[HANASHIR:8585] Re: b'nai mitzvah classes

[SHARON PLIER <CantorShar...>]

Dear Abby,

When I teach trope to a class, I have found that the most important thing is
to make it as accessible to as many as possible.  I have taught trope both
in a Jewish day school and in private classes.  For students who are still
struggling with just reading Hebrew, I have found that using Cantor William
Sharlin's very American trope names speeds up and simplifies the process
enormously.  For instance, instead of calling the symbols merchah and
tipcha, you call them open parenthesis and closed parenthesis.  The other
strategy that has helped me to be successful is to teach only a bit at a
time and drill, drill, drill....for the first two sessions, I teach only
merchah, tipchah, munach, etnachta and sof-pasuk.  I use sheets created by
Cantor Judith Rowland (that I have redone with Cantor Sharlin's trope names)
that list every possible combination of these tropes.  Then we sing them
over about 10 times or more at each session.   Next I have created flash
cards with the various combinations and ask individuals (or groups of people
if people are still reticent) to sing the combinations.  Finally, we pull
out a tanach and read the music without the words.  I sing all the symbols
that they have not yet learned and they find out they can do 65% of torah
cantillation after only 2 lessons.  Of course, when the students become more
comfortable, we try combining reading the Hebrew and musical symbols
simultaneously.

By the way, you can get a list of Cantor Sharlin's trope names in Helen
Leneman's book -- Bar-Bat Mitzvah Education Resource Book -- a wonderful
book to own if you are working with B'nei Mitzvah students.

Sharon Steinberg
----- Original Message -----
From: Michael and Abby Gostein <gosteins (at) cs(dot)com>
To: hanashir <hanashir (at) shamash(dot)org>
Sent: Monday, March 19, 2001 8:07 PM
Subject: [HANASHIR:8573] b'nai mitzvah classes


> Does anyone out there teach b'nai mitzvah students chanting/reading of
> prayers/Torah/Haftarah?
> I'd love info on how you structure a b'nai mitzvah class as opposed to
only
> one-on-one tutoring sessions.
> Hope this isn't too far off the track of this list.
> Abby
>
>

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