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Shalom, Yeledim

At Ann Arbor's Jewish day school,
students spend half the day speaking only Hebrew.

,

T

JULIE WIENER

StaffWriter

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4/17
1998

12

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Guide.

he first day is the hardest.
For three years now,
first-graders have entered
Aron Kaufman's classroom
with trepidation, fearing they will
drown in a sea of Hebrew. But within
a few months, they are chattering
comfortably in the foreign language.
Since fall of 1995, Hebrew Day
School of Ann Arbor (HDS) students
have learned Hebrew and Judaic
Studies through an immersion pro-
gram, spending half the day in a
Hebrew-only classroom where the
teacher speaks absolutely no English.
"It's a slow process, but it works,"
said Amalia Poras, the school's third-
grade Hebrew teacher. "Before we
started immersion, students would
read texts in Hebrew but then discus-
sion would be in English, and there
would be a lot of translation. Today,
we don't translate texts. By third

grade, most of the students are already
fluent in Hebrew."
The curriculum, which was devel-
oped in the 1980s by the Jewish
Education Council of Montreal, uti-
lizes body language, music and art
projects to make children comfortable
with Hebrew. In addition to providing
teacher training and peer support, the
curriculum includes audio cassettes,
posters, books, workbooks. This year,
196 schools utilize the curriculum
(called Tal Am and Tal Sela), up from
136 just one year ago. Educators in

Above: Aron Kaufman, a.k.a.
"Moreh Aharon," helps out
first- graders Jennifer Miller and
Eric Friedman with their
Hebrew reading. In the back of
the room is a display of the
children's pictures of the Garden
of Eden.

Right: Tatiana Bernstein sings
along in Hebrew with the rest o f
her first gradeclass.

Montreal also have adapted the pro-
gram for use in congregational
Hebrew schools.
"The actual program itself is just
phenomenal," said Kaufman, who
pioneered it with HDS's first grade
and now teaches second grade, as well.
"The whole idea is that when you
speak, you don't want to translate
because that reinforces the English
rather than getting the children think-
ing in Hebrew."
A musician, Kaufman especially
likes the program's musical compo-

