ChinuchWorks Now Includes 5,000 Student Activities

The cyber teacher center ChinuchWorks now has almost 5,000 student exercises, cataloged and arranged according to subjects and grades.

During the summer months more than a thousand new documents were prepared for the site by veteran educator Rabbi Reuven Witkes. He culled, adapted and edited from among materials submitted by teachers, and formatted them for inclusion in the Chinuchworks site.

Chinuchworks is a project of the Merkos Chinuch Office with a simple objective: to make easy to use (and/or edit) materials available to teachers so that they will be better prepared for their classes. If, for example a teacher in the third grade is teaching Chumash Bereishis, Parshas Vayishlach, he or she will be able to find ready-made student activities to teach and reinforce the lesson.

Chinuchworks has developed a full hierarchy of Chumash skills. They build upon one another from basic word recognition to full independent understanding Meforshim. The hierarchy lists more than 100 skills which students must master in order to become independent learners. The skills are also divided by age and grade appropriate designation. If the entire hierarchy is properly assimilated, a student can by definition learn any passage anywhere. The exercises in Chinuchworks are also identified by grade appropriate skills.

The Chinuchworks project is still in its infancy and will eventually include lesson plans and assessment for all Limudei Kodesh subjects. The website is accessible by preregistering and there is no cost, at present, for teachers to join.

Rabbi Nochem Kaplan, director of the Chinuch Office who conceived of the idea, says he expects that it will be at least two more years before it is completed, but the beauty of it is that it is an invaluable resource even as it is.