What do you do when you find an amazing letter or article that is too long or too dense for your students? Learn how to modify and excerpt documents, allowing students to access the important ideas within them without losing the voice or intention of the original composition. See examples of modified documents and discuss strategies for introducing them to your students.

1. Sharing Stories
Inspiring Change

2. Sharing Stories
Inspiring Change

3. Sharing Stories
Inspiring Change
Who is this person?
What did this person do?
Why did they do it?
Who am I?
What do I do / What do I
want to do?
Why do I do it?
You Cannot Be What You Cannot See

4. Sharing Stories
Inspiring Change
Jonah Hassenfeld

5. Sharing Stories
Inspiring Change
How can I scaffold my students’
reading of primary sources (or
anything)?
Is there an “ethical” problem with
modifying a text?
Essential Questions

6. Sharing Stories
Inspiring Change
Teaching with Primary Sources
What are the benefits of
teaching primary sources?

7. Sharing Stories
Inspiring Change
Teaching with primary sources
What are the benefits of
teaching primary sources?
• Brings past to life
• Provides insight into experiences of
individuals
• Gaps that foster authentic questions

8. Sharing Stories
Inspiring Change
Teaching with primary sources
What’s hard about teaching
primary sources?

9. Sharing Stories
Inspiring Change
Ray Frank’s Sermon
Now is a most excellent time for you to consider the question. It is the time for you to decide whether you will effect a
permanent organization or whether you will continue to go on and hold only one or two services a year. There are here, I
know, certain disagreements as to the form of worship, whether we should cling to the old orthodox style or take up the
reform that has gradually been instituted in the Jewish church. This is a progressive age, and some of the customs of
two or three thousand years ago will not do for to-day, and at the same time many customs which were good then are
just as good now, and can be just as appropriately used. It would be well for you to throw aside all little disagreements
and unite in the one cause—that of upholding the creed of our religion…
Whatever you do for religion, or whatever you give, must be voluntary and sincere. Coming here because your neighbor
does is not religion; neither is it religion to give a certain amount because some one else has done the same. True
religion is true repentance for our many sins and mistakes.
…You have always said that in union there is strength, therefore it is necessary that you should unite, giving help to each
other through the creed you all believe in. Drop all dissension about whether you should take off your hats during the
service and other unimportant ceremonials, and join hands in one glorious cause. We are all Israelites, and anxious to
help one another. Look up to our creed and live up to it. It is not necessary to build a magnificent synagogue at once;
that can be done in time. The grandest temples we have ever had or the world has ever known were those which had
the blue sky for a roof, and the grandest psalms ever sung were those rendered under the blue vaults of heaven…
Form yourselves into a permanent congregation as soon as possible, and organize a Sabbath school. Unless one is
established soon your children will grow up without any creed at all. One must believe in something, and one must have
faith in something or become a menace to society. Keep one day holy, and teach your children to do the same. It isn’t
good for you to do as you are doing. We are no longer a nation of people, although we are often spoken of as such. We
have no ruler, but are simply citizens of the country we live in. We are loyal to the civil rule that governs us, and we
should be loyal to the religious rule that we all bow to.

10. Sharing Stories
Inspiring Change
Scaffolding
All teachers must teach reading.

11. Sharing Stories
Inspiring Change
Scaffolding
What is the purpose of a scaffold?

12. Sharing Stories
Inspiring Change
Scaffolding
Lev Vygotsky
1896-1934
• Interiorization of
interpsychic processes
• Zone of proximal
development

13. Sharing Stories
Inspiring Change
Interiorization
The ways we think begin as conversations we have.

14. Sharing Stories
Inspiring Change
Zone of Proximal Development

15. Sharing Stories
Inspiring Change
Adapting documents
Document Scaffolds:
• Focusing: 200 words

16. Sharing Stories
Inspiring Change
Adapting documents
Document Scaffolds:
• Focusing: 200 words
• Simplifying:
- Modifying language and syntax
- Word banks

17. Sharing Stories
Inspiring Change
Adapting documents
Document Scaffolds:
• Focusing: 200 words
• Simplifying:
- Modifying language and syntax
- Word banks
• Presentation: 16pt ft, 1 document/pg

18. Sharing Stories
Inspiring Change
Adapting documents
Document Scaffolds:
• Focusing: 200 words
• Simplifying:
- Modifying language and syntax
- Word banks
• Presentation: 16pt ft, 1 document/pg
• Header

19. Sharing Stories
Inspiring Change
Adapting documents
Adapting Ray Frank’s sermon:
- Start from a central question
- Cut to 200 words
- Define 3 hardest words in a word
bank
- Write a brief header for the
document

20. Sharing Stories
Inspiring Change
Practice
• What central question could you
ask?
• What kind of background info would
go in the header?
• Modify one sentence from the
document

21. Sharing Stories
Inspiring Change
Wrap up
Will this approach work for your students?
What challenges do you foresee?

22. Sharing Stories
Inspiring Change
Natalia Twersky Educator Award
Honoring educators who share JWA’s commitment to
using primary sources to weave Jewish women’s
stories into their lessons and programs.

23. Sharing Stories
Inspiring Change
Who is eligible? What are the prizes?
• Any Jewish educator working with students in grades
6-12
• Two cash prizes
• Winner receives $2,000 + $400 for their school/program
• Finalist receives $500 + $100 for their school/program
• Submission Deadline: June 1, 2015

24. Sharing Stories
Inspiring Change
Examples
Adele Gilman and Jackie Zidar—Studyingthe
congregation’s Confirmation Photos

25. Sharing Stories
Inspiring Change
Submission requirements
• Statement of purpose
• Lesson plan
• Classroom product (handout, assignment, etc.)
• Two examples of student work
• Two letters of support (from supervisor,
colleague, student, parent, etc.)

26. Sharing Stories
Inspiring Change
SELLING SOAP, SMASHING SEXISM
Thursday, April 30 @ 1pm
With Twersky Award Finalist Rabbi Michael Rothbaum