Madinah Arabic Reader Book 2 - Lesson 3c

Week 1:

I wrote the following on the whiteboard as a recap, i.e. differentiating between these/those/they and their gendered singular forms (this/that/he/she):

"Ulaika" is the new word being introduced here, but it was pretty easy to pick up and the girls are familiar with it from their hifz lessons. 💕

We read through p.31 together - taking it in turns to read and translate each sentence. This was pretty simple as revision so didn't take long, MashaAllah. The only new word was "wuzaraau" (ministers) which was difficult to explain as the girls didn't know what politicians were. 😂

We also read through p.32, taking it in turns to read, translate and do the activity. Again, I didn't get the cards out as this was pretty simple revision.

Week 2:

More revision.

Madinah Arabic Reader Book 2 - Lesson 3b

Week 1:

We read the passage from p.25 and talked about what we thought it meant. They managed to make sense of most of it MashaAllah. I told the girls we would read it again at the end of the chapter, inshaAllah, so they could see how much they had guessed correctly and how much they had learnt!

I filled the whiteboard with the new words for this chapter, i.e. feminine plurals. I asked the girls if they noticed any patterns and they said they ended in "alif taa", which I clarified as the "closed taa opens up" for the sound plurals. Of course, some words didn't follow the pattern exactly, such as "nisaa" and "banaat", etc.!

We looked at the feminine plurals for adjectives and noticed that they were the same as the masculine plurals.

Finally, we did the exercise at the bottom of p.25 and top of p.26 verbally. We learnt that the plural for "these" is the same for both masculine and feminine, i.e. "haulaai".

We read through the whiteboard at random chances throughout the week, with mini tests in between, and I took the words off once the girls were confident they knew them. Sometimes we just read the words as is, other times as a sentence, e.g. "Haulaai fatayaatun" and with a mix of definite and indefinite, i.e. "Haulaai mudarrisaatun / Haulaai al-mudarrisaatu".

Week 2:

We read through the activity on p.26, with a focus on looking at "hunna" as the plural of "hiya", i.e. "they" and as the plural of "haa", i.e. "their".

I wrote the following on the whiteboard so we could recap the differences:

Then I laid out all the vocabulary mentioned in the activity and read through the sentences in turn. As I read each sentence, the girls found the corresponding cards and then translated the Arabic into an English sentence.

We then needed to tidy up the cards... But rather than just gather them up, I asked them to pass me a card to put in a pile only once they'd used it in a sentence. They took it in turns to come up with sentences and they could use more than one card at a time if they wanted - though obviously this made it more difficult! The winner was the one who had the bigger pile of cards at the end.

MashaAllah they came up with some good sentences, with up to 4 cards at a time! F won with 14 vs 12, so I gave M the chance to make up any sentence using an adjective to describe a group of female people... So in the end, they ended up with a draw. 😉

Finally, I wrote the following on the whiteboard:

Using cards as prompts (I took a mixture from all the cards so far, some of which we've not seen since Book 1!) they took it in turns to pick up cards from face down piles (1 for female people, 1 for nouns and 1 for adjectives) to make sentences along the above pattern, e.g. "Hunna fatayaatun. Baytuhunna kabeerun." = "They are young girls. Their house is big."

Week 3:

I asked the girls how to say "they went" (m), i.e. recapping the verb ending pattern "dhamma, waw, alif" to make "dhahabuu". Then I read a sentence from p.26 and asked them to tell me how to say "they went" (f) - which they correctly identified as "dhahabna". So what was the verb pattern here? The ending changes to "sukoon, noon with a fatha".

I stuck the following flashcards onto the whiteboard and asked the girls to tell me what to write on either side:

On another day, I chose about 10 more verbs from our verb flashcards to go through with the girls. I showed them the Arabic side for them to read (1st person, past tense, singular male) and translate the meaning for, e.g. "dhahaba" means "he went".

Then I challenged them to go through all the cards and change them to third person, past tense, plural male (e.g. "qafazuu" means "they [males] jumped") and to third person, past tense, plural female (e.g. "qafazna" means "they [females] jumped"). MashaAllah they managed this OK and this really helped solidify the verb ending patterns!

