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What We Do - Teaching Tips
There is a range of material here on all three sections of the chapter: food, space and time. Some can be used to supplement the activities in the CD-Rom and some as a challenging extension to it.
Time
Shabbat
When your pupils have heard what Sarah and David say and read ‘What makes work work?’, you could ask them to consider what this might mean for them by getting them to:
- list the toys and games they and their friends have at home or the resources there are in the classroom
- identifying the ones that Jewish children could use if they were keeping Shabbat.
The CD-Rom refers to food that is slow-cooked from Friday afternoon, so that there is a hot meal for Saturday lunch. Here is a recipe for a traditional dish called ‘cholent’ (
PDF). Traditional cholent has meat—usually, the cuts of meat that need slow cooking to be tender—as well as beans. This recipe is a vegetarian version. The quantities are enough for each pupil to have a spoonful to taste.
Pupils might take this home with them to try at home or they could make it in class. BUT cholent needs to cook for 15-20 hours. In the likely event that that the school ovens cannot be left on overnight, you can:
- make the cholent, with the pupils, one afternoon
- take the cholent home and start the cooking it in your own oven (or that of a parent who lives nearby)
- bring the cholent back to school the next morning and pop it in an oven there
- serve the cholent at midday.
This is not the way it happens in a Jewish home, of course, but it means that pupils can participate in or observe the overall process and get to taste cholent.
Rosh HaShanah
This activity, Changing for the Better (DOC), is good for reflection and reflective writing. It protects pupils from exposure by engaging them in focusing on a fictional character. You can amend this worksheet by creating spaces for pupils’ responses.
This recipe for Apple Krugel (PDF) can be made at school or given to pupils to take home.
This Worksheet: If Not Higher (DOC) is an adaptation of a story by the Polish Jewish writer Isaac Leibush Peretz (1852-1915), widely acclaimed as one of the three major writers of the modern Yiddish literature. It pre-echoes the themes of Rosh HaShanah and Yom Kippur. It is best if you read it aloud to the class, at least initially. This version also contains boxes of ‘interrupting’ questions, which you can take or leave, for anticipation and reflection. An adaptable worksheet follows: pupils would benefit from having the text of the story (with or without the boxes of ‘interrupting’ questions) when they complete the worksheet.
Yom Kippur
Engage pupils in discussing the similarities and differences between:
- starving
- dieting
- fasting
You might also create a grid template for them to record their answers in writing.
The story, Just a Drop (DOC) is based on a Yiddish story from Eastern Europe. In this version, the language, setting and framework are contemporary. The story is followed by a brief explanatory note and some questions—both easy to turn into a worksheet.
Sukkot
You might be tempted to build a sukkah in the school grounds: don’t resist it! It’s a wonderfully engaging activity to make and live in a sukkah but it’s a huge project. So consider instead involving pupils, as individuals, pairs or a small group, in making a model of a sukkah using a shoe box, along the lines of a doll’s house.
- You need to cultivate your local shoe shop to save the shoeboxes that customers don’t take: you need to allow lead-time for this, of course. A parent might help you out here.
- Using a craft knife, cut out a rectangle from the middle of each lid (1—2 cm from the edge, all round).
- Likewise, cut the two verticals on ONE of the LONG sides of each box, so that there is a flap and the pupils can see into their shoebox sukkah.
- If the pupils are working in a group, one or more pupils can: form the roof by attaching foliage; create mini-mobiles to hang from the foliage (raisins, slivers of carrot, pieces of popcorn etc. strung up with sewing thread); decorate the walls with appropriate illustrations; make or collect doll’s house furniture to go inside; and so on.
Hanukah
It is tempting to focus on the military aspects of the story that gave rise to the festival of Hanukah. However, for the ancient rabbis—and in Jewish tradition since then—the main focus has been on the lure of assimilation and the struggle for faith and identity in the face of the attractions of secular society. In Judaism, the foremost victory and miracle are that Jewish religion and culture survived. The themes are therefore the light of faith and the primacy of freedom of religion. Lights: a Hanukah video (Gefen, 1983)—an animated film—has not been bettered as an educational resource that captures these themes in an exciting way: See 
The JHVC Video Library Many RE resource collections in Britain hold it and used copies can be bought cheaply online (check the format).
These diary entries, "Dear Diary" (DOC) of an imaginary girl and boy living through these historical events serve a similar function. They are followed by a boxed note of explanation and a series of fairly challenging reflective questions.
