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[yaichenbaum]

Dear Mechanchim,
I am currently doing research on the Chumash fluency of day schools and chaderim.  I want to know if the average child who is attending our schools is becoming proficient in the basic shorashim of Chumash and can he/she tiche and understand a passuk in Chumash.  What is your experience in your school?  What do you think is the reason for your school's success our failure in this area? 

Rabbi Yaakov Aichenbaum
Educational consultant, Scranton Hebrew Day School

[TovaRR]

I my class I start off the year with tools that will help them learn Chumash almost on their own.  We start with word beginnings, shoroshim, and build on the vocabulary that they will see in the Chumash.  Then when we finally open the Chumash they are excited and can "teach" the possuk by themselves.  By the time we get to the end of the year they read ahead of me and tell me waht the pesukim are about and what the shoroshim are that they already know.  Chumash becomes very exciting for them.
If you have any more questions you can reach me at newwavesbytova@aol.com
Tova Rabinowitz

[batrot]

In my experience of teaching chumash (over ten years to ages starting age 7 till 12), the best way was making big wallsigns with the shoroshim of the coming perek. We put them on the wall as we got to them. The wall was also divided into "f" and "m", so if there was a verb which was clearly "f" or "m" it was stuck on that row too.
The girls also had a sheet with tables on them. Each shorash had its own table. Whenever they came across that Shorash (in any sort of setting i.e the shorash is "shalach" - to send, then at the top of the table it said the word, and if the posuk mentions "vayishlach", they filled it into the table, with the possuk and perek. )
I.e. heading SHALACH - SEND:
Table with six columns: Perek, posuk, Word, Shorash of word, Prefix, Suffix. As they went along they filled those tables in and after finding a word over 20 times we put that table away.
This was one sure way of covering as many shorashim as possible. The girls managed after a few month to more or less translate new pesukim on their own.
If you would like to see a sample of those tables and also of the dikduk walldisplay you can contact me on battylop@yahoo.co.uk
hazlocho
B. Lpoian