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Being a great madrich/a is one thing, but being a great mechanech/et (educator), is another. Running engaging and impactful chinuch sessions demands the best from you in both of these capacities – using your finest hadracha skills to keep your chanichim focused whilst your chinuch prowess ensures the content and devliery is top notch! So, no easy feat but don’t worry – help is at hand!
Check out the page below which blends together theory and practical elements to help you give an unbelivable quality session – no matter the setting. Read on…
1. Target Practice
There’s a lot of variables here but the most important is to think about the Chanichim.
What context is this in: is it at sviva, machane or a one-off event? This will impact how you adjust the peulah and if you need to include ice-breakers at the start.
Next is considering the age of the chanichim: If you have younger chanichim, you’ll need to make things more interactive and weave lots of games and movement into the session. If you have older Chanichim, they will benefit from more content and discussion with challenges along the way.
The last thing is to consider prior knowledge, will these chanichim already be familiar with the content of the session?
Now you’ve thought about all of this let’s start making a plan!
2. Setting Up the Session
Now you know who you’re working with, it’s time figure out what you are trying to achieve – if the goal is pre-determined, e.g. you’re planning an OBM or shiur for machane, then you can skip this!
So let’s have a think through the following:
What is this session about?
What are my Concerete Concepts – what messages do you want the session to contain?
What do you want your chanichim to take away with them (and hopefully remember!)?
How much of this can I achieve given the time constraints of the session?
Answering these questions should leave you with a good idea of what you want to achieve and now it is time to set about bringing that into reality with a practical plan…
3. A Strong Start
It’s time now to actually focus on the structure and content of the session itself!
Deciding how to begin is important: the first five minutes should generate excitement with a trigger which introduces the topic or something to hook the attention of the group. This opening should help provide a general outline and idea of what will be happening for the remainder of the session.
This could be achieved with a play or a game in a more dynamic session or a story in a more formalised learning session with questions to think about. However, don’t make the introduction longer than ten minutes as this will take away from the core of the session!
4. A Magic Middle
Now we move on to the body of the session: this is where you deliver the content by making the chanichim think about what you’re presenting and internalising it. In this section you want to think about how the content itself is delivered, whether different chanichim take turns reading or if there is regular discussion.
At the same time, you also want to ensure chanichim will process and consider the content, a good way of making sure this happens is through debates, ranking and categorising activities. This helps chanichim articulate their reactions to the content of your session!
5. An Excellent Ending
Keep in mind don’t let the middle section go on too long without changing approach or the chanichim may lose focus! If appropriate, insert some form of game, especially if it reinforces the ideas thought via concrete concepts.
All that remains is the closing 5-10 minutes, make sure to recap the key elements from the session and decide on the closing message you want the chanichim to leave with. This could be done by answring questions or giving some sort of token/reward for participation.