Next, I put the verbs into one pile and next to them a pile of people (both male and female... I was originally going to just do sentences all in the masculine form followed by all in the feminine form, but because they were confident enough in the previous activity I thought I'd just mix them all up from the start!). Along the top I laid out the prepositions we've come across so far, so they could use them as prompts if they got stuck.

The activity was to use the verb and plural for the person to create a sentence. (I took out the verb "fa'ala" before we started when I realised it was difficult to make a sentence with using the vocabulary and grammar we knew so far!)

Some of the sentences they came up with were e.g. "Jalasna at-tabeebaatu 'ala al-maktabi" (The female doctors sat on the desk), "Akaluu al-muhandisoon at-tuffaaha" (The male engineers ate the apple), "Kharajna al-mudarisaatu min al-hammaami" (The female teachers exited from the bathroom).

I wasn't fussed if the sentences actually made sense! But this was good practise for word endings (i.e. changing to a kasra if preceded by a preposition or to a fatha if it was the object being affected by a verb) and for making them think about which vocabulary they knew, without any flashcard prompts, to complete their sentences!

Finally, we talked about what to do if we had more than one group of people in the sentence, i.e. two groups of males, which form of the verb would we use? The masculine... Two groups of females? Use the feminine... What about a group of males and a group of females? Then we'd use the masculine. What if there were more females, say three groups of females and only one male? Still use the masculine!

Then we practised making up sentences along this pattern, drawing 3 cards at random from the people pile and thinking about which form of the verb to use in a sentence. (I chose to use 3 rather than 2 as I'm not sure if there's a dual form for past tense? We're not that far in our studies yet! So to be safe, just avoid using 2 lol)

Week 4:

We did the activities on p.27 and p.28, taking it in turns to read the sentence, translate it and then give the suitable pronoun/change to plural. This was pretty much just revision so I didn't get the cards out - we just did it verbally sitting together around the book.

I wrote out the words at the bottom of p.28 into their handwriting books and they told me what the plurals were for me to write next to them. Then they practised handwriting by copying the words once each.

Madinah Arabic Reader Book 2 - Lesson 3a

This chapter is an introduction to plurals.

I split this part of the book over several weeks, as I felt it was worth spending longer to help with learning all the new vocabulary.

Week 1:
I just introduced the plural form of the nouns mentioned on pages 16-17 as stand-alone words, not in sentences. I wrote the words on the whiteboard and gave the girls the corresponding flashcards to match up where they thought they went. The next day, I rearranged the board to move the words they knew to the top of the board and the words they were still unsure of to one side (so we had space to use the whiteboard for other things!).

(My husband pointed out I forgot the shaddah on the laam in "tullaab" - which I fixed after taking these photos!)

Then I introduced the word "haulaai" as the plural equivalent to "hadha". We read through the cards on the whiteboard practising the simple sentence "Hadha X" followed by "Haulaai Y", i.e. "Hadha mudarrisun, haulaai mudarrisoona."

Week 2:
We recapped the words learnt previously and introduced the plural forms of the adjectives mentioned on pages 16-17. Again, we used flashcards to match up with the words on the whiteboard and practiced saying sentences along the "hadha X, haulaai Y" pattern using the cards.

We read through p.15 together and mashaAllah were able to translate the meaning - referring to the whiteboard when unsure of a word's meaning to help.

We learnt that "hum" is the plural equivalent of "huwa", but left that information at that for now.

Week 3:
We put together all we had learnt so far by making some simple sentences using the flashcards as prompts.

1) After recapping how to say e.g. "This student is poor" as "Hadha taalibun faqeerun", we made up sentences in the plural form e.g. "These students are poor" as "Haulaai tullaabun fuqaraau". We did a couple of sentences in both singular and plural form to help solidify the differences.

2) I put together each adjective with a noun and would ask a question e.g. "Man haulaai tiwaalun?" for them to answer with the correct noun, e.g. "Haulaai fallahoona." They took turns to ask the question of each other, we reshuffled the cards and repeated a couple of times.

