Audience: 5th and or 6th grade students
About 60 participants
Time frame: 3 school hours (about 140 min)
If any of the teachers wants to have a longer day, the school is responsible for that time.
Location: outside in a big open area, where you can spread the stations or in a large indoor area, such as the gym. It is important to have the stations close to one another to allow smooth transitions.
Format: 3 stations – 2 fellows operating each station, 20 students at each station accompanied by a teacher from school. One fellow, who is the ‘host’, is available for logistics.
Suggested Schedule
Opening – 20 min
Station Rotation – about 100 min
A closing session – 20 min
A general note – keep your instructions simple. Give examples when possible. The purpose is to expose the students to English, encourage them to speak English and to have fun!!
You can prepare a small notebook to put stamps or stickers in after completing a station (like the one we had on our previous study day).
Opening – 20 min
- The fellows introduce themselves
- A song or a dance performed by the fellows. You can use a mix of children’s songs – ask your teachers which songs they had taught in class. Another option is using trendy songs.
Here are some examples of kids performing songs. You can use these or come up with your own ideas.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FiXCxfWWwPo – Dance Monkey
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yss0SGzrUIY – Best Day of My Life
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b-gvV1U_smM – Levitating
Station Rotation – about 100 min
3 stations of your choice with a few minutes in between, to move from one station to the other. Each station is 30 minutes long.
Below you will find 6 stations which you can choose from. You may use them as they are, alter them or come up with your own stations.
Station 1 – Family and Home
5th grade
- Create a route with family words and some other words.
The students should know 14: father, mother, sister, brother, grandmother, grandfather, son, daughter, grandson, granddaughter, aunt, uncle, cousin, nephew. Then add random words such as book, shelf, sofa, bed, etc.
Print the words in big letters or write them on cards.
Draw the route with chalk or create a route in another way.
Place the words along the route.
Divide the students into 2 groups. They compete against each other.
Decide on the rules. A suggestion: each student in his/her turn jumps on one leg along the route and picks up one family word, yells out the word and brings it to the end point. The group that finishes first and does it correctly is the winner. If any of the members makes a mistake such as picking out a card which is not a family member word, one of the other members has to jump along the route to the end point, take the wrong word and jump back to put it in its place.
- Create a worksheet with a wordsearch and a matching word-picture exercise.
6th grade
- Categories game
Think of categories related to the family or home and the students will compete to think of as many words as possible that fit in that category.
Divide the students into 2 groups.
Give a category and the students from one team have to say a word which belongs in this category. Then the other team gets a chance to do the same. The competition continues going back and forth between the teams until one team cannot think of a word to say. State that each group has 10 seconds to give a word.
Suggested categories:
Family, the kitchen, the living room, bathroom, bedroom
- Create a worksheet with a wordsearch and a riddle.
Optional riddles:
Station 2 – About Us
Suitable for both 5th and 6th grade
- Collect pictures from your hometown. Try to have the following:
Your home, your school, kindergarten, grocery store, favorite diner, favorite dish/food, local synagogue, a famous park in your town or state, a playground you used to go to, your pet. Feel free to use any other places you can think of that the kids may have the vocabulary to name.
Write the list of the words that describe the pictures. They can be on a poster or as printed cards you will post on a board (it depends where the English day takes place).
Place the words in front of the group and show a picture – the students will have to match a word. For some of the places you can add information – for example – the name of your school, your favorite swing on the playground, etc. Since there are two of you, try to bring in a variety of images, instead of duplicating places. However, you may want to show both of your houses and schools.
- Choose 3 songs, one of which is your favorite song. Play a short part of each of them and ask the students to guess which is your favorite. Have the lyrics written on a poster and play the full song. Instruct the students to sing along with the lyrics.
- It is important you choose songs that are suitable for kids. Try to choose songs that they know or pick a song where they at least know the singer.
- You may ask them afterwards which words they know from the song.
- Have the students fill in a worksheet about themselves.
An example:
Station 3 – Jewish Holidays
- Prepare 4 different games. Suggested: Candy Land, Chutes and Ladders (Snakes and Ladders), 4-of-a-Kind (card game) and Ludo (Sorry). With young students you can also play Bingo. Divide the participants into four groups to play each of the games. Think of simple questions about the different Jewish holidays, using vocabulary that the students would recognize. These questions then become the way that the students move through the games.
Sample Questions:
What is the food we eat on Pesach?
Who is one of the heroes of the Purim story?
Whose birthday do we celebrate on Tu B’Shevat?
Include a page with some of the instructions in English, depending on the games you choose. For example:
Role the dice, Go back, Lose a turn, etc.
- You can have a Pictionary competition between groups. Divide the students into 2 groups. Each one chooses a student to draw on the board. The student near the board gets a word and has to draw it. His/her group has to guess what it is and say it in English. Pay attention that a lot of the holiday words are actually Hebrew words, so choose words that are English.
Suggestions: a top (dreidel), a new year greeting card, a doughnut, a seder plate, a mask, a costume, apples in honey, a pomegranate, 4 glasses of wine, a tree, queen, king, etc.
Station 4 – Seasons
- Comparing between the weather in Israel and the States.
Create cards with pictures and words connected to the weather here in Israel and the weather in the states. Make sure you have some for each season. Be careful because rain/umbrella might be spring in your country but it is winter here in Israel.
- Everyone sits together. Show a picture or a word and the students will have to decide whether it is about the weather in Israel or in the States. Decide on “confusing” images together.
- Divide the students into 2 groups. Prepare 4 buckets or baskets to put in the 4 corners of the space and label each basket with the name of a different season. Each group gets the same pile of cards (you can color code them to see which team is most successful), and once you give the sign, they have to put the cards in the correct bucket/basket.
