- Read the text and talk about it. Build, draw, collage, or act out the text. Read more text, argue, read it again, show all the faces that Sarah and Hagar make to each other (what is “contempt,” anyway?), and go back to the text again to make our points.
2. Notice: what’s something about the text that really troubles me or grabs my attention? Name my Big Question or Big Idea. (“It’s all Adonai’s fault that Sarah and Avraham and Hagar are in this mess.”)
3. Research! Go back to the text and focus on the parts that are related to my Big Question or Big Idea. Get excited and jump up and share our findings with friends. (“Oh!! Yitzchak and Yishmael bury their father together! So, they don’t hate each other after everything that happened?”)
4. Draft. What ways of showing my ideas do I like to use: oil pastels? writing? Google Slides? photography? What materials will be best suited to showing my ideas? (“I’m gonna write the story from Yitzchak’s perspective.”)
5. Peer Feedback and Review: What are the main ideas you see in your friend’s work? What might make the idea more clear? (“What if you used the thick paper to make Yishmael pop out of the scene, so it looks more like he’s the center of attention?”)
6. Prepare a Public Presentation: How will we share our work with the community? We write a final statement about our interpretation. (Soon! We’ll be writing our statements in about two weeks!)
7. Reflect on Our Learning: Breathe, spend plenty of time looking at our friends’ work, talking about it, and noticing what questions we still have about the texts. (Stay tuned for an update during the week of December 17!!)
