent with the school's values and beliefs. Some reasons for using modified or different lesson plans might be: >> >> >> Feedback from teachers on the lesson plans is always welcome and provides a way for continuous improvement.
 * Objectives of Curriculum
 * General to secular Jewish Education
 * Critical thinking over values clarification
 * Critical Thinking for this curriculum entails the idea that we are looking at various changes in Judaism/Jewishness from a historical perspective. That's the "Critical Thinking" part. We're not just seeing changes in outlook as "theological" developments floating in thin air. Changes are responses to specific life needs arising in particular historical circumstances.
 * Reform as an example
 * Critical Thinking - Reform developed in Germany in the mid-19th century for two reasons:
 * Desirable - Jews hoped to avail themselves of the better life by exemplified by modern Christians.They didn't want to be Christians but Christians had done some worthwhile things and they wanted to get in on it.
 * Restrictions - Jews hoped to get restrictive laws lifted by being Germans of the Hebraic religion instead of a strange, foreign people living in Germany.
 * Values Clarification - presented in abstract - rabbis come in and give their understanding of what their religion is about
 * Specific to comparative Modern Jewry
 * Explore the different ways in which Jews embraced modernity
 * Emphasize the history and ideology so that the comparative aspects grows organically out of that
 * Much less important is giving a feeling for current practice by visiting synagogues or meeting with religious leaders
 * Emphasize that people tend to be loyal to their religious organization even though their personal beliefs may be vague or at odds with that organization
 * Most student interactions with other types of Judaism will be with friends rather than religious leaders
 * Difference between personal and organizational beliefs
 * Emphasize that Jews have a loyalty to the Jewish people that often transcends their particular beliefs
 * Grade Summary
 * Target Grade - 6th to 8th, optimally 7th when students are attending religious b'nai mitzvahs
 * Generic Structure (look at example for the grade)
 * Title
 * Synopsis
 * Questions: Some basic questions students should be able to answer at the end of the year
 * Objectives: A list of what is trying to be accomplished during the year
 * Meta Issues: optional section stating some of the issues that span most of the lessons (new to this grade)
 * Lesson Titles and Goals: Should embody the objectives for each lesson. The grade objective should summarize all the individual lesson titles and goals
 * Background: More than enough for the teacher to do the lesson, not so much that the teacher won't read it all
 * Lessons
 * Generic structure -**(All grade-specific lesson plans should have the following form and at a minimum, include title, goals, materials and close the lesson. Please also include as many of the other sections as possible though some kinds of lessons may not use all of them)**
 * **TITLE:** (1 sentence or less summarizing the goals and ideas for the lesson - should not include how the lesson will be done)
 * **GOAL:** (list of specific goals for the lesson – should not include how the lesson will be done.)
 * **MATERIALS:** (a list of materials needed for the lesson)
 * **LESSON:**
 * 1) **Gain attention of learners:** (Warm up to get students interested in topic)
 * 2) **Relevant past learning:** (brief review of previous learning relevant to the topic)
 * 3) **Introduce new material:** (New material or links to new material. May also include background information for the teacher that is not presented to the class)
 * 4) **Provide guided practice:** (Demonstration and guided practice for activity that uses/expands on new material)
 * 5) **Provide independent practice:** (Activity that uses/expands on new material where students work independently of the teacher)
 * 6) **Close the lesson:** (review and wrap-up of independent practice and important points of the lesson. Generate answer to parents' question "What did you learn today")
 * **REFERENCES:** (list of references, links and reading related to the lesson)
 * **VOCABULARY:** list of important words to be used/defined during the lesson
 * Tailor to the particular students in the class
 * Found better way to present material
 * Corrected errors in the content
 * Follow up on material from a previous lesson that the students found particularly interesting


 * Checklist When Preparing a Lesson
 * Activities for multiple intelligences, interests and abilities
 * Movement
 * Music
 * Art, Arts & Crafts
 * Introspection
 * Small Groups
 * Activities should relate the lesson to their lives - Adolescents love to talk about themselves
 * Modes of presenting information
 * Reading a poem, a newspaper
 * Viewing Movie
 * Talking
 * Looking at pictures
 * Gain attention of Learner
 * Trigger games
 * Awareness of alternative available physical spaces
 * Couches in classroom
 * Be outdoors in good weather
 * etc
 * Examples of 1 or 2 lessons
 * What was done
 * Why it was done
 * Efficacy
 * Simulate an activity
 * Summarize the effectiveness of the other lessons without going into detail


 * Sources - summary and lesson plans can be found beginning at: http://folkshuleducation.wikispaces.com/CSJO_2013-Ed8
 * Comparative Religion - to teach or not to teach!
 * In general, don't teach
 * We don't have enough time to teach our own subject matter
 * Each other religion is its own ocean of material often with many different varieties
 * If you teach
 * Teach the ones the students are most likely to encounter - ie Christianity and Islam, possibly Bhuddism if several students have Bhuddist parent(s)
 * Islam
 * Traditional has 5 major schools - with very little diversity - Institutional all still in 11th century
 * Equivalent to our UltraOrthodox Jews - rejects modernity and embraces medieval legal system that makes no sense today
 * Typical Muslim students likely to meet is a modern person who if they knew what was actually in Muslim law would reject most of it
 * Similar to modern Jews, who tout the Torah/Talmud as fonts of wisdom and ethics where in reality they are mostly the opposite
 * Christianity
 * Has great diversity of Institutional belief - very similar to Judaism in that respect with the exception that Christians did it first