Tweet Tweet: Ilanot Tweets about Tu B’Shevat
“One man’s garbage is another's man’s treasure” is my motto. Beige and white plastic shopping bags, remnants of colored paper and, newspaper were the materials used to create our Ilanot board.
Tu B’Shevat is one of the Chagim we in Kehillah Ilanot cherish. After all, Ilanot is the formal translation in Hebrew for “trees”. In Israel, Tu B’Shevat is thought of as a celebration of the beginning of spring, with a strong emphasis on the environment.
The third and fourth grade students have learned in their Judaic classes that there are countless interpretations of text in the Torah. Each class analyzed a quote from Tanakh, and the students were asked to write their own commentary based on these quotes. Of course, we had to give it a techy flair and with a nod to Twitter.
“Happy is one who delights in learning Torah. They are like a tree planted by streams of water.” Psalms 1:1-3 - 4th grade’s quote
"These are the children who sit and study Torah, they sit in rows,like the seeds of pomegranates" - Song of Songs Rabbah, on 6:11 - 3rd grade’s quote
In third and fourth grade, another academic focus is learning how to respond to a text succinctly, a perfect tie into the character limit Twitter is known for. But for this Tu B’Shevat activity, our tech-savvy students had to respond to their class’ quote in 15 words, in honor of the gematria of the holiday’s name, ט”ו.
Then to push their learned even further, the students used the Twitter lingo of hashtag (#) to pull out meaningful words from the quote. Not only is the “trend” in tweeting, but it showed our students’ ability to find a theme in their response; one word that really summarized their thinking and feelings about the quote.
The resulting work was inspiring:
The learning and Tu B’Shevat fun didn’t stop there. We celebrated Tu B’Shevat together as a Kehillah with a discussion of the five tastes we have on our tongue. We brought in a selection of fruits and traditional Tu B’Shevat fruits for a Tu B’Shevat Taste Test. Students tasted kiwis, figs, dates, carob, lemons, olives, pomegranate seeds, and Jalapeno peppers. After they tested each one, they then documented what they tasted on graphs, one for each food.
Each graph categorized each of the 5 taste categories: salty, sweet, spicy, sour, and bitter.
After the tasting, we gathered to look at the results. We were amazed to see how each person can taste the same food differently. Just look at the variety of responses for the olives; not all the students agreed that they were salty!
There were many brave souls who tasted a jalapeno pepper for the first time and their reactions were priceless! There were some in the group who asked for more, they didn’t think the peppers were spicy at all; in fact, they thought they were sweet! It was great to see students tasting new foods and thinking carefully about how to categorize the flavors.
What a wonderful way to celebrate our chag. Come visit our board. Look carefully at the birds on the tree, can you guess what part of the newspaper I used?
@Ilanot #Tu’Beshvat #KSA #Kehillah #pasticbags
Sarah Shay-Davidson
A proud Ilanot teacher
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