Reading Carnival

Adolescence is hard enough. But for American Jewish children age 13 comes with the added pressure of having a Bar or Bat Mitzvah, a lifecycle event that requires singing and reading Hebrew in front of their entire community. 

Most of these adolescents don’t speak Hebrew, and many don’t have a parent at home who reads Hebrew well enough to help them. Many extracurricular Hebrew school programs only hold classes once a week, so learning progress is hampered, leaving students feeling disheartened. Some families hire a private tutor to help students prepare, and some families do nothing except the weekly class. But what if there were an app to help support students between classes?

I’ve been a Hebrew school teacher for several years but in order to get a more seasoned perspective, I conducted phone interviews with a rabbi and four veteran Hebrew school teachers, each with over 30 years teaching experience. I asked them broadly to describe teaching success stories and to share insights into what helps motivate students to learn at home and how we might best support them. I asked about what problems students commonly encounter, about whether memorization or decoding/phonics is the better approach, and about teaching students with varied learning styles. The consensus is that once weekly Hebrew school isn’t enough, but that students’ lives are so busy that families likely wouldn’t agree to more classroom days. 

These experts shared with me a trove of information, but the main points were these:

Students have the most success when practice sessions:

• Are short but frequent
• Are fun and interactive
• Aren’t too challenging, but can gradually increase
• Accommodate different learning styles
• Include reading aloud, even if they make mistakes

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I spoke with two current Bat Mitzvah students, both of whom said they learn better when they can see and hear the words together, and they also both prefer to do something more interesting than just reading text on a page.

Additionally, I conducted a brief analysis of existing Hebrew reading apps. Duolingo, which is perhaps the most popular language learning app, is intended for conversational Hebrew, not prayer language. Something that it does well, however, is provide short and repetitive lessons with daily reminders to keep on track. The app most similar to what I was imagining is called 7 Minute Hebrew, which was created by an old colleague of mine, but it is no longer operational. When I spoke with him he shared that he had spent too much time and resources on developing a system to report student progress to teachers, and that if he could do it again he would focus on a standalone game. I only found two other apps meant to teach Hebrew prayer reading: Alef Bet Quest, which looked good but didn’t work correctly on mobile, and PrayerTech, which no longer seems to be set up for homeschool use. But based on what I’ve seen, apps geared toward prayer reading skills tend to be colorful and animated, and use games to make learning more fun. 

Research Summary:

• This product should be interactive and fun
• Short lessons/activities should be played throughout the week
• It is important to get instant feedback on reading aloud
• Phonetic decoding is the goal, not memorization
• Intrinsic and extrinsic rewards should help motivate learning

Based on what I learned from the educators I interviewed, as well as my own experience as a Hebrew school teacher and informal educator (and long-ago Hebrew student), I envisioned a learning platform containing a rotating set of interactive games. Each game would exercise decoding skills and could increase in difficulty as students progress. I thought it would be helpful if the platform could keep track of which words the student had read correctly in order to reintroduce words they had gotten wrong, but to keep reusing even the words they’d gotten right. Duolingo works in much the same way. And like Duolingo, these games would be played for short but frequent periods of time. Studies show that repeated lessons with breaks between help move information from short-term memory to long-term memory. But I also know from experience that new activities will prevent boredom and burnout. I thought this product would be best if played up to ten minutes per day, most weekdays. The games should offer words of encouragement (like a good teacher would say) and immediate feedback for how accurately a student reads a word.

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Because I’ve known so many different students over the years I created a persona named Shoshana who could stand in for the most typical type of student who might best benefit from this product.

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Next I brainstormed a few different games the platform might contain, some modified from activities I have used in my classroom to practice prayer words. I made rough sketches of several of these ideas. Each of these games would require that students interact with words in Hebrew letters or transliterated into English, and could be adapted to different skill levels and for different sets of words.

Top row, L to R: Slot machine for 3-syllable words (later Galgal Mazal); Prize wheel where students spin and read syllable/word aloud that it lands on; Matching card game to connect Hebrew syllable with transliterated pronounciation.

Bottom row, L to R: As ducks swim by user must tap the duckie with Hebrew syllable that matches the transliterated syllable before it falls into the water; Pop the balloon that corresponds with the transliterated word shown; Put Hebrew words in order, modeled after Duolingo activity.

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What’s more fun than a carnival?

I knew I’d need to create a working prototype of a game for user testing. Along the way I realized that a fun way to tie these games together would be to make them all like games on a carnival midway. With that in mind I decided to start with a slot machine design - each of the three wheels would have a syllable from a 3-syllable word. The wheels would spin at different rates but end up spelling out an actual word from a prayer each time. I thought it was important that students practiced decoding actual words rather than nonsense syllables because it would breed familiarity with prayer vocabulary. The goal of this type of practice is improved phonetic decoding, but as words become more familiar a student will eventually recognize certain words, which will improve their reading speed and fluency.

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I decided to keep the controls simple and designed a big realistic looking button to spin the wheels to the next word, and a speaker button that would play a recording of the word so students could check their pronounciation. 