Pesah
The festival of Pesah centres on the theme of freedom—especially the responsibility that comes with freedom. It provides a good ‘learning from’ opportunity if pupils are encouraged to think about what freedom means.
Here are six vignettes (DOC) (lettered A—F) in which a character is in some sense free and another sense not free. In some cases, the un-freedom is a result of a decision made freely. Three of the vignettes are likely to be culturally quite distant from the pupils’ situations. The other three may be ‘closer to home’. Across the six, there is a balance of genders and a stated or implied range of ages. They are not culture-free but are capable of being seen as representing various ethnicities.
The vignettes are followed by as series of reflective questions for oral or written work.
Space
Home
Either before or after the activity on the CD-Rom to explore the kitchen in David’s home, engage pupils in reflecting on what the environments that we create reveal of our values. You might start by thinking about the school environment: “How do visitors know that they are in a school?”— “What impression would the visitor get when entering the building or site?” —“What clues are there to what we believe in and stand for?” You might then move specifically to people’s homes and ask similar questions. Here it is better not to ask the pupils to make disclosures about their own homes but rather to speak about visits to other people’s homes—and to avoid naming them. “How could you tell that they are of a particular religion?”— “What else seems to be important to the people who live there, based on the things they have in their home, the way those things are arranged and how they are treated?”
Synagogue
An activity to create a synagogue newsletter works well with several pupils working together as a team to draft, edit and design. It’s probably most effective as a whole-class activity, with you in the role of managing editor. Most synagogues have weekly or monthly newsletters; some are in the style of magazines; others a fold-over leaflet. Therefore this is an exercise in writing for real audiences and the contribution it can make to the literacy strategy is enormous. It calls for at least these main stages:
- collaborating on the overall concept
- parcelling out specific tasks (e.g. reporting, advertising and announcements, picture research, design) for individuals or pairs of pupils
- drawing together the first drafts
- amending those drafts
- producing the final design
- publishing
The document created can be as short as one or two sides of A4. It can be produced as a text document, with or without illustrations, but is even more effective if a publishing package is used. The following pointers may be helpful:
- Synagogues have three roles—worship, study, meeting—and it would be authentic if the newsletter reflected each of these roles by, for example, announcing the times of services for a forthcoming festival (worship); including a thought-piece or a story, or announcing the times of classes (study); reporting on a recent social activity or raising awareness for a cause the synagogue is taking up (meeting). Note: these are only examples.
- Some synagogues are named by the place in which they are situated but the Hebrew name is usually concept based—most typically “House of X” (e.g. “House of Peace”) or “Gates of Y” (e.g. “Gates of Truth”). The name of the synagogue that features on the newsletter could authentically be one such name. Its place name could be that of your school! The newsletter might also have a name linked to the synagogue name.
- Sarah and David refer to several specific functions and activities in their tour of their synagogue. These can be used as a basis for the activities and events to be announced or reported on in the newsletter.
Food
Kashrut
Planning a kosher meal is a practical and real-life way for pupils to use the knowledge they gained—and for you to assess it. The worksheet: A Kosher Picnic or Party (DOC) has been created with that objective in mind.
Part of the challenge for the pupils is avoiding the milk-meat combination, as well as avoiding the foods that are always non-kosher. The following foods are not kosher:
- Ham sandwiches
- Pork sausages on sticks
These foods could be kosher if the animal was slaughtered in the kosher way. But the meal would not be kosher if they are eaten at the same meal as milk foods:
- beef burgers
- fried chicken
You can make the activity more accessible for some pupils by limiting the brief for the meal to one that has no meat. In that way, pupils don’t have to avoid the meat-milk combination.
As an alternative or additional activity, some pupils might also be able to explore and report on the kosher guide on the United Synagogue website. It lists foods by type and also by brand—most of the common brands of foods available in Britain. Pupils could, for example, investigate whether some of the brands of foods are kosher that have at home or the school kitchen use for dinners.
Blessings for food
Use the learning from this section to encourage pupils to reflect on the preciousness of food and all the resources of the world. If you share food in the class, one or more pupils might choose a short reading or prepare a personal statement to be read before or after eating. This does not need to be a prayer. It might help if you modelled it, the first time.
You might also stimulate this thinking by showing the video clip of David and his family singing ‘Thanksgiving after Meals’: it’s in the Friday evening section of the ‘Shabbat’ unit in the ‘Time’ component.