Dear OTRS Families,
So here we are, home with our loved ones and ready to embark on a new adventure of Jewish learning. But what does that mean? In the spirit of our tradition whenever we try something new at OTRS, take a look at the FAQ below...
Ok, we're home, we've got lots of time and we're ready! What's the plan?
Let's start with the big picture. We have two goals with this new endeavor. First, we want to keep our kids connected to their Jewish learning. There's no way to recreate the OTRS classroom experience at home but we do want to make sure that all of our students continue to have opportunities to "do Jewish" in lots of different ways throughout the next few weeks.
Secondly, we want to keep them connected to one another. Our teachers will be facilitating live online experiences where students will be able to not only share their learning but also share what's going on in their lives.
Goals are good but what are we actually going to be doing?
Right now our teachers are putting the finishing touches on their first round of activities. The material will be posted with clear directions in terms of expectations and instructions on how to interact with them. We'll be using the OTRS section of our website to house all of our material and we'll email you whenever it's updated.
That email about updates will also include information about the live component of our plan. Our teachers and I will co-facilitate Zoom calls with each grade on a regular basis, so that we can interact with our students about what they've learned. For our younger students, these calls may include a story or an activity. For our older students, we'll encourage discussion and conversation. We hope all of our students will be able to join us during these experiences.
What about Self-Paced Hebrew? How does that fit into all of this?
After a lot of conversation with a lot of smart folks, we've decided to truly put the "self-paced" into our Self-Paced Hebrew Program. In a couple of days I'll be posting a video that will walk you through a variety of online resources your child can use to keep their skills sharp and on track. Again, it's important to talk about goals. We want our students to stay at the same level they are at and not lose any of the progress they've made. We'll continue to move forward once we are all back together again.
Did we mention we've got a lot of time on our hands right now? How about some other things we can do as a whole family?
Don't worry, we've got you covered! We're working on a variety of things for the entire OT community that should give you lots of options to plug into as a whole family.
We are ready! Let's do this!
Great! Like we said, our teachers are finishing up their first round of materials and we will get those out as soon as we can. But in the meantime, here's a fun activity for the entire OTRS community to dive into.
Follow this link
to our padlet page, where you'll find images to explore and react to. Add your comments and take a look at what other folks have to say. Feel free to visit it more than once to see how it evolves.
