In the Classroom
After we were married, Sandi and I received our first assignment serving at a small church in Georgia. We ministered alongside a semi-retired pastor and there was not enough work for both of us to be full time thus I was encouraged to find a part time job. After a brief stint as a cabinetmaker and painter, I ended up teaching math at the local public high school and found I had a gift for connecting with the students.
During my time in the classroom as well as working with young people at our church, God blessed us with three sons and this is when we began our homeschooling journey. Our fourth son was born with Down syndrome and in the first ten months endured several significant surgeries. Between multiple trips to the hospital and medical professionals, my wife and I burned out. We were unable to continue the many tasks on our plate and sensed God leading us to step back and heal as a family. In search of a job, I landed a teaching position at a small K-8 Christian School in Massachusetts where I had attended Seminary.
As the lone man on the staff, I wore several hats. I taught math and science to the upper grades and was the Physical Education teacher for the whole school. Since I had taught math successfully and had participated in collegiate sports, I felt comfortable teaching these subjects. In addition to these subjects, each teacher was assigned a homeroom to begin the day. It was here that I was stretched. There were daily tasks such as making announcements and taking attendance, and I was had the responsibility of teaching the Bible, Spelling, and Penmanship.
Faith Comes by Hearing
When I was a student in seminary I had a few classes on church education and learned about the early roots of education in our country. As a teacher, I was doing a lot of thinking about what we taught and why we taught it. Our forefathers had a strong desire to teach their children to read so they could understand Scripture. As believers we know that “faith comes from hearing, and hearing through the word of Christ” (Romans 10:17) and “the Law has become our tutor to lead us to Christ, so that we may be justified by faith.” (Galatians 3:24)
Since the knowledge of the Bible was so important to a Christian education, I suggested to my students that we read through the New Testament as a class during the school year. I made charts for each student beginning with Matthew in September and finishing Revelation in May. This would mean reading daily, even on weekends and holidays. Then for our Bible Class in the morning we would discuss the chapters we had read. This was proving profitable and I sensed God’s hand in our endeavor.
Biblical Literacy
During this time I had been watching my 10-12 year olds dutifully filling out worksheets to fulfill their Penmanship and Spelling requirements. They each had their own workbooks and mechanically turned in a page per day. This exercise did not seem profitable and was mostly busy work.
One day during our Bible class, one of the students mentioned that they did not understand some of the words in the chapter which we had read the day before. Others chimed in that they had the same experience. For my benefit I asked each student to write a list of words they did not understand in the next day’s reading and bring it to class.
I was surprised to see as many as seven words on some of their papers. It was then that God gave me a wonderful idea. I realized that until we understood the meaning of the words, we wouldn’t understand the Scripture. I wondered if we could take a word from each chapter and look it up in the dictionary each day for our vocabulary. Then God gave me another idea. What if we combined our Bible, Spelling, and Penmanship into one exercise and enriched our understanding of the inspired word of God, which was the prime objective.
We set aside the Penmanship and Spelling workbooks and I chose one word from each chapter of their Bible Reading for the next seven days. The students would look up this word and print the definition in manuscript then use it in a sentence with cursive. This would be the word to learn how to spell while practicing their penmanship. On Friday we would then have a quiz on the seven new words from that week, plus three that I chose to review from the previous week.
If I were to teach this today, the one adjustment I would make, would be that after I chose one word from each chapter of our daily reading, I would ask the students to look up the definition and write it in cursive then print the Bible verse where it appears in the chapter we were reading and studying. In this way we would still be practicing our penmanship but also copying the word of God while learning the meaning of one new word each day.
At the end of the school year we had not only read the New Testament, we had also learned the meaning and spelling of 260 words, and how to write and print them. This was the most satisfying part of teaching that school year.
List of Words
Recently I discovered the words I had chosen for the students in my 5-6 grade homeroom class. I went through them and edited a few, and I now have one word for each chapter from Matthew to Revelation. These words are found in the ESV translation of the Bible. I have this list available in a PDF for your perusal. There are 260 chapters in the New Testament. If you read 5 chapters per week, you can read the whole New Testament in one year. If you read a chapter each day, you can read the New Testament in 37 weeks plus one day.
Even if you don’t employ my list of words for your family, you could adapt this approach for your family devotion time and choose whichever word you encounter in your Bible reading and use this as your vocabulary word. In our home, when we assembled for Family Worship, we would begin with prayer, then take turns reading aloud three verses at a time, until we had completed one chapter of the Bible. If we came to a word which we did not understand we would look it up to see what it meant.
Another idea might be to give each person a journal where they could write down words which they did not fully understand and then for “school” look up the definition, write it in cursive, then print the verse where it appears. In this way each student could identify their own words to look up. Or you could pick one word to focus on as a family.
There are many ways to employ this strategy but the primary objective is for each of us to increase our understanding of God’s word and become more Biblically Literate. You may find this list of words for the New Testament here.
“Nyms”
I enjoyed teaching my kids about synonyms, homonyms, and antonyms. In Matthew 28 the word I selected is descended and in Ephesians 4 the word is ascended. These are antonyms. Use your creative juices to discover examples for each of the “Nyms.”
Teach Me to Fish and I eat for a day
Teach me to fish and I eat for a lifetime. Hopefully as you apply these principles which encourage reading for understanding your students will mature into lifelong learners who continue to examine the Scriptures with diligence and an inquisitive mind long after they have left your nest!
Extra Credit
We have four sons. After reading the Bible regularly for several years, I began to assign specific words to my older two and asked them to look up the word and discover its Greek root. This was back in the day when we had to use reference books like large concordances to discover this information. With the advent of computers and resources like BibleHub, which I use frequently, this is a much easier exercise. I have a video explaining how to use this resource here.
You may also examine the etymology of the word to discern its origin and historical development. God chose to reveal Himself through words. He penned the decalogue on two tablets of stone with His own finger. Words matter.
Listen
This topic, “Teaching Spelling through Scripture” is discussed in more detail in the Podcast which was posted today here.
Podcasts
470 Christ the Cornerstone of God’s House
471 El Elyone, God Most High
472 Teaching Spelling through Scripture
473 Jesus the Bread of Life
474 Jesus the Living Bread
475 Let’s Read through the Old Testament Together