After-school Kriah Independence

Rabbi Nachman Goldenberg

Kriah is arguably one of the most essential Judaic skills. The foundation of anything Jewish is kriah. From everyday tefillah to genuine Torah learning, without a strong foundational knowledge of the Hebrew language, which begins with kriah, we are lost. Jewish day schools across the spectrum have placed kriah within their core curriculum. The Jewish world has hundreds of kriah experts, each of whom designed their own unique approach to catering to the kriah needs of every child. Tens of top-notch kriah programs have gained popularity among various schools and have raised the bar for kriah proficiency the world over. And yet, we are seeing that students are still struggling.

There seems to be a kriah pandemic in the Jewish world. Studies show that more than fifty percent of students in grades one through three are not reading Hebrew at grade level.^[1] That means that at least one out of every two Jewish children has trouble with kriah. The problem persists even as they get older. Students who struggle with kriah at a young age will likely fall further behind as they get older. I’ve seen this reflected in the results of the tri-annual assessments that I’ve conducted in my school for the past three years. Students who are not actively involved with kriah on a regular basis are likely to regress in their skills, even if they initially showed grade-level proficiency.

Educators and experts across the spectrum have explored rationales for this extreme deficiency in one of the most foundational areas of Judaism. Some experts blame it on the methods utilized when teaching students how to read. Others attribute the deficiency to a lack of periodic assessments and data-driven instruction. Still others charge every educational institution to maintain kriah as a core subject through the elementary school years. Keeping these ideas in mind, kriah experts have crafted innovative and well-researched approaches to tackle these issues successfully. And yet, the “kriah pandemic” still seems to be flowing with full strength. Students continue to struggle with their kriah and are crippled for life as a result.

There is an additional area where all experts would agree is essential for maintaining and enhancing kriah skills. To understand this area fully, it’s imperative that we analyze one facet of English reading, which is encouraged by any reading program worldwide. Students of all grade levels are encouraged to read age-appropriate material independently, or when necessary, with guidance from an adult. When it comes to English reading, the goal is always to achieve reading independence through constant and consistent reading. Schools have programs that encourage students to read every night, and libraries run reading programs during both the school year and the summer months to maintain enthusiasm for this essential foundation. Do we have any equivalent system for kriah? Do we have an approach to complete the circle when it comes to kriah? 

Many people will claim that we do have a strong approach to sustaining kriah that is well-rooted in the mesorah. Many schools assign nightly kriah homework to their students and require that their students read to an adult to ensure accuracy. In addition, many schools also provide carefully crafted and systematic kriah material to aid students in progressing through a level-by-level format. This approach can help, but students need to actually do the homework. Additionally, this approach requires that the student be supervised by an adult to ensure accuracy. Anything less than that could actually diminish the student’s skills, reinforcing bad habits if they read inaccurately. A well-known principal of a very large elementary school recently told me that whereas in past years students would excitedly read with their parents fifteen minutes per night, nowadays, students begrudgingly read for five minutes on their own, once a week if you’re lucky.

Years ago, this issue really bothered me, and as a third- and fifth-grade rebbe I was inspired to attempt to tackle it. Over the span of ten years, I’ve developed a system for independent home kriah where students read enthusiastically at home. The system is based on a few core principles. Considering that today’s parents are extremely busy and often lack the time to work with their children, I established a kriah hotline for students that the teacher reviews daily. In addition, to ensure that students are enthusiastic about reading, I incorporated a system that generates internal motivation to do kriah, an activity that, for most children, is quite boring. Bear in mind that for American students who don’t understand what they’re reading, they won’t do kriah at home as they do with an English novel, so it’s imperative that we substitute the missing excitement with something. To address this, I incorporated a series of measured challenges with a timed component included.

There are numerous fringe benefits for seriously taking advantage of a program of this nature. A hotline (we use Google Voice) can be carefully and consistently reviewed and monitored. The students should also have kriah homework that challenges them to read perfectly onto the hotline. If those challenges are designed in a skills-based format, the program offers the ability to monitor each student’s progress as they master one challenge at a time. Additionally, the timed challenges create an atmosphere of shared motivation to push forward and master them. An aura of achdus could also be felt when all the students are pushing forward at their own pace and are encouraged to help one another shine.

Boruch Hashem, the initiative has seen tremendous success, and I have incorporated it into my third- and fifth-grade classes. Subsequently, we expanded the program to include the entire school, from grades two through eight. Amazingly, even the older students joined the program and continued to be part of it through their years in our school. Our school has now completed three full years of triannual assessments, allowing us to achieve accurate assessments of growth. The data is striking. Across all participating grades, we’ve documented an average 30 percent improvement in both fluency and accuracy. Additionally, more than 90 percent of our students achieved the goals they set for themselves at the beginning of the year. More than just skill growth, these numbers represent a cultural transformation. Kriah, once viewed by many students as boring or frustrating, has become something they look forward to and celebrate.

Incorporating a program of this nature fills a major gap that no kriah program on the market deals with to date. How are we ensuring that our children are consistently and actively engaged in independent kriah at home and in school? Additionally, who is ensuring that when they are reading on their own, they are reading properly? We can’t afford to allow them to make mistakes that will take many times longer to unlearn.  When a systematic approach to fill this void is created, all the hishtadlus we are already doing as committed educators through in-school kriah instruction, remediation, and assessments, will be many times more effective.

Rabbi Nachman Goldenberg is a third- and fifth-grade rebbi and Director of Kriah Advancement at the Phoenix Hebrew Academy, in his eleventh year as a staff member at PHA. He has semicha from the Rabbinical Seminary of America and holds a master’s degree in Jewish education from the Azrieli Graduate School of Yeshiva University. He is the founder of crazykriah.com, an extension of the program he spearheaded at his school. 

^{[1]  Goldberg, S. J. (2019). An analysis of the overall MaYDK dataset, from Hebrew Reading & Progress Monitoring.}

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