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Brakhah Buddies: A Hevruta Model for Improving Menschlichkeit and Hebrew Decoding

Jerry Silverman

A year after becoming educational director at the Neziner Hebrew School of Temple Beth Zion - Beth Israel, I decided to test our students' reading abilities using different prayers for different grades. Each child was given the same page of siddur in September and in May and the number of words read in one minute was recorded. The mistakes in September were circled in red, those in May were marked in blue and a grid was created indicating the number of words read in one minute plus the number of words correctly read.

The overall school increase was 56% in the number of words merely read; the Increase in correct words was 70%. Though this was acceptable, I always look for new ways to do things and the idea of groups, the think-pair-share model, dyads, cooperative learning and similar modes were in the back of my mind. Why not bring the ancient study form known as hevruta to our school? I adopted a standard reading selection for all grades so a child's progress could be tracked during the five year span from aleph to hay, choosing something totally unfamiliar so the child could not chant or recognize already mastered words.

The word hevruta is related to the word haver, friend, as mentioned in Pirke Avot 1:6 (acquire a companion/teacher/student for yourself). In a paper entitled A Conservative Context for Jewish Education presented at the JEA convention in 1998, David Ackerman wrote: Finding the right hevruta, though, is much more than just matching intellectual levels. It also requires a complementary relationship with regard to temperament, personality, and learning style, and learning how to get along with those who differ. Hevruta reminds us that learning is a social activity and that the source of learning is in the relationship that develops between students and teacher. Ultimately hevruta stands as a micro-model for students of how the community should function.

Scores from the reading selection were tabulated and listed in numerical order. The hay 12-year-olds were matched with gimel 10-year-olds, dalet 11-year-olds with bet 9-year-olds and some extra hay students and teachers worked with the aleph 8-year-olds. A contest was held and the winning name Brakhah Buddies was born. Each weaker reader had his or her own siddur which was kept on the classroom shelf. When the bell rang to mark the end of the first class, all 55 children found their assigned partners, sat in comers, in classrooms or on the floor in the common areas of the school and settled down to work. It was rare that anyone had to be coaxed or reprimanded for incorrect activity during that period.

As opposed to a system where one student reads alone while the rest of the class listens in boredom, our older and better readers were given the responsibility of coaching our younger, weaker readers for ten minutes twice a week. It created a feeling of community and, as a result of restructuring our entire reading program, the number of correct words rose 113%. The students enjoyed being with one another, the responsibility felt by the older students was noticeable, behavior problems were at a minimum and the excitement was thrilling. Clearly the improvement justified the experiment, and we have continued to refine the program in the following years.

From Highlights, Fall 1998/5759