Distance Learning in the Shadow of War: Poetry, songs and digital games in Hebrew as a teaching method and as a content in the Hebrew language textbooks intended for students of an early childhood age in Arab schools strengthen their skills and make Hebrew accessible to them as a second language.

Abstract

The Iron Swords War between Israel and Hamas Organization, which began on October 7th, 2023, caused sudden changes in the teaching curriculum. The students have had to experience an emergency situation and a state of uncertainty similar to that during the Corona epidemic. The Ministry of Education decided to apply the method of Distance Learning as an emergency teaching method in all towns and villages that are located in risk areas. Distance Learning also gave an opportunity to creative teachers to enhance their students' group learning and individual self-learning by listening to Hebrew poetry and songs, and play digital games that use spoken Hebrew. Teachers applied their innovative methods on early childhood students, who study Hebrew in Arab schools. This study was conducted with a specific purpose: to investigate the effectiveness of listening to poems, songs and digital games on the early childhood Arab students who study Hebrew as a first foreign language through their Distance Learning meetings and self-learning in their free time. The study found that listening to Hebrew poetry, songs and digital games have positive effect on the early childhood students and enriched their vocabulary, improved their grammatical skills, and their state of mind. The contents of poetry, songs and digital games provided the students with positive values of peace, understanding, hope, tolerance and acceptance of the other.