Claudia Marbach teaches Toshba in the JCDS (Boston) Middle School.

Claudia Marbach discusses using technology in the context of her Mishnah class.

JCDS Boston is a pluralistic K-8 school in suburban Boston. My overall teaching goals in this school are to expose the students to classical Jewish texts and make the students see the relevance of those texts to their own lives. In my sixth grade Mishnah class I have focused the curriculum around Seder Nezikin (the order of the Mishnah dealing with damages) and set as the stated theme for the year, the role of the individual in society.

For the second chapter of Baba Metzia, the enduring understanding I selected is personal responsibility to the community through an obligation to act. I also emphasize that it is important for students to take responsibility for text learning (i.e., making sure one really understands the ideas in the text) and to be able to explain the text to others.

After learning the first two mishnayot in the chapter with the students, which primarily list of objects that can be kept when found and lists of objects that need to be returned, we reasoned and discussed the rules implied by the authors of Mishnah. This modeled for the students the kinds of explanations they would have to give when they would explain their mishnayot.

Each student was assigned a different Mishnah to prepare. Beyond translating it, students had to prepare a storyboard – or graphic organizer – for their Mishnah. This aided them in self-assessing whether they really understood their Mishnah or not.

After each student had a clear storyboard, programming could begin. Most of the students had some training in Scratch, a basic programming web-based tool (Scratch.mit.edu). The program is free on the Web and allows a student to use preprogrammed modules to create animations. Students choose characters from stock figures provided by the program or use pictures they found on the Web. I did not specify the format of the animations. Some students did quiz shows while others taught their mishnayot in story form. Regardless of the format, students repeatedly went back to the text to check their accuracy and to quote the Mishnah in the animation. Some presentations were set in the time of the Mishnah while others were set in modern situations; some animations used people and some used silly characters; sometimes they had Rabbis explaining the Mishnah and in one case the narrator was a ghost. My favorite was “Mishna Girl” who flies around the world helping people who need to know what to do with their found objects.

I had never programmed before so I chose a Mishnah and worked along with my students to create an animated Mishnah. In this way I modeled the joys and frustrations of programming and was also able to create an atmosphere of cooperation. We all asked each other for help in the program and sometimes in figuring out how to explain a concept in the Mishnah. The program is simple enough to use that I could get a working animation in a reasonable amount of time.

As students finished they helped others in the various aspects of the program. It was particularly tricky for some students to move their figures from one part of the screen to another. When the students were all done we watched all the animations and the students did peer editing. We established certain criteria of how to articulate suggestions or comments so as not to be hurtful to others. Because each student appreciated how much work had gone in to each animation, their comments were, for the most part, respectful and constructive. I also created a rubric for grading the projects, which included grades for organization, mechanics, use of time, creativity, Scratch code and the rules of the Mishnah.

Using the Scratch programs increased the rigor in understanding by the students. They were forced not just to memorize the rule of the Mishnah but also to articulate it in a format where they could not assume the consumer of the material already knew the material. They had to show that they understood each point in their Mishnah. The format engaged students who might otherwise be less engaged with the material. Every student was able to participate even if he had never programmed before. Since there was a visual modality, students who might not shine in text study were able to excel and be appreciated by their classmates. The projects can be viewed at http://scratch.mit.edu/studios/272470/