First and Second Grades:

• The Tal Am Hebrew immersion program used in the first and second grades is a comprehensive curriculum integrating Hebrew and Judaic studies. The program focuses on developing in the students a positive sense of Jewish identity, and the HDS instructor for these grades uses storytelling, drama, art, music, rhythm, humor, and movement to engage the students. Students develop oral comprehension and speaking skills by observing the teacher's body language, gestures, and facial expressions as well as picture and contextual clues. They practice orall language skills on a daily basis and take turns leading the calendar routine in Hebrew. Reading skills focus on letter (print) and vowel recognition, building a sight word vocabulary, decoding words with multiple syllables, and comprehension. Writing skills focus on the formation of print letters and proper spacing between letters and words.

• At the second grade level, students continue refining their Hebrew reading, writing, listening and speaking skills while strengthening their comprehension. Students develop greater fluency in phonetic decoding of words, sight word recognition, and reading with expression. They master cursive Hebrew and sentence construction, present tense conjugation of verbs, and are introduced to the concept of the root form of the Hebrew word (shoresh) and the singular and plural forms of nouns. See examples of second grade work in Hebrew here and here.

Third and Fourth Grades

• The Tal Am Program for the third and fourth grades is a subject-oriented whole language curriculum integrating Hebrew, Jewish values and holiday studies. In each unit, the goal of the curriculum is for the student to learn new vocabulary, history, and Jewish values in an integrated way. In the third grade, the curriculum focuses on comprehension, speaking, and reading fluently. Students learn to recognize the roots of the basic verb form (Qal/Pa'al) and how to conjugate these verbs in the present tense, and then move to the past tense. The class focuses on writing in complete sentences, and on using all parts of speech correctly, including pronouns, verbs, nouns, and adjectives. Students also write short stories and poems on a variety of subjects. For a third grader's autobiography composition in Hebrew, look here.

• In fourth grade the students learn texts from modern Israeli children's literature. They learn new adjectives and use them in creative writing. In grammar, students review and reinforce the past tense and start learning the verbs in future tense. They learn verbs in the Pa'al and Pi'el forms, and are also introduced to the verb form Hitpael. Students compose poems in Hebrew and concentrate on writing in the third person singular and plural in the past tense. For examples of fourth grade writing in Hebrew, look hereand here.

Fifth Grade

• In the fifth grade, students become secure in their use of the future tense and learn about the verb system more systematically. They study noun-noun compounds and prepositions. Children read essays, stories and poems, and tell stories, give oral presentations and conduct conversations in Hebrew. In their writing they pay more attention to syntax and spelling. For an example of 5th grade writing in Hebrew, click here. Fifth graders perform a play entirely in Hebrew at their graduation.