But there wasn’t a way to embed audio into Figma prototypes. I tried importing my files to Adobe XD (and had to redo all my gradients) but although I was able to use audio on my laptop, the mobile version didn’t work (apparently this is an XD bug which has not yet been resolved). I needed to be able to test my design on a mobile device so next I looked into using Protopie and discovered that on that platform you can use audio and even voice recognition. Unfortunately, Hebrew isn’t one of the 40 supported languages. Disappointed, I returned to Figma and decided to just skip the audio and instead show the word in transliteration (Hebrew pronunciation spelled out with English letters), and when I tested the prototype I’d just use my own voice to simulate what it might sound like.

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I continued to improve upon the slot machine design. First, I fleshed out the design to make it look more 3-dimensional. 

Then I realized that I had assumed students would know to press the red button, say the word, and then press the speaker button to check. But as I had designed it there was nothing stopping them from just skipping the checking step entirely. So my next iteration had a button panel that rotated, showing just one button at a time.  

The only problem now was that it resembled the terrifying Eye of Sauron. 

The design I finally settled on solved the problem by featuring a rotating label, while the button stayed where it was. 

Once I realized how to create that effect with Smart Animate I designed encouragement signs which would pop up at the midpoint and end of the game, and for and extra bonus added blinking lights which I animated in Adobe AfterEffects and imported as an animated GIF.

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I decided to name the app Reading Carnival, or Carnival Kriya in Hebrew. I chose a thematic palette and experimented with a few different logo designs. Eventually I settled on a bilingual logo that uses the same colors for matching syllables between the languages, as a subtle reading reference. 

Part of a discarded logo idea was repurposed for a title illustration for the specific game I’d designed, which I named Galgal Mazal (Wheel of Luck).

To test the prototype I enlisted three Hebrew school students ages 11-14 and had them try Reading Carnival in person, on my phone. I didn’t give them any instructions, other than to show me how they would log into email, and then look around and play with it. All 3 students went directly to the game, skipping the other menu options, and though they hesitated briefly they all understood to press the red button, and easily figured out how to play. 

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Afterward I asked each student a series of questions, like how many times a week they imagined they would use this app if their teacher told them to, how they thought it might help them learn, was it age appropriate, and what they liked and didn’t like about it. Responses were generally very positive, but because I noticed that moment of hesitation at the beginning of the game I added the most basic directions. 

One of the students suggested I build other rewards into the game besides words of encouragement, so while I was waiting for the other three students to return from spring break I spent some  time designing a prize gallery and a reward animation sequence. I believe the intrinsic reward of seeing one’s own progress in reading ability is very valuable. But for students this age, a prize, even if it’s just a digital stuffed animal, can be a more age-appropriate reward.

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This time I created the animation exclusively in Figma, which turned out to be a lot of fun.

I tested the updated prototype with the remaining students, ages 10-12, just as I had the first three.

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All six students understood how to use the Galgal Mazal game, thought it was age appropriate, and enjoyed it. Specifically, they liked the graphics and animation and that it was interactive, and they thought it was creative. Criticisms included at least one student saying they had trouble reading the Hebrew typeface, and some thought the animation could be a little faster. The emoji images I used in the slot machine design between the letters were surprisingly polarizing: one student said that was one of her favorite things about the game, but two others hated them.

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Hypothetical questions aren’t the most reliable, but students on average thought they would use this app 3 times per week, and that they would probably be able to play the game 4 days in a row before tiring of it. At least 5 of 6 said they thought this app could help them learn how to read Hebrew better. I was a little worried that the students wouldn’t answer some of these questions honestly, because they knew this was my project and they didn’t want to hurt my feelings. But these students seemed quite forthcoming with their opinions; as a function of their developmental psychology, I’ve noticed that many middle schoolers still seem completely unaware of other people’s feelings.

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I discussed push notifications with each student and the general feeling was that although reminder notifications can be helpful to adults, these students believed they would be more annoying than helpful.

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After testing my prototype on all six students I realized several things. First, most of them didn’t understand this was going to be a platform with rotating games - since they only saw the one, they assumed that was all there would be. It would be a good idea to provide a little more context in the opening screens. More importantly, although the About section mentions that students can only play up to ten minutes per day, none of them looked at that page; it might be helpful to put that information upfront too. 

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Even though notifications might be useful to remind students to use Reading Carnival, they should be used sparingly and users should have control over how often and when notifications are sent.

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One student made this astute observation:

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As designed, the app gives students the option to send reports to their teacher to show they have been using the app and keep them accountable. If there were a way to make weekly reports send automatically it could make it easier to use. I spent most of my time on the game itself, because this project was meant to be completed in 80 hours. But if there was more time it could be good to build out a teacher dashboard to keep track of student progress and also a way for teachers to select which specific prayers to focus on. The goal is decoding, not memorization, but it could benefit students to practice the same specific words on Reading Carnival that they are working on in class. 

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I don’t know enough about how voice recognition works, but I think it could be really a helpful tool if I could integrate it into this app to give users instant feedback on pronunciation. And of course, adding sound effects and music would bring the games to life in a fun way.

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Finally, if Reading Carnival were to be developed, I would need to design many more games than just Galgal Mazal. It would take a lot of work but I believe, based on my research, that Reading Carnival could help a lot of students improve their reading and confidence.

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Testing Summary:

• Slot machine game tested very positively
• Game would be improved with voice recognition and/or audio
• More games would be necessary to design before developing
• More thought could go into reporting progress to teachers, and to the reward schedule
• A reasonable goal is no more than 10 minutes a day, several days per week
• Don’t bug kids with push notifications, unless they want them

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See full prototype.