by Beth Rosenblatt, SHACHARIT Staff Member
Over the past two years that I have taught this group of four children, they have come a long way with their Hebrew reading.
However, some prayers that they need to learn well for their Bar or Bat Mitzvah are quite challenging. Two of them are Yotzer or and Ahavah Rabbah. Yotzer Or is read and not chanted, and I tried to find a way to teach them to read it without boring them to tears!
So I creating a reading game that, as one of my students said, "is cool, Kind of like Bingo". There are two dice that I made up - one has number 1-6 and the other has 7-12. There are 12 lines on the game page with six words on each line. The child rolls both dice and picks one of the two lines. Then the student rolls the die with number 1-6 on it to determine which word to read. After reading the word correctly, the student circles it on his/her sheet. If the word is already circled when the die is rolled, the child rolls again. If all words are read except one, the child reads that remaining word and gets a prize for completing a line. It can be used by any class for reading; for younger classes or for fewer words, use a regular die with 1-6 numbers and just have 6 lines of text with 6 words on each line.
I believe it is a motivating way to teach lines of text, especially how to make reading a prayer fun!
However, some prayers that they need to learn well for their Bar or Bat Mitzvah are quite challenging. Two of them are Yotzer or and Ahavah Rabbah. Yotzer Or is read and not chanted, and I tried to find a way to teach them to read it without boring them to tears!
So I creating a reading game that, as one of my students said, "is cool, Kind of like Bingo". There are two dice that I made up - one has number 1-6 and the other has 7-12. There are 12 lines on the game page with six words on each line. The child rolls both dice and picks one of the two lines. Then the student rolls the die with number 1-6 on it to determine which word to read. After reading the word correctly, the student circles it on his/her sheet. If the word is already circled when the die is rolled, the child rolls again. If all words are read except one, the child reads that remaining word and gets a prize for completing a line. It can be used by any class for reading; for younger classes or for fewer words, use a regular die with 1-6 numbers and just have 6 lines of text with 6 words on each line.
I believe it is a motivating way to teach lines of text, especially how to make reading a prayer fun!
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