I just came up with the geniusest of genius ideas.  Well, not really.  I’m sure it’s being done in other places and I don’t even know if it will work out.  But I am super excited.

Next year, my 6th grade class will be split up into four teams (they are already split up into two different sections of the class based on skill level, so each class would have two teams playing each other directly).  Everything they do will be to win points for their team.  Last year I had them winning personal points that, at the end of the year, they could cash in for silly little prizes.  But next year, I don’t want to do that.

So my idea is to periodically have “challenges” during the year.  For example, the Ashrei Challenge.  Ashrei is one of the hardest prayers to learn that shows up sixty million times during the day.  Okay, more like 3-4 times.  But whatever.  It’s hard.  This past year I spent the whole year trying to teach it to the kids and they didn’t get it.  Not next year.

Next year, I am going to give them a sheet of paper with the Ashrei on it and a link to a website that will have audio downloadables for each line.  Each student will be expected to learn the Ashrei at home on his own.  Then the day of the Ashrei Challenge comes!  There is a lottery, each student picks a random number out of a hat - that number corresponds to a line of the Ashrei that the student will have to read -perfectly- in order to get a point for his team.  The team with the most points wins the Ashrei Challenge.

My plan is to do this for all of the prayers we have to learn.

This encourages parent involvement with the child’s education before Bar Mitzvah year and it also leaves me time in the classroom to spend teaching things that can’t be taught at home, like Torah studies and Hebrew language/grammar.

At the end of the year, the winning team (and all four teams will be competing against each other ultimately) will get certificates and maybe a little prize or something.  Certificates are handed out in front of the entire 5-7th grade - including parents.  It’s a pretty big deal, this whole ceremony.  So they would get like big nice certificates and stuff.

I may not be teaching on Wednesday nights next year so that may put a wrench in my plans a little, but we’ll see.  We’ll see.

This is good: I like doing some work ahead of time so that next year I don’t have to go crazy coming up with lesson plans at the last minute.