Efrayim Clair

Curriculum and Assessment

Dr. Glanz

Field-experience write up

In the first class I observed, a "class, the goals were pretty

straightforward. The class had just finished a sugya and were preparing for
an upcoming test. The teacher was having the students outline the "on
the board and then asking review questions that the students were expected
to write down and have answered for the next day. The assessment was
twofold: first the students were supposed to hand in the answers to their
review questions and then the upcoming test would assess their
understanding of the sugya.
After class I asked the teacher why he chose to give this review day.
Was he worried that the students wouldnt review otherwise or did he think
that the students did not yet really understand the material. He told me that
having the students create their own outline was not just a memory trick but
a skill building technique he had been working on the whole semester. One
of his curricular goals, it turns out, was for the students to learn how to
concisely summarize and organize sugyot into meaningful chunks. Part of his

final, he told me, was giving the students a broad topic or key word and then
having them write two lines of relevant background and explanation.
In terms of alignment with goals, I think this teacher was right on
target. His students certainly seemed to have polished the ability to
succinctly summarize a piece of information into easily digestible chunks.
Personally, I think this is an admirable learning goal and I think it is being
applied well. Especially in ", the ability to distill usually abstract
information and then apply it to other ideas is critical.
This class sat in stark contrast to the next class I observed. Unlike the
first class, which was an all boys honors class, this second class was
regulars and a much more difficult group, even though it was all girls. This
was a Tanach class and they were covering parshat beshalach. The teacher
was trying to teach the girls about chaiastic structure, and to do this she was
working on the smart board. The students had compiled a list of the 5 key
pot points in the parsha and were now tasked with organizing them into a
chaiastic structure. The teacher assigned this as in class work but most of
the class was disinterested, and from what I could tell, confused about the
significance and purpose of these types of structures.
After class I spoke to the teacher and explained that I noticed that the
girls just didnt understand why they were learning about perek structure.
The teacher explained that one of her curricular goals was to provide greater
context to the book of shemot than the simple level understandings.

Her goal was for her students to see the book and its parshoit not as
freestanding independent ideas but as a larger intertwined narrative that has
deep plot lines and ideas.
While both the goal and activity were apropos Im not sure the teacher
applied it in the best way possible. Im not sure how I would necessarily
teach the idea of chaiastic structures, because it is complicated, but the
students were missing the big idea. Perhaps an in-class assessment would
have been appropriate, allowing the students to verbalize their confusion
and the teacher to identify the best way to proceed.
I want to mention here something I observed, not in a class, but in
davening. Someone on the class forum mentioned the pressing problem of
involving students in tefila and davening. Students have such a tough time
connecting. Students today have no real worries. They live in the instant
gratification generation and dont know what it is like to ask and ask and wait
and wait and perhaps not receive. The worst thing in their lives is getting a
bad grade on a test. They have a hard time davening because they dont
ask. Some schools are approaching this problems in creative and, from
what I could tell, effective ways.
In the school I observed, one davening a week was dedicated to
personal connection with ' and significant relationship building. The school
worked hard to find its staffs strengths and parlay them into separate types
of prayers services. The schools calls them tefilla workshops. While there is

still the standard tefilla for those who wish to attend, one rabbi leads a
meditation on davening and another leads a musical tefila. The school
gives the students total freedom to attend whichever workshop they like.
Some choose one and stick with it for months while others bounce around
between the 5 or 6 different options offered. In terms of curriculum, I think
the school has built in a strong system for teaching the values of davening
and increasing the general feeling toward tefila in the school. I think the
assessment in this case may simply be the attendance and participation.
Since the whole point of the program is to give students flexibility in
choosing their own path, allowing them to find a meaningful experience is
critical. But the school needs to maintain this curricular goal and not lose
sight of why they began this program in the first place. Just like in a class,
schools need to ask the students what is working and what is not. The
administration needs to find the programs that are the most popular and
decide how to build on that. This is a new program and the developments will
continue to roll out, but the administration needs to constantly monitor their
students and see in which direction to steer the program.
Another class I sat in on showed me some similar lessons. This Ivrit
teacher had just handed back a test and was not beginning this new section
by introducing new material to the students. What I found interesting was
that the teacher asked the students how they wanted to learn the new
material. Apparently there a few methods the class had tried out and now
the teacher was throwing the choice back to the students, allowing them to

direct their own learning and in essence assess how the other learning
methods had worked for them. The students were very methodical about
making their choice, comparing old home works and quizzes to see which
method they had done the best on, as a class. Eventually they chose a
blended method (I think) where the students worked in small groups on the
material for the first 20 minutes and then came together as a class for the
last 20 to review with the teacher.
In terms of assessment I think this was an excellent choice by the
teacher. Not only did the teacher give flexibility to his students and control,
to some extent, over how they would learn, but this teacher also found a way
to measure how well the students were grasping the material by meeting
with them immediately after they were supposed to teach it to themselves.
The teacher had developed an open and friendly rapport with the students
and the class as a whole thrived in this informal way.
After class I spoke to the teacher, wondering how an Ivrit class, of all
classes, was able to function with such a loose structure. The stereotype, at
least as I imagined it, is that all language and math classes needed to have a
rigid and inflexible structure to operate correctly. The teacher, who was in
her 10th year, revealed to me that this was not always her approach. She said
that she used to teach in a very frontal way but noticed in her assessments
that the information was only learned short term. At some point she decided
that she wanted her lessons to be more memorable (shades of Father

Sarduccis 5 minute university from earlier in the semester) and to have the
students experience the material as opposed to memorizing it for a few
months.
Significantly, during my interviews and observations, I noticed how
organized and directed the teachers and their classrooms were. Not once did
I see a class that seemed to be in disarray or lacking direction. Every teacher
had answers to all my questions and had sometimes detailed plans of how
they chose to teach. Even each class seemed to have an outline and lesson
plan, an impressive feat considering how many classes these teachers
probably teach.
Curriculum and Assessment is certainly joined at the hip with
organization and structure. When developing our mini-curriculums for class
we couldnt afford to put ideas together haphazardly. We needed to
collaborate, synergize ideas, ensure proper assessments and design realistic
and significant goals. The teachers were prepared for class and my questions
because they had spent a significant amount of time deciding what to teach
and how. They didnt just walk into school that morning and decide what to
do. To be honest, it was a little daunting to think about all the work teachers
do outside of the classroom in addition to the energy we need in the
classroom.
In general my observations were an enlightening experience for me.
Interestingly, I paid attention to very different things during the observations

this year as opposed to last year. This year, as I had a classroom of my own, I
was able to catch nuances that I certainly overlooked when I observed before
ever teaching. Also, now that I have completed all my core courses at Azrieli
I have a much broader and all-encompassing overview of the entire
classroom. Especially this semester I focused on, of course, Curriculum and
Assessment.