Religious School

• Fun, small-group alef-bet instruction. Our beginning Hebrew students learn together with a dedicated Hebrew teacher, using not only a book, but also games and other hands-on activities.
• Individualized, self-paced Hebrew instruction. Once a student has learned the alef-bet and can read Hebrew, he or she learns in an innovative, self-paced program. There are games and activities for every chapter of every book, and the students take the lead in choosing how to best learn the material. They decide when they are ready to demonstrate their reading fluency for the chapter and be tested on the vocabulary. A supportive, observant adult teacher, and teenaged assistant helpers, offer one-on-one to each student during the sessions.
• Deeper Hebrew learning. We go beyond phonetics. Our students are learning prefixes, suffixes, roots, gender, and number. It’s a good thing that they think they’re just playing games!

• Hands-on Hebrew materials. Our Hebrew students don’t learn just from books. Our classrooms boast games, puzzles, and Montessori-inspired Hebrew manipulatives.

• This is a video of an 11-year-old student demonstrating the Hebrew “make a word” work. The object is to make a Hebrew word from an English phrase, and he demonstrates his understanding of Hebrew word roots, prefixes, and suffixes in order to do so.

• Thought-provoking lessons. We don’t just teach our student the Torah stories and tell them how to interpret them. Our students engage in lively, challenging Torah studies where they are encouraged to develop their own interpretations. In other words, we are creating scholars

• Mixed-age, family-like classrooms. Our students enjoy warm, accepting relationships with each other, with older students acting as role models for younger students. Kind of like brothers and sisters, but with a whole lot less bickering!

• Music. Our students love to sing. And to play instruments. But especially to sing. They sing in Hebrew, English, Yiddish, and Ladino. They are accompanied by guitar, percussion, piano, and the occasional cameo accordion performance.

• Flex days. Every so often we take a break from classroom instruction, and focus on something special. They might do a cooking project, work on crafts for an upcoming holiday, sing in a nursing home, or take a field trip.

• Weekly schedule. Because of the individualized attention we can offer, our students accomplish so much in one action-packed Sunday that we don’t need a mid-week class.

• Opportunity to lead. Students from the religious school lead some prayers at every single Torah Or Olam Friday night family service. By the time our students are ready for B’nei Mitzvah preparation, they
  are exceptionally well prepared to lead services.