This curriculum has been designed for students between the ages of nine to eleven in the fourth and fifth grades. While students in this group are more mature and developmentally capable than they were in kindergarten to third grade, they will still need to be engaged through call and response, zipper songs and rounds. At this point, students are competent readers and should be given either lyric sheets or projected lyrics. It should be noted that this age group is becoming increasingly more resistant to Hebrew as they become more self aware and self-conscious. This should be factored into how the teacher of this curriculum plans to implement these lessons.
The following curriculum will introduce more challenging melodies and topics while reviewing some repertoire from previous years that remains appropriate and prevalent to this age group. This curriculum will be broken up into three parts based around the religious school’s scheduled vacation breaks. While the first third of the year will review the high holidays and topics broached in the second and third grade curriculum, the second third of the year will be focused on middot, tikkun olam and personal responsibility. The last portion of this year will introduce liturgically focused pieces in an effort to prepare and engage students with liturgy they will be studying as they approach the b’nei mitzvah process.
The musical selections within this curriculum have been carefully chosen. There are a number of longer English pieces geared towards proficient English readers beginning to feel less comfortable with Hebrew, as well as shorter Hebrew pieces. The goal is to first create a safe environment where students will be able to not only retain their Hebrew song repertoire but continue to build upon it. The topics students will engage with within this curriculum are intended to stimulate challenging, and thought provoking conversation surrounding Jewish values in an effort to foster their own emerging sense of identity and personal value systems.
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