3) I turned the cards face down in two piles and the girls had to flip one card over from each pile. I would ask either "Man haulaai?" or "Man hum?" for them to answer in a complete sentence, e.g. "Haulaai awlaadun kibaarun" or "Hum muhandisoona jududun". If I asked "Man haulaai" then they would need to move the cards to the pile closer to them; if I asked "Man hum?" then they would put the noun in the pile further away - to help signify the difference between "hum"/they and "haulaai"/these. The adjective pile simply stayed face down with the top card moving to the bottom after each question.

Week 4:
We did the activity on pages 17-18 using the cards.

I laid out all the relevant cards underneath the book. I read the sentence out and the girls found the cards mentioned (translation practice) and placed them above the book as a reminder. Then they changed the sentence from singular to plural in turn.

We then focused on the verb conjugation for past tense plural male using the verb "dhahabu"

I shuffled all the "people" words in the chapter into one pile and the adjectives mentioned into another. Then I chose 6 locations mentioned in the chapter and spread them out on the floor.

I modelled an example then the girls took it in turns to be A and B. A chose a card at random from each pile for B to ask the matching question, e.g. "Ayna az-zumlaau al-kibaaru?". A would then put the cards next to a location card and answer, e.g. "Dhahabu ila Hind."

Finally, they chose three of the sentences they had made and I wrote them onto the whiteboard as they told me what they were. They finished by copying the sentences onto a piece of coloured A4 paper and drawing a picture of one of the sentences underneath.

Week 5:

Day 1:

We looked at the conjugation for past tense plural male using the verbs "to sit" and "to exit" and comparing to how we conjugated "to go", i.e. the verbs in this chapter.

We did the exercise at the top of page 19, verbally.

Then we extended this knowledge to the verb "to do" and asked and answered questions of each other such as "Madha fa'alu at-tibbaau?" "Kharaju min al-mustashfaa wa dhahabu ila al-masjidi wa jalasu ala al-karaasi".

The vocab for "restaurant" was new so we added this to the whiteboard as a reminder.

Day 2:

We did the exercise at the bottom of page 18 verbally, attaching nouns and pronouns to words to show possession.

Then we read through the sentences on pages 19-20, translating the meanings as we went along.

Finally, the girls did the exercise on page 20, first verbally by telling me what the plural forms were, then as handwriting practise in their books. I wrote the words for them to copy as the spelling from memory is difficult for them (even I need to check some of the words still!).

We also added the new vocab words "village" and "field" to the corner of the whiteboard as a visual reminder for the rest of the week.

(Just noticed I forgot the fatha on the qaaf in "the village"! And put a dhamma on "a village". Never mind. It's fixed on the actual board now 😂)

This brings us to the end of Lesson 3a, mashaAllah. Ready for half term and for me to look at planning how we'll tackle the next part of the chapter, inshaAllah!

Arabic update

The twins have completed Madinah Arabic Reader Book 1 with me and we've just started Book 2, mashaAllah.

Their understanding is pretty good, as we read through the first chapter together and they had no issues with the content.

Current targets:

1) To be able to read more fluently (just need more practise, ideally daily!)

2) To be able to write simple sentences (they can spell words but don't have the confidence to write, especially joined... I need to give them more opportunities to do so!)

One of the grammatical concepts in the current chapter is the idea of the object of a verb in a sentence needing a fatha (and revising the subject needs a dhamma), i.e. "Tuhibbu al-baqaratu al-kitaaba" means "The cow likes the book" [as opposed to "Tuhibbu al-baqarata al-kitaabu" meaning "The book likes the cow"]. So we did some work on the whiteboard to this effect, using different familiar verbs and objects and emphasising that the order of the sentence isn't important, but the meaning comes from the vowel sound on the words.

Then the girls (Z included!) drew and painted a picture of 5 foods they liked to eat (so we could practise the verbs eat, like and want). They painted them with cottonbuds and a dot effect (I'm trying to introduce them to different art techniques where I can within other subjects, as we don't really have a set "Art" time atm!)