I understand this thread could have been in culture or religion, but I feel it will be better suited here. However, mods, please feel free to move it if needed.
I have been teaching arabic for beginners for a few months in a local school here as a volunteer. The kids are pretty good at identifying huroof now but as I start with the harakaat, such as fatha (zabar), kasra (zeyr) and dammah (pesh), I see confusion. They forget the letters and cannot seem to grasp the effect of the harakaat on the letters. How would you suggest I proceed? It's obviously something with my style of teaching.
Secondly, I am also teaching an Islamic Virtues class which entails lessons on character building. I would appreciate some ideas from you to make my class more interesting and worthwhile. My students are age 6-13.
Thanks.
We also teach kids to read Arabic in our local masjid. I've found that if we go through Ahsanul Qawaid, and we make sure that the students don't go ahead without properly learning their lessons, then learning about and applying harakaat seems to come to them quite naturally. I haven't found anyone having problems with letters once they get to the harakaat. The main thing here is that every student has his/her individual lesson. When I'm teaching, I don't move them ahead until they know their current lesson well enough. Sometimes it means that some students cover the same lesson for 2 or 3 weeks, but making sure they know it properly is more important than rushing through the book.
As for character building, fada'il of good character seems like a good place to start. I would cover the rights of parents, neighbors, respect for elders. You can present examples of good character from the life of Rasulullah (SAW) and from the lives of the sahaba (RA).