Dear Shalom,
Regarding - Teaching Gemara to weak students
It is almost impossible to set goals, standards, core ideas and skills for the Gemara classroom. For every student you will need a different goal (even in same classroom), depending on the amount of weekly hours, years, background, knowledge of Hebrew, etc. I made a set of goals for Talmudic language for Israeli students, 100 words a year, by the end of 8th grade they will know 94% of the Aramaic words. This does not include the learning of Talmudic logic.
I believe that there are no weak students, there are weak teachers, there are teachers that give up quickly. We have no right to decide which student should learn Gemara and who should not. See my article in "Shematin" 150 Sept. 2003 pp.277-283.
Gemara definitely builds learning skills and acquires thinking and cognitive skills and has a strong effect on their overall academic progress. See my article in Studies in Jewish Education, Vol. 8, 2002, Hebrew University, Jerusalem pp. 59-90.
The Best way to teach Gemara to students who struggle with abstractions is by self learning (Shottenstein can be used) with "Cognitive Maps". The "Cognitive Maps" gives an outline of the talmudic logic, of the "sugya" being learned. This way of teaching is not easy, teachers need to learn how to use this method. Today students can learn Gemara while filling in the "cognitive maps" on their Laptop.
Dr. Tzvika Kanarek
Jerusalem
Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 02/26/2018 05:47PM by mlb.
