Through a grant from Jewish Education Innovation Challenge (JEIC) and the Mayberg Foundation, we are currently producing and providing resources for any educator to use at this time at no cost.
Introduction To Partnership Learning
Reimagining Jewish Education for the 21st Century
Click here to see student learning over time, as a group of 7th-grade students explore and practice what it could mean to study Torah through the partnerships of havruta.
Teaching Tips for Online Havruta Learning
Havruta learning affords us a particular opportunity to cultivate meaningful connections between people at a time when physical distancing is necessary. Online platforms such as Zoom enable us to pair students easily in breakout rooms to talk and learn with one another. Teachers can “pop” in, listen, and help while also giving students necessary time to direct and enjoy their own learning relationship.
Tips for Online Havruta Learning
Using the Havruta Warm Up Online
- Pair your students into havruta partnerships to do some learning with a text and some guiding questions that you have provided.
- Assign each pair (or group of three if needed) into online breakout rooms. Provide the breakout rooms with a link to the PoP Havruta Warm Up by copying and pasting the link into the “broadcast function” or “chat function” of your online platform. Alternatively, simply email students a file of the document. Ask students to follow the steps of the exercise. When they are finished with the Warm Up, instruct students to begin their learning together.
- When students finish their text learning, ask them to reflect on their havruta in relation to the intentions they set at the end of the Warm Up exercise.
Online Engagement Warm-ups are short activities you can use with your class to bring all students’ voices into the online learning space and help students connect to one another. These activities are meant to be playful and give everyone an opportunity for much-needed laughter and a sense of connection..
Havruta Warm Up Exercises
The Pedagogy of Partnership Havruta Warm Up
The Havruta Warm Up facilitates a havruta pair to get to know one another as learners and enter into their partnership with intention. It also helps to give partners a shared idea of good havruta practice to guide their study. Use these links to find the Warm Up that works best for you and your students:
For upper elementary and middle school students
Text Learning Exercises
Below is a series of text learning exercises. Each exercise is a protocol for supporting students to engage with one another and the text when learning in havruta. These protocols can be used flexibly with a wide variety of texts and curricular goals and can be adapted for different age groups and small group work. For an introduction to these text learning exercises, watch the video above.
Listening to the Text: This protocol helps students notice a text’s details and practice bringing textual evidence to support interpretations. It supports the PoP stance that we should listen to the text and seek to understand what the text is saying.
Listening to the Text_Teacher version
Listening to the Text_Student version
Listening to My Peer Partner: This protocol helps students discover ideas in a text and share them with one another. It supports students to become accountable for understanding their partner’s ideas as well as their own.
Listening to My Peer Partner_Teacher version
Listening to My Peer Partner_Student version
Noticing and Wondering: This protocol helps students slow down and do a closer reading and/or translation of a text. It encourages students to wonder about the text and ask questions.
Noticing And Wondering_Teacher version
Noticing And Wondering_Student version
Is There Another Way of Understanding That: This protocol helps students consider multiple ways of understanding the same text. By structuring students to look for multiple possibilities of meaning that can be supported with textual evidence, the protocol prevents students from rushing to judgment about a text’s meaning and instead reinforces a habit of wondering and seeking to understand.
Is There Another Way of Understanding That_Teacher version
Is There Another Way of Understanding That_Student version
I Agree/Disagree because…This protocol engages students in exploring and understanding the content from multiple perspectives. It does so by providing structures so students can practice the PoP skills of Supporting and Challenging in a basic way, by agreeing or disagreeing.
I Agree/Disagree_Teacher version
I Agree/Disagree_Student version
Community Building Exercises
Engagement Warm-ups are short activities you can use with your class to bring all students’ voices into the room and help students connect to one another and a text. These activities are meant to be playful and give everyone an opportunity for much-needed laughter and a sense of connection.
Advisory Activities are more robust community building activities that reinforce PoP principles and practices. Each activity connects to Torah wisdom. “Advisory activities” are not just for “advisory period”. These work organically in your Jewish studies class!
Reflection
Reflection Questions and Student Self-Assessment: Giving students opportunities to reflect not only helps the teacher better understand the progress each learner is making but is also key to empowering students to take more responsibility for their learning by monitoring their progress and helping them make meaning of their learning experiences. These reflection exercises are built to reinforce the connections students are making with both the content and their peers.
Student Self-Assessment for Havruta Learning
Portrait of a Learning Partner: This exercises can be used to introduce new partners to one another as a Havruta Warm-Up activity or can be used more generally to help students reflect on their strengths and challenges together.
Portrait of a Learning Partner
For more information about Pedagogy of Partnership, please visit: https://www.hadar.org/pedagogy-partnership
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