- Using the same cards, have them play a memory game. For 6th graders you may want to use sentences to match with pictures rather than words.
- Bring clothes for different seasons (2 of each type – winter hats, baseball hats, sunglasses, umbrellas, coats, shorts, etc. Items should fit the Fellows (big for the students). Divide the students into 2 groups. Ask each group to create an order for the team members (1st, 2nd, 3rd, etc.). Then, say a season and the chosen team member has to run to the clothes and dress up according to the season. The fastest student gets a point for his/her team.
- Micrography – designs such as the shape of animals, flowers or human figures. This is a Jewish form of embellishment of Biblical texts, developed in the late 9th century, and first used by Jewish scribes in the Holy Land and in Egypt.
Choose several designed shapes according to the 4 seasons (suggestion: an umbrella, a snow flake, a flower and a sun). The students choose 1 and copy it lightly in pencil onto a blank page. Then, they use the words of a poem about the season, or words taken from a word bank that you create (about 50 words per season), and they write the words along the line of the shape. They can also use the words to fill in sections of the shape, if they want. The words should be written in pen or marker. When done, have the student erase the pencil lines and the words become the outline of the image.
Examples for poems about summer:
A Word bank for summer:
Fan, vacation, ants, flowers, August, July, June, bare feet, sand, beach, sun, bathing suit, bikini, beach ball, waves, blue sky, camping, trips, ice cream, cold drinks, shorts, yard, water park, light, extreme heat, hot, diving, surfing, kite, tourists, insects, travel, tan, sandals, humidity, swimming, river, suntan oil, surfboard, sweat, pool, picnic, outdoors, fun, float, water ski.
Examples of finished micrography work:
Station 5 – Independence Day in Israel and Abroad
All countries celebrate their special day. Let’s see in what ways we are the same and in what ways we are different.
- Let’s start with what you do that you think is also a tradition in other countries. According to the lists below, prepare pictures and words (you may alter or add to the terms as you wish). Draw a Venn Diagram with chalk or on a big paper. Spread the words and pictures on a desk or on the floor. Give the students a few minutes to put them into the right place.
Israel
1948, May 4th, squeaky hammers, torch lighting ceremony, picnic or barbecue (BBQ), Israel Air Force airshow, bible contest, snow spray, waving flags and putting them on buildings, fireworks, light chains, falafel, visiting air force/army base exhibitions.
The States
1776, July 4th, fireworks, picnic or barbecue (BBQ), sales in stores, hikes and bike ride, baseball game, fairs/carnivals, concerts, hot dogs/hamburgers and french fries, parades, waving flags, drumming – marching bands, Uncle Sam figure on balloons, costumes of Uncle Sam, displaying other American symbols – Statue of Liberty, Bald Eagle, George Washington, Abraham Lincoln.
Your Country – England, India, Australia, etc…
When you’ve finished the comparison, you can show them a short video about Independence Day celebrations in the countries you presented.
- Give each student an image of the Israeli flag an A4 or A3 paper. You will want to make the Star of David in the middle larger than usual because you want the students to fill in details in the triangles and center space. They may fill in the spaces with the names of places (Jerusalem), symbols (falafel), or ideas (community, culture). Ask the students to use words from the previous activity or they may add ideas of their own. Instruct them to write and/or draw in the 6 triangles and leave the space in the middle for the most important item. Ask them to write their names and class number on one side of the paper.
A follow up suggestion: collect the flag posters and present them on a wall at school to remind them of the English Day.
Station 6 – The Maccabiah
- You can open with a video. It shows different sports that are on the Maccabiah. There are participants talking about the experience.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jT2-F3GIK5Q
OR You can start with the following riddle:
- Then you can divide the class into groups and give them this text to read as a group (taken from the Ministry’s official Maccabiah site):
The Maccabiah is the world’s largest Jewish athletic competition in the tradition and values of Maccabi, emphasizing the centrality of the State of Israel in the life of the Jewish people. The Maccabiah takes place every four years in Israel – “The Jewish Olympics” as they are often called – are Maccabi World Union’s largest and most famous enterprise. These spectacular sports and cultural extravaganzas unite close to ten thousand Jewish athletes from all over the world in Israel every four years.
We hope that, by educating and motivating our students to learn about the Maccabiah, many of them will attend the various Maccabiah sports’ events during their summer vacation in July 2022.
The dates of the 21st Maccabiah Games are July 10th – July 27th 2022. The events will take place mainly in Jerusalem, Haifa, Netanya and Tel Aviv. Entrance for spectators is free!
Each group has a green card with the word YES on it and a red card with the word NO on it. You say the following sentences and the students raise the appropriate card after they decide as a group which one to raise.
- The Maccabiah takes place in Israel. T
- I can play Katan in the Maccabiah. F
- You must be a very fast swimmer to be in the Maccabiah. T
- All the Maccabiah games take place on the beach. F
- The Maccabiah Games are like the Olympic Games, but only for Jewish people. T
- I can go and watch some of the Maccabiah Games for free during the summer vacation! T
- Using the same groups, you can play a miming game. You ask for a volunteer from each group. Taking turns, you give them a note with one of the sports the Maccabiah athletes compete in and the group has to guess what sport it is.
Options: beach football, baseball, volleyball, basketball, chess, half marathon, ice hockey, judo, karate, swimming, table tennis, bowling, etc.
A closing session – 20 min
- Something about you – you can present true and false statements about yourselves, and the students vote with their thumbs – up or down.
- Dancing with the kids to a country song – show how it is done, use some vocabulary while doing so, teach the moves and have fun!
A possible song to use: Cotton Eye Joe – we will learn how to teach it on our study day.