a plea for Sunday school !!!

[New Creation]

Hi folks.

I am a relatively (1 year) new Christian at an evangelical Anglican church. I am one of the Sunday school teachers and we are getting to a point of real frustration for me. Our classes are usually not bigger than 10 kids and on occasion there will be one or even no kids. They range in age from 15- 4. We don't have a LOT of resources but I know God will provide what we need.

There is a 15 year old girl and a 13 year old girl in the class but they don't come every week. The curriculum I have been given is good for young kids but in my opinion is insulting to teens. I have been thinking about asking the two girls to begin helping me teach the class. They need more than they are getting and I can't split the class up right now because we don't have any other teachers. I also don't know what to do about the only boy in the class. Being the only boy is a particular source of misery for him. Any advice?

What I guess I need to know is, how do I teach teaching when I am such a new teacher myself? Do you have any advice for me? I get along well with all the kids I should add.

 

[fishstix]

You can split them into groups within the large group. Think of the way that one room schools used to be in the old days. Up to 12 grades all in the same room, each doing their own lesson, at the same time, with only one teacher there. In your case, perhaps 3 or 4 subgroups based on age would work well.

It is going to require some creativity on your part, and you'll likely have to work outside that curriculum. Use it as a guide for whichever age group it is meant for, but find other stuff for the other age groups that is more appropriate for them. Getting the older students involved with helping the younger ones like you mentioned is one good idea.

I attended a small elementary school and was part of numerous multi-grade classrooms until I started high school in grade 10. One strategy that the teachers used was having one or two grades doing hands-on work while the remaining grade was being taught a lesson. So, perhaps you could have the youngest children coloring a picture, the oldest having a reasonably quiet group discussion on some topic, and teach a lesson to the intermediate group. Or maybe you could have the middle group act out a Bible story for the youngest group while you teach the oldest. The key is to alternate lessons and projects that require somewhat less direct supervision. Make sure that each age group has some days when they are being taught and some days when they are working more on their own or with each other.

Sometimes two or more grades would work on the same subject matter and it would rotate each year. For example, in high school the Christian Ethics classes were quite small, so grade 10, 11, and 12 were combined. Each year, one of the 3 curriculums was covered. So, if a person was in the class for 3 years they would do all 3; they just might not do them in the right order. This is a good idea only if everyone is at about the same level though - with an age range like you have it would probably not be a good idea for the entire group to do this.

Occasionally, multi-grade groups were made from the entire school (kindergarten - grade 9) in which the older students were the group leaders and in charge of coming up with some sort of presentation for the entire group to do for the whole school. This happened maybe once a month in school - perhaps every few months would be more appropriate for a Sunday School.

Sometimes, the entire school was given a topic to study, but each classroom studied it in their own way. The youngest children would draw pictures, the oldest would do research and give presentations, etc. You could have everyone working on a similar topic but give different assignments/projects depending on the age group.

As far as not knowing how many people are going to show up, all I can suggest is to be flexible and have a number of different possible options for what you might teach each week, depending on who shows up. As far as resources go - try searching for stuff on the net Good luck

 

[New Creation]

Those are some GREAT suggestions there fishstix- practical ones. Thanks for taking the time to answer, I really appreciate it!