This year I am the luckiest teacher in the world. I get to teach at the best school ever – International School of Morocco, with some of the best, most creative, teachers ever. Each time I walk into someone else’s classroom, I get inspired and we just seem to spiral great teaching ideas off of each other. It’s a wonderful place to teach, and since we are all collaborating, it’s a wonderful place for our kids to learn – a teacher’s dream, right? I have tried and tried to convince the other teachers to create blogs of their own to spotlight and share some of their amazing ideas, but everyone is super busy. Instead, they have each agreed to let me spotlight some of their ideas right here on Raki’s Rad Resources. So, each Friday night, I will be posting an ISM Spotlight.
This week, we are taking a sneak peek into the Arabic Language Learners class, taught by Khalil Raki, who just happens to be my husband – :) . He also teaches right “next door” to me, so I popped in the other day to borrow some tape and saw this:
Three little girls who do not speak, read or write Arabic were creating the Arabic Alphabet with Play Dough. Better than that, they could tell me the names and sounds of each of the letters they were making. How cool!
With these same students, Mr. Raki has been working on Arabic greetings, like As-salem Awalykom and Ma’Salema. For these greetings, he created a whole Arabic Greetings Packet and had them color and cut out the greetings, spelled in Arabic letters. Then, they matched the greetings to the same word spelled out phonetically in the English alphabet that they are used to seeing.
In addition to teaching Arabic Language Learners, Mr. Raki also teachings Arabic Native Speakers, who speak Arabic at home, and have a base in Arabic literacy. With these students, Mr. Raki works on all of the same concepts we are working on in class, including math and literacy. He also places educational videos for them on Edmodo and allows them to explore those concepts we are teaching in Science and Social Studies further in Arabic.
Come back next week for more of the awesome stuff that is happening at the International School of Morocco.
Good job, Mr. Raki! I love using playdoh to make English language letters. I'll bet it's great for Arabic letters as well. Have you ever considered using Wikki Sticks? I love using those as well. I think if you cut some into smaller pieces (which is easily done with some sharp scissors) you could use them for forming Arabic letters, too.
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