HI, my name is Dina Pinhasik. I teach at Ulpanat Noga.

This year I'm teaching the hakbatza bet in 8th grade and I wanted to share with you some of the ways that I prepare my students for the meitzav and in general how I prepare them to effectively use the English they've learned.

Of course I follow the textbook(we use Get Together which I personally think is a great text), do the exercises, etc. but I find the following activity simply brings the language to the forefront and engages the students in its use through reading, writing and speaking.

At the end of each unit in Get Together, there is an unseen in the workbook. I begin by having the students do the unseen, usually individually. Vocabulary words can be practiced beforehand in preparation for the unseen.

After I've graded the unseen and gone over it with the students, I then encourage the students to think about a kind of letter they could write regarding the topic of the unseen. So, for example, last week, my students read about the discovery of paper tissues in 1924. They came up with ideas like: writing to the inventor to thank him for the invention, writing to a friend to tell her about this new invention, etc. The students were expected to construct sentences based on the information they read and to use the vocabulary and expressions in the text. In addition, they learned the format for letter writing, a skill they can always use.

The results were amazing. Students in hakbatza bet who have trouble getting through a "fill in the blanks" worksheet , were suddenly composing meaningful letters with newly used words. Because they had learned and practiced the vocabulary and then seen it in its use in the unseen, they were able to effectively utulize these words in their letters.

The final activity is really the "cherry" . After the writing stage, I told the girls that they were now going to act out a conversation about the content they had learned in the unseen. Again they brainstormed and came up with different scenerios like an advertisement for tissues, a conversation between a saleslady and a customer and a conversation between two friends to discuss the uses of paper tissues. Each pair had to film their conversations using the Flipgrid tool.

In the meantime, two pairs have uploaded their conversations. I invite you to view them at this link:

https://flipgrid.com/8ec0fa15

Other students have sent me their clips on whatsapp but at least you can see these two students.

It is so gratifying to see these students producing language so creatively!

I find this method so effective. It varies the use of the vocabulary and really gets the students to use the words in a meaningful way.

Thanks for your time,

Dina Pinhasik

(I also use it in my hakbatza aleph classes and it works beautifully. Last year, using the Navigator book, my students produced conversations connected to an unseen they read concerning what it takes to become a taxi driver in London. Here is the link to those conversations: https://flipgrid.com/8e17fc

(I'm not sure my students would appreciate that I've shared their clips, so it's just for your observation, not for public use. )