A description of the presentation

This section describes and explains the presentation's development relating to its Visual, Auditory, and Reading/Writing components, which created Visual, Auditory, reading, writing and Kinaesthetic learning events. The section provides a clear picture of the activity in the classroom during the lesson with the presentation and explains how data was collected during the observation on the lesson. All the presentation texts were written and transmitted in Hebrew, but for the purposes of this thesis they are translated into English.

The goal of the first lesson was to revise material, previously learnt by the pupils in the preceding year as groundwork for the new material. The first presentation began with a review of the previous material, that is, it reiterated the identification of different 'parts of speech' in the Hebrew sentence, for example: 'noun', 'verb'. The academic subject for the year in which the study took place was the function of the different parts of speech in the sentence, for example: subject, object, the main subject and subsidiary subjects and a revision of the sentence parts, punctuation, and Hebrew idioms.

This first presentation displayed two sentences. In each, the same word appeared, but with a different meaning. The sentences appeared on the screen gradually. This presentation was considered for the purpose of this study as a Visual event.

Next, an interrogative sentence appeared, the question was: ‘Which identical words appear in both sentences?’ This too was considered as a Visual event.

The question was directed at the classroom pupils. The teacher or the pupils could read the question aloud. When the pupils read, it was considered as a

Reading event. Listening to this reading was considered as an Auditory event.

The teacher asked one of the pupils to answer the question. All the other pupils in the classroom looked and listened. The pupil's incorrect answer did not always testify to a lack of observation of the display in the presentation but sometimes testified to a lack of prior knowledge. When the pupils wanted to answer which word was the same in both sentences, their knowledge of the correct answer testified to their prior knowledge, which the teacher wanted to use as the foundation for new knowledge. For this reason the pupil's answer was not considered as an event (Visual, Auditory, Reading/ Writing). However, this

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response was observed, the pupil's name was written down and whether the pupil gave the right or wrong answer, in case this information would be needed to enrich the data.

After one of the pupils had answered, the teacher reacted by pressing the computer's 'Enter' button, and the two identical words were then coloured in red, for example, the word 'falls' in the following sentences: Daniel falls from the chair. Niagra Falls is beautiful. This response by the computer was also considered in this study as a Visual event. This process of appearance of the question,

responses of the pupils and the teacher, was repeated several times during the lesson.

When the pupils answered the question, annotated arrows appeared leading out of the words to explain the parts of speech represented by these two words, this was also considered as a Visual event, these words had identical sounds but different

meanings (one was a verb and the other a noun). Next the presentation asked the pupils how the two words differed one from the other.

The next part of the presentation related to the different forms of a verb. A word of explanation is necessary regarding Hebrew grammar. Hebrew verbs are conjugated according to specific patterns called binyaním - "constructions". To form these constructions vowels and affixes are slotted into the (mostly) three- letter (shorashím - roots) from which the majority of Hebrew words are built. There are seven basic binyaním. In addition verbs are conjugated to reflect their tense and mood, as well as to agree with their subjects in gender, number, and person. A framed verb appeared on the screen, surrounded by four additional frames, in which four forms of the verb were described. Each framed word represented a single form of the verb, Below these frames appeared three conjugated forms of the verb, which were distinguished one from the other by a single component. All these representations are considered as Visual events, (see example in Figure

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Figure 2.12: The Presentation of a Verb

Thus the pupils learned to identify the different forms of the verb. They were then presented with three identical forms of different verbs and one exceptional form and asked to identify which of the forms was exceptional

At first the root was the exceptional form. Following this the exception was the verb's form conjugated according to time. Thus the pupils arrived at the conclusion that the verb has four forms, the root, and its conjugations according to person, time, and structure. Each of the conjugated verbs received a different colour and was animated to move from above to below, moving directly into the appropriate frame. This event was considered as a Visual event. This movement was

accompanied by musical sounds, considered as an Auditory event, since the

teacher was also asked by the researcher to sing the verb components with the pupils in a certain rhythm adding melody to the words so that it would sound like a jingle, which could help the Auditory learning.

The presentation ended, but in the other presentations, when the rules appeared, the teacher asked one of the pupils to read the rule aloud – this was considered in this study as a Reading event. The pupils were also asked to copy the rule into

their notebooks, an act that was considered as a Writing event. During the lesson,

or sometimes even in the middle of the presentation, the teacher would stop the presentation and explain things to the pupils orally. This was again an Auditory

event.

The Verb

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