Sunday School Curriculum

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Sunday School Curriculum

• The Diocese of the Southern United States
• H.G.BishopYoussef

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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.

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First Stage (cont.)

• The removed lessons were replaced with
• More Bible study lessons
• Social lessons relevant to the society
• Awareness lessons of other surrounding beliefs
  e.g. Mormons, Jehovah's Witnessetc.
• Church awareness lessons
• Stories of Saints

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The Modified Curriculum Consists of
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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.

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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

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Examples of Topics Distribution

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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.

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Lesson Format

• All lessons followed the following format
• Objective
• Memory verse
• References
• Introduction
• Lesson Outlines
• Conclusion
• Applications

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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.

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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

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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 books
• Decreased to 3 months/book for the remaining 8-9
  books

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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

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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

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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
  Jonahs fast.
•          2 lessons, one before and one after
  Jonahs 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

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Gods 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

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Future Work

• To continue improving the curriculum according to
  feedback
• E-mail address SSC_at_SUSCOPTS.ORG
• 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

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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.

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Adjunctive Services

• The Pre-servants Curriculum
• The Holy Bible Contest

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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

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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

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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

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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 438)

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Thank YouHave a Blessed St. Marys Feast