“Want to really learn something – in depth? Then teach it to someone else…” It is a well known statement that is true. The best form of learning is to give over what you have learnt to another – and yet how often do we allow our students the time to teach others?At Ji we experimented with giving students this power to enhance their Jewish studies, by allowing them access to the Ji Tap Creation Tool. Did you know that kids love drawing tools? We had some kids who drew every color of the rainbow in every pen type and, while they produced stunning pieces of art, their creations did not really demonstrate higher learning!

So in the  next session we focused them a bit more. They worked in pairs, as collaboration works so well in this area. We told them that they have two  lessons to design a game about Israel’s 70th birthday.

We showed the students this game as an example:

We reviewed with the students all the information they had already learnt already in class about the topic and some safe research tools –and then asked them  to create a game about Israel@70. They could then share their game with others, like family, and friends.

We also added the incentive that kids lower down the school will play the games they create, giving them an authentic audience.

And then we watched the magic...

What we saw was 30 kids who were super engaged and producing brilliant content. This was definitely a win in terms of getting students excited about their Jewish Studies. 

Now while my colleagues are marking their students' books and taking home stacks of papers to mark, I'm in the corner of the staff room, on the bus or at home, with my headphones on, playing games to assess my students' knowledge.

Super cool.