You have been there, too, right? You thoroughly prepared a Gemara lesson by formalizing how you will explain the shakla vetarya, you concocted attention-grabbing examples and cases, charts to organize the conflicting opinions, and provided a translation and question practice worksheet. You slowly read the Gemara aloud while students annotated the text or completed linear translation sheets. You patiently and clearly explained the concepts and reasoning on a first, second, and even third pass of the reading. At the end of the sugya, you wrote a test that required students to detail the meaning of each step of the sugya. You assume that students will organically pick up on the reasoning patterns and build a knowledge base as they gain experience learning.

However, challenges abound. Dovi is overwhelmed by the attempt to punctuate, translate, and explain the text simultaneously, leading to fragmented comprehension. Chaim can repeat the question after I explain it but can’t identify who the Gemara is challenging by that a question or why. Zev confuses the way the Gemara originally understands the case of the mishnah versus the understanding based on the first and second answers of the Gemara. Dovid’s responses to oral and written prompts lack depth and fail to capture the intricacies of the Gemara. He uses 80% of the words that I did, but I can tell from the 20% he left out that he is parroting phrases without really understanding them. Even though our class has encountered half a dozen ureminhu questions so far in this perek, Hillel still doesn’t recognize what it means or the kind of question it represents. Instead of progressing, numerous students continue to grapple with the foundational concepts of how the Gemara’s discussion flows, retaining vocabulary, and interpreting the text. Rather than honed critical thinking, successful learning is often defined by accurate memorization and recitation.

The Unique Challenges in Teaching Gemara

Teaching Gemara presents us with a unique set of challenges:

• While the primary focus of many subjects is content mastery, the focus of Gemara is cultivating textual and reasoning skills. In fact, I fully anticipate that my students will return to the masekhet at some point and learn it repeatedly because it is an important part of their religious life. Since the acquisition of specific content knowledge is not my ultimate goal, how do I define what my goal really is?
• General studies teachers are usually provided with specific age-appropriate curricular standards and goals and professionally crafted curricula designed for the developmental skills and knowledge level of their students. By contrast, Gemara presents a text that is deliberately terse, obscure in nature, and lacking punctuation. It is studied by young beginners and advanced scholars at innumerable levels of analysis and interpretation. The very definitions of “understanding” and “mastery” are elusive, and if I cannot define them then how can I teach toward or determine when my students have achieved them?
• For the Rebbe of the inexperienced learner, deciphering the text adds layers of complexity that, in and of themselves, are daunting. And while reading is a prerequisite skill for accessing the depths of the subject at hand, it is not where the satisfaction and growth in studying the Torah SheBe’al Peh Reading and translation practice is necessary but tedious. How do we avoid having the tedium overshadow the experience of our students? How do we balance skill acquisition with “real” learning?
• While teaching other subjects usually means the delivery of content, Gemara is a dynamic dialogue, the development of which can be lengthy and complex. The comprehension of each new step is dependent on and relates to the previous ones. Understandings shift from line to line; facts are disputed and reinterpreted in a variety of conflicting ways. How do we present this in an organized, comprehensible, and memorable form?
• The Gemara’s content covers a very extensive range of topics and styles of discussions demanding significant frontloading of background information and concepts. All this makes it challenging to use a structured and consistent approach to building skills.
• Eitan shone in our lively class discussions but is unable to show that on a test; Shimmy never demonstrated a clear grasp in class, but his responses include the correct phrases; Binyamin’s test, which is almost entirely blank, gives no clue as to where things went wrong for him. With so much complexity and so many kinds of knowledge to learn and skills to develop, how can we properly assess our students’ development and progress?

Compounding these challenges are the high stakes involved. Given the communal expectations that students will be lifelong learners of Gemara, deficiency in the essential skills that need to be acquired at this stage can hinder a student’s ability to engage in future learning endeavors that are at the fabric of their Orthodox cultural milieu. Their confidence in themselves, and even in their very identities as Benei Torah, may suffer.

This reality demands a careful and intentional approach to our goals and lessons.

Backwards Design

Backwards design, championed by Grant Wiggins and Jay McTighe in their book Understanding by Design (UbD), flips the traditional planning approach on its head. In UbD, we start with the end in mind and work our way back to the beginning. A unit is planned by first pinpointing exactly what we want our students to achieve—these are the learning outcomes. Then, we determine what data would serve as evidence that they have reached those goals and create the appropriate assessments. Finally, we build the actual lessons and activities that guide them toward those outcomes. This approach ensures that teaching is laser-focused on specific objectives, resulting in more visible and measurable learning.

