<HTML>I taught Sefer Shmuel this year as part of a bekiut program for
grade ten. I found the following to be by far the most useful aids to planning the material and building exciting lessons on the "peshat" level:
*Shimon bar-Efrat's two volume commentary on Shemuel (published by Am Oved and Magnes as part of the "Mikra le-Yisrael" series of commentaries on Tanakh). Bar-Efrat is on of the leading figures for literary readings of biblical narrative, and he is also at home with traditional parshanut. So his book is an excellent guide to *meaningful* bekiut, as well as a guide to issues in parshanut.
*There are a number of useful charts on Shemuel in the "madrikh" to bekiut published by Makhon Herzog at Yeshivat Har Etzion. These too are good for organizing the material, and great lessons can be based on them directly. (The Makhon has also published similar hovrot on other books of Tanakh.)
In general, I think it would be worthwhile for high schools to at
least consider the idea of a one-year bekiut program fully covering Neviim Rishonim (and perhaps even for all the narrative in Nakh through Shivat Tzion), to be followed up in the following years with selections from Neviim aharonim which could then be better understood in context. This is something that can only be done well with an immense amount of careful thought and planning in advance, and would require quite a lot of teaching
hours, but the results may well be worth it.
I have begun to prepare pages that are "Guides to Reading" various narrative books of Tanakh. The sheets show the structure of each book clearly, in its entirety, and divide it into (a) coherent titled units (instead of relying on the chapter divisions), and (b) daily reading sections that are fairly even in length and more or less consistent with the natural division of the material.
Bivrakha,
Seth (Avi) Kadish
Amit Karmiel High School</HTML>
