The purpose of this session is to

1. introduce the family to what is in the Torah and Haftarah Portions, and how the rabbi and student will go about learning together.
2. help the student select that part of long Torah portions which they will study, and determine into how many readings to divide the portion (7 min-10 max).
3. make any decisions about the Haftarah (see below).

   During this session the student will be expected to take notes on what has been studied. After this session, the student and parents will write up what they learned/created and send it to the rabbi by email. This will be practice for the write-ups to follow each student session.

4. to decide how many aliyot to allocate that day

What to bring:

1. Tzedakah to give. (We do this each time we study)
2. Your service attendance journal so we can see how that has been going.
3. The student should have a 3-ring binder with paper, just for this purpose. Do not use the Siddur binder or the class binder, as all that stuff just gets in the way.
4. Something to write with.
5. Your Torah, TaNaKh, and Tikkun.

How to prepare:

• You should have already purchased your Torah and TaNaKh with commentary.
• The Parent(s) and student should have read the whole of the traditional portion and haftarah in English.
• The student should think about which part(s) of the portion he/she is most interested in studying.

You may have a choice of Haftarot

Where there is a choice between Haftarot, the student may choose.
There are various ways where there is a choice

• sometimes Ashkenazi, Sefardi, and other haftarot for the same Torah Portion
• when two Torah Portions are combined, each has its own Haftarah
• If their Shabbat is the day before a New Moon (Rosh Hodesh) or the New Moon Day itself, each of which days have their own Haftarah
• Finally, they may choose to do the standard Haftarah for that Torah portion and "wrap" the first and last lines of the Rosh Hodesh portion "around" the standard portion, as many Sefardi communities do.