Simple Steps to Combining Classes

Occasionally, low attendance or absent teachers make it necessary to teach a broad range of children in a single group.

 

Since Growing in Christ and Cross Explorations are unified curricula, you can successfully teach a broadly-graded group of children when attendance is low. Here's what I would suggest to accomplish this.

 

Give each student the lesson leaflet appropriate for his or her grade/age.

• Teach from the teacher guide that matches the leaflet used by the majority of the students, or the guide that hits the middle of your age-range.
• Prepare your lesson ahead of time using this guide, but have the guides for the other levels handy to switch out or adapt activities to best suit your students' needs.
• Accommodate varying reading ability by assigning reading only to volunteers; be alert for words that need to be defined for younger children.
• When the guide directs students to do activities in the leaflet, have the students work in groups that share a common leaflet, or adapt the activity so that it can be done without the leaflet.
• If you have extra time in class, allow the students to complete any leaflet activities that they did not get to do during the lesson. Or, encourage them to do these at home.

God bless you as you teach His children is Word.

Using CPH Sunday School Material in a Small Sunday School

So your Sunday School has just a few students and, most weeks, just one teacher. How can you use CPH's material, which is created for use in congregations with multiple age-grouped classes?

Here's the approach I would take.

If your group does not include young children (aged 3 through first grade) it is tailor-made for Cross Explorations Explore Level 2 ; you can supplement that 20 minute lesson with and opening from Church Year Connections and a couple of the Express resources (your choice of crafts, skits, music, or activities) and you would have enough for an hour and resources that suit a range of ages.

If you want to use Growing in Christ, what I usually suggest is:

•           Buy the age-appropriate student pack for each student expected, even if they are different. Keep them to review each week before class, don’t distribute them all at once.

•           Buy the teacher guide and teacher tools for the biggest cluster of students. Make notes in the Teacher Guide about activities that don’t apply to all student leaflets (“Shelly won’t have this puzzle; she has a craft activity instead.”)

•           As needed during the lesson give the students time to work individually or in age-level groups to complete leaflet activities.

With just a little bit of adaptation, each child can participate in age-appropriate ways.

God bless you as you teach His children His Word!

 

How Many Teachers Will You Need This Summer?

The exact answer, of course, will depend on how many children you expect to reach each week in Sunday Sunday School.

A small Sunday School, though, can probably manage with two teachers, one for each of two age groups. In Concordia Publishing's "H2Oh! God Keeps His Promises," we have pared down summer Sunday School to two levels.

Level A serves non-readers and early readers, generally preschool through grade one or two. Level B serves readers, generally grade two or three through grade six. Both levels share a common full-color lesson leaflet with activities that will intrigue your students and be helpful in class and at home.

The program offers options for creating a site rotation experience each week or teaching the children in same-aged classrooms. And the detailed teacher guides will make teaching easy even for the new teacher.

What is your preferred arrangement of classes during the summer?

Will your regular teachers continue through the summer, or do you recruit new teachers?

How many students do you expect?

God bless you as you teach His children His Word this summer!

What Is the Small Sunday School Problem?

It strikes me that the small Sunday School does NOT have a student population challenge.

Small can be good. Public schools complain about class sizes being too large, not too small. Children, generally speaking, thrive in one-on-one interaction with adults. Even the Sunday School that has one three year old, one third grader, and one sixth grader on Sunday morning is not too small for the Gospel to shared enthusiastically and in an age-appropriate manner.

The small Sunday School does NOT have a curriculum challenge.

Even the best curriculum in the world cannot work miracles in overcoming developmental differences among a diverse but small student population, but a curriculum that works effectively to teach thirty or forty Sunday School students can teach three students.

The small Sunday School has a teacher enlistment challenge!

To teach the one three year old, one third grader, and one sixth grader most effectively, you should probably have at least two or three teachers. The high teacher-to-student ratio, often one to one, seems extravagant to some. But, looked at from an educational perspective, it is right and necessary. (For some enlistment assistance check this previous post: http://teachgodschildren.blogspot.com/2011/08/five-steps-for-enlisting-teachers.html.)

The answer?

Make effective, Christ-centered Christian education a priority for your congregation. Impress on parents and congregational leaders the challenging reality that sometimes is does take three teachers (and three sets of teaching materials) to teach three students effectively. Refuse to take shortcuts that will short-change the education of one-third or two-thirds of your students. And know that it really is worth the effort.

Some suggestions:

• Warm up each week with student-teacher conversation. Get used to talking one on one with your student and get him or her used to talking one on one with you.
• Use activities that match your student's preferred learning styles. If he or she like to draw, use drawing as a frequent means of reviewing the Bible account. If he or she likes drama, use it, even if you both have to take several roles.
• Have extra activities in mind to extend the lesson, since one-on-one discussion often takes less time that the teacher guide allows. Look for craft activities that relate to the lesson.
• Allow the teacher (especially if it is you) to flex the lesson schedule. If you prepare this week and have no student to teach, use the lesson next Sunday. Skip next week's lesson, or in the interest of good stewardship drift behind the scope and sequence as needed. Eventually you may be able to skip buying a quarter's worth of the curriculum.
• Give one or two students all the energy and enthusiasm you would give twenty students. No whining about small class sizes.

God promises to bless as you teach His children His Word!

All in One Room?

Our Sunday School team here at Concordia Publishing House gets occasional requests for "all in one room" Sunday School material. We talked about it again last week. We are generally not inclined to pursue it. It's not that we are insensitive to the needs of small congregations. Small Sunday Schools face many challenges and we want to help.

But we are, first and foremost, sensitive to the needs of children. Preschoolers and sixth graders in the same class just doesn’t work very well. The learning opportunities for one end of the age spectrum or the other will be lost.

We have experimented with models that test the limits of age-appropriateness. Our 2013 summer material offered just two levels: non-readers and readers; it seems to have been well-accepted. Cross Explorations and Growing in Christ can be combined to serve three levels: Early Childhood, grades 1-3, and grades 4-6. These seem to be the “functional minimums” for effective Christian education that uses volunteer teachers in the setting common to most congregations. They are the minimums our Sunday School team would like to strive for.

We have decided to work instead to provide resources (free ones if possible) that can support the small Sunday School in emphasis, volunteer enlistment, and student recruitment. Too often "all in one room" is a last resort of a congregation that is not pursuing the better, but more difficult options of emphasizing Christian education, enlisting volunteers, and reaching out to unenrolled students. The better alternate is to accept the burden of small classes that still provide age-appropriate instruction for children.

What pushes congregations you know toward "all in one room"?

What help do you think congregations need to overcome the barriers to a more robust Sunday School?

God bless you as you teach His children His Word.