PBL Gemara Days 2/3

Here is the class picture, taken from my Windows Phone (yes, that is really what I use) while the students learn in their groups.

I have received from all of the kids their individual assignment responsibilities. I will break our class time into sections when we will focus on the Gemara and Rishonim, and when the students will work on their individual projects and group law drafting. Today I shared this worksheet to help the students through the early Torah sources. https://docs.google.com/document/d/1-fYoEPtXIkkFrjbO4yUgceWogbTswHqkezATjKCfeuo/edit The students are reading the sources in their groups and my worksheet is hopefully guiding them in the direction I want. I move through the room to listen and ask questions, I try very hard not to give too many answers. I do some help with words so that groups don’t get too slow. I have been very pleased that the students are working fairly diligently. I have three groups that are through the Gemara and Rashi now starting Ran, and one group that has made it through Ran, and is starting Yad Rama (all source references are on the document I posted on Day 1).

Today I sectioned 45 minutes for only Gemara study and allowed 35 minutes for individual work. Three of the groups broke off to do individual work and one stayed together to finish the questions on the worksheet about Rashi’s understanding of the chain of events. No one is ready for group law drafting yet, they are just starting to learn state laws. To help learn state and federal laws, I have made an appointment for my class with Mr. Robert Hutton Esq., a partner at Glankler Brown who practices criminal law. We will travel next week to their offices and he will present to my class in their conference room about the Tennessee and Federal statutes, including the American legal theory and some applications in different cases. Mr. Brown is volunteering his time, sounds happy and excited to be able to teach, and seems to be very curious himself about the comparison between Biblical/Talmudic Law and that of the United States. I had a very nice, fairly long conversation with Mr. Brown working out the details of our visit and picking each other’s brains about Law and Talmud. I hope my students are behaved, ask good questions, and gain information they can use in addition to having a positive learning experience.

3 days in, still no frontal teaching, and still an excited and positive learning environment. Mr. Noam Davidowitz, our school’s technology guru, stopped in yesterday and remarked that we had a wonderful sound of learning in the classroom. The small compliments make you feel good.