sunday school curriculum the diocese of the southern united states h.g.bishopyoussef
Post on 19-Dec-2015
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Sunday School Curriculum
The Diocese of the Southern United States
H.G.BishopYoussef
Background: Previous Sunday School Curricula available:
A translated curriculum from the the Youth Service Committee of the Coptic Orthodox Patriarchate in Egypt
Curriculum written in Arabic Translated into English in Australia
Canadian Curriculum from St. Mark Church in Toronto Written in English
Choice: The translated curriculum of the Youth
Service Committee of the Coptic Orthodox Patriarchate
Complete curriculum for grades 1 to 12
Used for many years in most of our Churches
Experience: The following observations were noted during the
use of this curriculum:
Differences in surrounding culture Differences in surrounding beliefs Differences in youth interests and social life Differences in methods of education Need to increase the knowledge of our youth with the Bible Need for more focused lessons
Action:
A group of faithful servants from St. Mark Coptic Orthodox Church in Houston felt the need for major modification of this curriculum to better suite our children
A committee of 7 servants was formed and started the work 5 years ago
Stages of Work:
First Stage: Decisions on what and how to modify the curriculum Design a new curriculum 6 months
Second Stage: Implementations 4.5 years
First Stage: Repetitive lessons were removed Unfocused lessons were removed Lessons unsuitable to the western society were
removed
A complete new curriculum was created for Kindergarten children.
First Stage (cont.):
The removed lessons were replaced with:More Bible study lessonsSocial lessons relevant to the societyAwareness lessons of other surrounding beliefs
e.g. Mormons, Jehovah's Witness…etc.Church awareness lessonsStories of Saints
The Modified Curriculum Consists of:
Old Lessons55%
New Lessons37%
KG New Book8%
First Stage (cont.): The following Criteria were followed in redesigning
the curriculum:
Concentrate most of the Bible stories between KG and grade 6 Concentrate most of the saints stories between grade 4-6 Concentrate most of the Bible studies, social topics, dogma,
church history and ritual topics between grade 7-12 No topic is to be repeated within two years period Alternated the topics in each grade between Bible, social,
dogma, rituals and church history topics instead of grouping them to avoid boredom.
First Stage (cont.):
These criteria took into consideration:
The natural child and teenage psychological development
The nature of the society and education in the U.S.
The experience of the teachers teaching different classes
Examples of Topics Distribution:
70
10
0
10 10
60
84
8
20
40
20 20
128
0
10
20
30
40
50
60
70
Grade 3 Grade 5 Grade 7
BibleDogmaSocialChurchSaints
%
Second Stage (Implementation): Servants had to be recruited from all around the diocese
to write ~240 new lessons and KG book (50 lessons) The remaining old lessons had to be scanned to convert
them into electronic copies The new lessons were inserted in suitable church events
order with the old lessons The new books had to be reformatted for consistency of
appearance The new books were edited for content, language and
consistency.
Lesson Format: All lessons followed the following format:
ObjectiveMemory verseReferences IntroductionLesson OutlinesConclusionApplications
Trend:
We started with the high school books where the greatest need for a change was felt
Subsequently we moved to the younger grades However, our experience with book production
increased and improved as the number of books we produced increased.
Servants: More than 40 servants contributed to
this service Mostly from the diocese but some
from outside the diocese and even from Canada
Amazingly there was great consistency in the spirit despite differences in formatting the lessons: Some long and some short Some in paragraphs and some in point
form
Half Way Through:
God has led us to a servant that had already scanned the old lessons which helped expedite the production of the books
Initially 4 months/book for the first 4-5 booksDecreased to 3 months/book for the remaining
8-9 books
Half Way Through: God had led us to the idea of posting the completed books
on the diocese web page.
This helped: Widespread access to the books to all the servants from different
churches all around the world Faster feedback on the performance and adequacy of the
produced books Encouragement and demand for expedited production of the
remaining books Ability to improve the books according to the need in the future
The Order of Lessons in Each Book Each book is 50 lesson The lesson are arranged similar to the church
calendar Each book starts after the Coptic New Year i.e
second week of September Filler lessons are available for the 5th week of
some months
The Order of Lessons in Each Book:
3 lessons for the month of September 4 lessons for each month from October through January Variable number of filler lessons for the period between the beginning
of February and Jonah’s fast. 2 lessons, one before and one after Jonah’s fast 7 lessons during the Great Fast 7 lessons for the period between Resurrection and the Feast of the
Pentecost Variable number of filler lessons between the Feast of the Pentecost
and the Apostles’ Feast 3 lessons for the remainder of July after the Apostles’ Feast 4 lessons for August 1 lesson for the first week of September
God’s Blessing: All through the years of this service we felt the hand of
the Lord in the following: Whenever we became weak and discouraged God would send us
complements of the curriculum and requests to complete the rest of the books
Whenever, we lost vital servants for different reasons, God would send better ones
Whenever we were overwhelmed with the magnitude of the work, God would send references and resources that would expedite the production of the lessons
God has used the old and the young, each one with his/her talent to the production of this curriculum
Future Work: To continue improving the curriculum according
to feedback E-mail address: [email protected]
To do a second revision where we can further improve on the remaining old lessons
To continuously update the social topic to match with new hot issues in the society
Future Work (cont.):
To develop a curriculum for College To develop power point presentations for each
lesson To complement this curriculum with a student
activity book.
Adjunctive Services:
The Pre-servants Curriculum
The Holy Bible Contest
Pre-Servants Curriculum: There was a need to develop a pre-servants curriculum
to better prepare the servants for teaching Sunday School
Therefore, 6 year program was developed The first 2 years prior to serving The following 4 years to be completed during serving
Presently, the material for the first 3 years is completed and available on the diocese web site
Holy Bible Contest: 4 levels of 3 years intervals of Bible contest were developed:
Beginner (grade 1-3) Intermediate (grade 4-6) Advanced (grade 7-9) Expert (grade 10-12)
Each level would encourage the students to read one chapter per day in the Bible and answer one question
Thus the Bible would be completed in 3 year intervals
Holy Bible Contest (cont.):
The question of the Bible contest are available on the diocese web site
The answers are also available with a password provided only to the servants
Acknowledgment: The success of this service was due to the fact that we had a
previous curriculum from the mother church as a base to build on
This was greatly appreciated when we wrote Kindergarten book from scratch.
We thought that KG book will be the easiest to write, till we discovered that it was the most difficult because we had to write all the 50 lessons
Then we realized that:“Others have labored, and we have entered into their
labors” (John 4:38)
Thank YouHave a Blessed St. Mary’s Feast