Twenty years ago, two sisters teamed up to teach a large group of Sunday school children. They did this very successfully for five years. Please see “Teaming Up” in last month’s issue of The Tidings. The way the sisters planned and carried out instruction was vital to the success of their work together, and a key part of the instructional plan that they put in place was the use of Bible learning centers. Again, they tell the story of what they did.
Q. What are Bible learning centers?
A. Bible learning centers are activities related to the Sunday school lesson. A center might be a craft project, a word puzzle, a filmstrip, a book, a creative writing assignment, a game. The availability of a few centers each Sunday provides the children with a choice of individual or small group activities to do on their own after the main lesson has been taught. The children carry out center activities at their own pace and in keeping with their individual interests and abilities.
Q. What kinds of centers have you used with your class of eight to 12-year-olds?
A. There is an enormous range of activities that a teacher can draw on for creating centers. We must say up front, though, that we don’t offer a huge selection of centers every single week. We don’t want people to think centers are overwhelming to run, because they aren’t. Once you get used to planning centers, it’s surprising how easy it is to come up with four or five for every lesson. Of course, it’s even easier when you have two teachers sharing the work load as we do. Some of the center activities our eight to 12-year-olds have done are these: (1) craft projects; (2) art work for bulletin boards; (3) model making with Play-Doh, Legos, or Bristle Blocks; (4) Fuzzy Felt or flannel graph recreations of Bible stories; (5) coloring book activities; (6) jigsaw puzzles (homemade, custom made at photo labs, and commercial); (7) sequencing and matching cards (e.g., 39 file cards with the Old Testament book names for sequencing; e.g., Bible quote cards with one word of the quote on each card for correct sequencing; e.g., name cards with a famous Bible name on each for chronological sequencing; e.g., Bible quote and reference cards for matching); (8) lacing or sewing cards; (9) videos; (10) filmstrips; (11) View-Master reels; (12) audio tapes (we have headsets for the tape player and TV to control the sound); (13) books and stories in the reading center; (14) word puzzles (homemade and commercial); (15) Bible games (homemade and commercial); (16) creative writing assignments; (17) decision-making and problem-solving activities; (18) Bible study worksheets, maps, etc., and (19) service center projects such as creating thinking-of-you cards and give-away crafts.
Q. You say that it is easy to provide four or five centers for every lesson. Even that sounds like a lot. How do you do it?
A. It’s helpful to have an inventory of teaching materials to draw on. Between the two of us we can almost always come up with a book or story about the lesson. This provides a reading center practically every week. Bible word puzzles often provide another center activity. Puzzle books on various Bible topics are available in book stores, and we either draw on these or make up our own. Bible activity books and Bible craft books are also easy to find, and we’re usually able to get one or two more ideas from these. Some of the children like to color with crayons or markers or colored pencils. They also like to embellish their pictures with bits of fabric or other appliqués. This can provide another choice that is not difficult to prepare. We keep a supply of Play-Doh and Legos handy and have been impressed on several occasions by the Bible models some of the children have constructed completely on their own (of course, we stipulate that the model has to be related to the Sunday school lesson). It only takes a minute to put these materials out for the children. The same is true for the flannel board and stick-on pieces which the children enjoy using to portray some aspect of the lesson. We also provide a creative writing center on a fairly regular basis. It isn’t fancy. All we do is supply a sheet of paper with instructions to write a ‘newspaper report’ on some feature of the day’s lesson. That’s more than five center possibilities already, most of which are easy to get ready. It is also possible to have one or two standard centers that you pull out from week to week. For example, sequencing cards on the books of the Bible can be used almost any Sunday until the children have mastered these. We have found that it gets easier to provide centers once you have some experience doing it. We had our doubts at the beginning, too, but it has turned out to be much easier than we anticipated. And the results are worth it. Our kids love doing centers. They really look forward to them.
Please describe how you run centers on a typical Sunday.
First of all, let’s say a few words about our space arrangements. Since we have combined two classes into one, we now have both of the class areas available to us every Sunday. And we use them. In one area we run our whole-group instruction which roughly occupies the first half of the class period. The other area has two tables in it, and these are set up ahead of time with the center activities on them.
When the whole-group instruction is over, the teacher for the day (who also has primary responsibility for preparing the learning centers for the lesson) briefly identifies the centers that are available. At this point the children are quite quick to choose a center and go to work. Once they get started, we pretty much leave them to work on their own. We only give help or direction when it is called for. With two teachers on hand it is easy to keep an eye on things, and one of us is almost always available if our special child needs help. Depending on the available time and the nature of the projects, some children may do more than one center on a given Sunday.
Q. Do the children usually work alone?
A. That depends on the kind of center activity they are doing. A craft project might be done alone. A small group might decide to do a word puzzle, and this could be done individually or cooperatively. Bible games often involve two or more children playing together. There can actually be a lot of quiet interaction going on among the children during center time.
Q. Are some kinds of centers more popular with the children than others?
A. Things go in cycles. When we first started centers with the children, they tended to avoid the craft activities and do more word puzzles, perhaps because they had done a lot of crafts prior to this. But now they are coming back to craft activities again. It’s not easy to predict what they will choose to do, though, and a variety of centers gets used almost every week.
Q. Do you attempt to guide the children in the activity choices that they make?
A. No, unless they are having trouble making up their minds which one to start on, and that doesn’t happen very often. It is possible, of course, to prepare only certain kinds of centers for a given Sunday if you want to control the selection that the children have. It is also possible to limit the number of children who participate in a given center so they have to take turns or choose an alternative activity. Beyond this we don’t try to steer the children. For them, having a choice is part of the fun of having centers.
Q. What advantages do you believe Bible learning centers offer over the more traditional, one-activity lesson in which all the children do the same thing?
A. First of all, we have found that centers are a boon for the teacher. We used to rack our brains trying to figure out what single activity to do with the children each week. Looking back on it, we were making all of the decisions for the children. Now we simply take stock of available materials and draw on any that are relevant to the lesson. It is no longer a case of agonizing over what craft to do and what project to omit. Now the children decide. And giving the children a choice gives them control over what they do. They respond very positively to this. It’s not uncommon for them to arrive at Sunday school with the question, “Are we going to have centers today?” One Sunday, not long ago, one of our youngsters simply exclaimed in the middle of a center activity, “I love Sunday School!” Needless to say that made our day. Attitude development is one of the most difficult things for a teacher to promote, and centers are excellent attitude builders. Another important benefit of centers is the fact that they accommodate as wide a range of age, ability, and interest levels as you wish. Centers respect the fact that children differ, and they allow for these differences. With a little forethought you can usually provide centers that will engage all of your children in the learning process. Many of our Sunday schools are faced with wide age or ability spreads among the children, and centers provide an effective way of dealing with this problem. Also, centers take a lot of pressure off the teacher. Once the children make their choices, it has been our experience that they take responsibility for the things they do. We have had no discipline problems with our eight to 12-year-olds when they have been involved in center activities.
Based on an interview with Patricia Hemingray and Esther Harper
The Origin of the Organic World – Part One