Miketz- Order & Sequencing

"[Joseph's brothers] were seated before [Joseph], the firstborn according to his seniority and the youngest according to his youth..." ~Bereishit 43;33

"[The man in charge of Joseph's house] searched; he began with the oldest and ended with the youngest; and the goblet was found in Benjamin's saddlebag." ~Bereishit 44;12

In this week's parsha, we can see two instances where Joseph's brothers were organized according to their age. Putting items in order, or sequencing, is a critical math skill that is used by students of all ages (preschool to adulthood), both in school and in life.

Sequencing:
Sequencing means putting items into a specific order or arrangement.
The skill of putting any group of items or information into a designated order is an important one. Children can begin working on this skill at a very early age. By the time they reach Kindergarten and 1st grade, children should be able to put objects in a designated order, and they can work on designating attributes to objects by which to order them. For example, the same group of students could be placed together and first asked to put themselves in height order and then asked to rearrange themselves according to their birthdays.

Connection to Parsha:
In Bereishit 43;33, Rashi explains that Joseph arranged his brothers to sit first by mother, and then in birth order within their groups. So, they were seated in the following order:
Reuven, Shimon, Levi, Yehuda, Issachar, Zevulun [children of Leah], Dan, Naphtali [children of Bilhah], Gad, Asher [children of Zilpah], and Binyamin sat with Joseph [children of Rachel/"without a mother" to quote Rashi here].

In Bereishit 44;12, Rashi explains that they were searched by oldest to youngest so that they wouldn't sense that the messenger already knew where the goblet was packed. According to this understanding, at this time they were searched in the following order:
Reuven, Shimon, Levi, Yehuda, Dan, Naphtali, Gad, Asher, Issachar, Zevulun, and Binyamin.

Sequencing Activites for the young and old:
For younger students, sequencing activities could be:
--putting dates into a calendar (cut and paste)
--putting counting numbers in order
--setting out a pattern with items or shapes and having them continue the pattern
--asking students to put a group of people in order or put themselves, as a group, in order by height, birthday, day of the month that they were born, etc. A game of asking them to sequence a group of people based on a non-physical attribute would best be accomplished with the people holding cards so that the child has something concrete to look at while putting the people in order
--creating a pattern of shapes, numbers, or information and asking a child to identify the pattern is also a good thought-provoking exercise for students.

For older students, there are still very relevant sequencing activities. Such activities could be:
--writing a timeline of events
--expanding on a number line- ordering integers (positive and negative numbers), fractions, decimals, or any mixture of rational numbers
--looking to identify patterns in numbers or shapes (this is a skill that they will use in all subjects as they learn- patterns in poetry tempo or lines, patterns in a science experiment, patterns in social history, etc)
--asking students as a group to organize themselves in a particular sequence based on a physical or non-physical attribute (this is often used as an ice-breaker activity for new groups of people first meeting each other at conventions and seminars).

For an extra challenge: There is a variation where students have an index card with a piece of information on their forehead. The students do not know what their own cards say, only what they see on everyone else's cards. Using this information and speaking to others in the group, they need to work together to put themselves in proper sequence for the information on the cards (without explicitly stating what is written on other people's cards).

What sequences can you find in your lives?