Today I taught my second half lesson to my Kitah Alpeh class! I had a great time, as did I last week. This week we played a Yom Ha'atzmaut trivia game show and last week we had a discussion about seder plate symbolism. I love making my kids laugh and being silly on purpose but it really gets them into the lesson. Being a teacher for young kids is difficult because they don't sit on their bottoms and they speak out of turn and they don't have a long attention span. So when I planned an activity that captivated their attention and listening skills, I felt really good. Today, I hyped them up for this game show, having them cheer their own team on and getting excited for the next round of questions, like they do on TV. They were excited and anxious to get trivia-answering. We may have been really loud but it was totally worth it. I also got to try a lot of new things with my class, veering from our typical Eifo Ha introduction to class and acting out of certain things and our Hebrew letter stories. Most of the things I had wanted to try were successful, like group activities, team competitions, and having classmates check each other's work. These are good things to know in being any kind of teacher, knowing that I have good judgement. And I can also take this into consideration if I come back next year to teach my own class.
-Lucy
