maaganim

Maaganim School - Kibbutz Maagan Michael, Hof HaCarmel, Israel
 * Teachers**: Susan Tsairi, Susan Biton.
 * Class**: 6th grades EFL

Aims
Israeli students are often surprisingly unaware that Jewish Communities exist outside of Israel. Our aims are to introduce our students to their peers around the world, to foster a sense of Jewish Identity and being part of a world wide Jewish community.

**Who will be taking part in our school?**
We will start with the 6th grade EFL class and possibly join in with 5th grades later in the year. We have about 70 students in our 6th grades.

**What is our subject matter?**
After an introductory presentation about ourselves, our school etc we will be focusing on the Jewish Holidays as they are celebrated in the various communities in our area.

**General Outline:**
Focus on the Jewish festivals, which are all celebrated here at the community level, although not neccessarily in the Temple/Synagogue. We or our students would take photos of the different events in the different Kibbutzim or in School and then our students would describe the whats whys and wherefores and their own personal take on the events. If we include a couple of secular, national holidays such as Yitzhak Rabin Memorial Day, and Independance day etc, we could focus on one event per month. As far as Teacher work is concerned it should be quite simple and not too demanding, ie: 1) make sure someone is responsible to take photos on the day of the event (or preparations for the event) 2) upload photos to the voice thread 3) students add their comments, describing the event etc. (one lesson should be enough) 4) students from other schools view the thread and leave their questions, remarks etc. (one lesson) 5) Follow up, visit thread again to answer questions etc, (this could take 1-2 lessons depending on the questions asked)

Our 6th grades are also in what their "Bnei Mitzvah" year, and later in the year there is a Joint "Bnei Mitzvah" celebration wich I'm sure would be very interesting to students in other countries.

**What technology will we use for our presentations?**
We will be using mainly Voicethread the simple interface makes it an easy but exciting tool for non-english speakers to use. Voice thread can be embedded in other sites which means we can use it within whatever container is decided on for the project. Voicethread allows for children of different abilities, as input can take the form of voice, text, and drawing

Possibly video - if the equipment becomes available.