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General education's "science of reading" research offers a number of teaching strategies and resources that have the potential to improve Hebrew teaching in part-time/synagogue settings. Many have been tested by educators working with #OnwardHebrew's 2023-2024 "Decoding Think Tank" and are in the process of being explored in other ways by #OnwardHebrew's 2024-2025 "educator experimenters."
Want details? Check out the "Conquering the Challenge of Hebrew Decoding" guide. The webpage of the same name (linked here) offers other resources especially (but not exclusively) for education directors and clergy. This webinar offers some of the big picture research from the science of reading that applies to Hebrew decoding. In addition, the "Conquering the Challenge" guide (linked above) matches specific strategies to specific research findings - find what interests you on pages 19-56. THIS "Decoding Resources" webpage has been set up especially for Hebrew teachers and tutors. It offers a sampling of the strategies in the "Conquering the Challenge" guide for which we created specific resources. Scroll down to find what you want to try with your learners, but be sure to open the guide, itself, to learn much much more! |
alef-bet strategies & resources
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STRATEGY: Students write Hebrew letters from memory.
Supplies: Teacher/tutor supplied. More info: Found on pages 22 and 67-68 in the Conquering the Challenge of Hebrew Decoding guide. |
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STRATEGY: Learners identify the key characteristic(s) of Hebrew letters (for example, "What makes a Tet a Tet?").
This strategy may also be used with two potentially confusing letters (for example, Resh and Dalet). Supplies: Click for an already-made packet of each of the Hebrew letters, each with 7 different fonts. More info: Found on pages 23 and 29 in the Conquering the Challenge of Hebrew Decoding guide. |
ABOVE: A lively AlefBet song that focuses on the 22 letters. From Jewish Interactive (Jigzi).
ABOVE: "Vowel Karate" - a movement based way to learn the names of the Hebrew vowel signs.
Above: "Vowel Karate" slowed down and the motions explained.
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DECODING STRATEGIES & RESOURCES
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STRATEGY: "Word cards", which clear away the distractions of all the other Hebrew on a page. Spend time helping the learner look carefully at the "inside details" of the given word.
Supplies: Teacher-made word cards taken from current work. The t'fillah pages in the T'fillah section below (scroll down) may also be used, as well as materials from textbooks or workbooks (word cards offered as supplementary materials, or cut from pages of text). More info: Multiple places in the Conquering the Challenge of Hebrew Decoding guide (for example, pages 27, 30-31 and 66). |
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STRATEGY: Segmenting Hebrew words, a process that helps learners focus on the letters & vowel signs within.
Supplies: Teacher-made word cards OR words found on prayer/blessing pages (see the T'fillah section, below, or in your textbook). More info: Appendix A (pages 57-58 in the Conquering the Challenge of Hebrew Decoding guide). |
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STRATEGY: Modified expectations of students achieving "fluent and accurate decoding," especially when asked to decode ("read") words/prayers not yet studied.
This means that students learn to recite prayers and blessings before being asked to decode them. During the learning process, it also means the Hebrew is previewed (recited or read first by someone else) before the student is asked to decode the line or passage. Supplies: The text the learner is working with. An option is to use an app that offers Hebrew pronunciation. Check out this on Avot V'Imahot in Jigzi (you need to create an account) or search there for "SLTA" to find pre-recorded blessings. More info: Research from the "science of reading" explains that we learn to read smoothly and accurately in our native language because of a process called Orthographic Mapping (this, with its implications for our Hebrew learners, is explained in the first 18 minutes of this webinar). Also, see pages 41-45 and 46-49 in Conquering the Challenge of Hebrew Decoding. If you are worried that learners who first learn to recite prayers/blessings before being able to decode, will have a myriad of "fossilized mistakes" that will be hard to fix, check pages 49-52 of the same resource. |
t'fillah STRATEGIES & resources
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STRATEGY: Research from the "science of reading" emphasizes the use of texts with large font, extra white spaces between words, and more white between lines. Research from Israel on Hebrew reading adds the helpfulness of setting up pages so that prayers and blessings are "phrased" to support meaning-making or grammatical pauses.
Supplies: The Jewish Education Center of Cleveland's Teacher Center created prayer/blessing documents with the recommended spacings and phrasing. PDFs are available for download below. Editable Word Docs may be downloaded from https://JECCMarketplace.com (search for "t'fillot"). All are a free download. More info: Found on pages 34-35, page 66, as well as other places in the Conquering the Challenge of Hebrew Decoding guide. |
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Sh'ma and its Blessings
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FINALLY, Take a look at these very very short videos
These three videos (below) were recorded by a participant in the 2023-2024 #OnwardHebrew "Decoding Think Tank." She wanted to hear from students how they found their place on the page when they got lost in the middle of a prayer. Their answers were recorded and then shared in the "Conquering the Challenge of Hebrew Decoding" webinar (these videos are also linked on page 62 of the guide).
Even though these videos do not capture the learners decoding large pieces of a blessing/prayer, an educator who viewed the webinar asked how these young learners got to be such masterful decoders. Yes, if one looks carefully, these children are not laboriously decoding Hebrew letter-by-letter, vowel-by-vowel. However, they are matching what they have learned orally to the print on the page.
Even though these videos do not capture the learners decoding large pieces of a blessing/prayer, an educator who viewed the webinar asked how these young learners got to be such masterful decoders. Yes, if one looks carefully, these children are not laboriously decoding Hebrew letter-by-letter, vowel-by-vowel. However, they are matching what they have learned orally to the print on the page.
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A CHALLENGE TO YOU: Our core Hebrew prayers and blessings are 2000ish years old, but prayerbooks were not mass produced in the United States until a little over 150 years ago. This means that for almost 2 millennia, most Jews learned their prayers by heart or they simply said "amen" after someone else recited the prayer. In spite of that history, decoding has been our "Hebrew School" expectation for a number of decades. As one colleague said, "we have an obsession with Hebrew decoding... but there is so much more to Hebrew than being able to decode"
#OnwardHebrew's challenge to us all is to help our learners be competent pray-ers within a Hebrew rich learning environment. Over the years, we have learned that this does not require years of focusing on developing competency in letter-vowel-letter decoding. And so, this call for change: https://www.onwardhebrew.org/blog/hebrew-learning-in-synagogues-a-call-for-change. We hope you give sound-to-print learning a try!!
#OnwardHebrew's challenge to us all is to help our learners be competent pray-ers within a Hebrew rich learning environment. Over the years, we have learned that this does not require years of focusing on developing competency in letter-vowel-letter decoding. And so, this call for change: https://www.onwardhebrew.org/blog/hebrew-learning-in-synagogues-a-call-for-change. We hope you give sound-to-print learning a try!!
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