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| Winter 2008 | |
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Writing for the early childhood classroom is tough. With short sentences and limited punctuation marks (no semi-colons!), every word counts. One advantage to such short sentences is that every parent, teacher, and educator who uses the Look at Me booklets, whether in a classroom or in a one-on-one setting, is free to expand on the text according to his or her interests. With so much room for creative input by each educator, I often wonder how the booklets are used in different classroom settings. How does an educator’s style, the size of the class, and the personalities of the children influence the way the Look at Me booklets are read and taught? Before introducing her class to Look at Me: I Can Learn and Do in the Synagogue, Dori Robbins of Temple Beth El Ner Tamid in Broomall, PA took her students into the synagogue sanctuary, where she showed them the ark, a Torah scroll, and a siddur. Later, when the children saw the illustrations in the Look at Me booklet, they were able to recall the real-life objects. The Look at Me series provides strong Jewish textual material that gets young students talking
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Dori expanded the lesson by asking the children about a recent Shabbat service that they had attended. Now that her students were familiar with synagogue sights, they could talk about what they had seen. Dori asked the children what they had liked about the service and what exciting parts they could remember. For Dori, the Look at Me series provides strong Jewish textual material that encourages discussion questions and gets her young students talking. There are so many ways to use the Look at Me series to enrich the early childhood classroom. Let the creative ideas flow!
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