Andrea Hason, a 5th grade English teacher at Beit Sefer Eitan in Jerusalem, and Alise Gold, who teaches 7th and 8th grade Tanakh at the Akiba Schechter School in Chicago, were both eager to teach their students about the holiday. Both teachers responded to Sefaria’s call for educators to experiment with the Yom Ha’Atzmaut lesson plan, created by Rabbi Tzvi Sinensky. This lesson plan lives in our exemplary pedagogy group, and Sefaria’s team was excited to see how it would play out in the classroom, in these two very different environments.
Both teachers began by showing the students the emblem, and asking them to discuss the symbolism. “Although every student had seen this image, they didn’t actually know what it was,” explained Andrea. In both classes, the students worked on dissecting the image and talking about the choices that were made in creating it.
In Alise’s class, the students used the Sefaria sheet to learn the background on their own. They answered questions on the Sefaria sheet, and then discussed what they read together as a class.
Andrea’s class focused on reading some of the verses from Zechariah, and were fascinated to read the verses describing the image on the emblem.
Sefaria’s lesson plans emphasize giving students the skills to navigate texts more independently, taking advantage of our technology to help students build their own learning experiences. Alise’s students were proud of themselves for figuring out the meaning behind the emblem before learning the sources. As they created their final reflections on the emblem, they all felt that the meaning was enhanced through the Sefaria sources.
Andrea’s students felt similarly empowered. She ended off the lesson by asking students to create their own emblem that had a connection to the text. Using Sefaria’s search feature, they looked for words in Tanakh that they might use in a symbol to draw a connection to the textual reference. The students loved it. They logged onto their computers to search for connections. Some had a hard time initially thinking about their connections, according to Andrea, but the ability to search for just one word in Sefaria was very helpful for them.
Feeling inspired by these innovative educators? Click here to see the full collection of Sefaria’s exemplary pedagogy sheets, and email me if you’d like to participate in Sefaria’s next lesson plan experiment!