As we’ve detailed, the content and skill demands of Gemara are complex, so identifying the learning outcomes involves a close task analysis. When examining the process of reading and comprehending a text of Gemara, I have identified six distinct skills or knowledge types:

1. Background knowledge: What terms, concepts, or background information do the students need before beginning this sugya?
2. Structure and organization: What are the steps the Gemara will take in its dialogue? What is the logical flow of the sugya?
3. Textual decoding: What are the new words they will learn to read and pronounce? Where do questions, answers, challenges, supports, and proof texts begin and end? With which unfamiliar acronyms or abbreviations will they need to contend?
4. Textual comprehension: What are the new words that students will learn to translate and need to retain?
5. Comprehension: Typically, there are layers and nuances to the explanations and interpretations in the Gemara. How will students understand the Gemara’s intention and how it is accomplished with each step?
6. Big Ideas: What are the fundamental and overarching concepts, principles, or themes within Gemara in general that will be touched upon in this sugya? For example, while the halakhot in the first mishnah of Bava Kama address the parameters of restitution for damage caused by one’s property, they are also applications of what Wiggins and McTighe call Big Ideas, in this case, responsibility and accountability—ideas which emerge when studying about shomrim (responsibility for objects being watched), hezek re’iyah (privacy), shutfut (partnership), and numerous other places. When understood in that context, students can be encouraged to compare and contrast these laws to their previous learning in a way that creates an enduring knowledge base and enriches their understanding of the Big Idea. Another example of Big Ideas is connected to the realm of skills. The Gemara’s limitation of a mishnah to a specific case (hakha bemai askinan) to resolve a contradiction between Rava’s statement and the mishnah is a repeating tool—one of four—that the Gemara uses to resolve clashes between the position of an Amora and a tannaitic source. Recognizing this and the other tools, including how the tools are used differently, builds a student’s understanding of the way Gemara works. Even the need to resolve the inconsistency is a Big Idea as the hierarchy of halakhic authority is fundamental to understanding Gemara and the multiple layers of interpretation built upon it. Explicitly naming, discussing, and assessing the Big Ideas in our lessons build a rich knowledge base.

Preparing to teach

Given that there are six distinct learning areas, each needs its own definition of goals and its own preparation, so I essentially prepare a sugya six times, identifying learning outcomes for each learning goal. This does not necessarily mean six different lessons, as sometimes these outcomes merely inform the language that I use during instruction or influence how much time I spend on one aspect of the topic over another or prompt me to remind students of a Big Idea before we begin or to pose an Essential Question that triggers their own associations with it. At the same time, sometimes the different areas of preparation do require building mini-lessons to introduce select words, common dialogue structures, or background concepts before diving into the text.

The process of identifying such detailed learning outcomes hones my focus and therefore my assessment and instruction. Those outcomes vary with the nature of the Gemara from one sugya to another, demanding that I prioritize what is best brought out from each. A variety of assessment activities, designed to target the identified learning outcomes, are embedded throughout the lessons and at the end of the sugya. Student performance on each reveals their progress toward a specific learning outcome, enabling me to adjust the pace, focus, and expectations for the entire class or for individual students for future learning.

By identifying and separating the various components, I achieve a flexibility to present them in an order or context that makes sense for my students’ learning level. We learn the background knowledge first: the types of shomrim and their various levels of responsibility, the difference between a ganav and a gazlan (two different categories of thieves). We define and memorize the translation of ten new words. I teach the structure—identifying the various steps—and highlight the key word that signifies the start of each: a mahloket between Rabba and R. Yosef, an explanation of their reasonings, two questions on Rabba, two questions on R. Yosef, and answers for each of the questions. Each student understands the structure and plan of attack before we proceed to read and explain the steps. When we do, students recognize that the Gemara is using two of the four resolution types. I ask them why the other two weren’t used here and we posit why that might be the case. They learn to identify other structures (another Big Idea) and can relate them to other sugyot which employed them as well. Another student mentions that Rabba often argues with R. Yosef and we discuss why.

By utilizing a methodical, structured process of identifying a comprehensive set of learning outcomes, designing targeted assessments, and then planning lessons targeting those outcomes, I help foster their development of a framework of knowledge and ideas that enrich their Gemara experience now and provide a pathway for them to become the competent and successful benei Torah that they aspire to be.