Pacificisland Bible

PacificIsland Bible

Textbook Two

A teacher’s guide for years 5-8 of religious education in Seventh-day Adventist schools in the PacificIslands.

Cover design: Laura Koolik

Signs Publishing Company

3485 Warburton Hwy

Warburton, 3799

Victoria, Australia

2006

While this text has been specifically designed for use within the Pacific and Papua New GuineaSeventh-dayAdventistPrimary Schools, the Writing Committee is aware that other Adventist school systems may well benefit. Such groups should feel free to copy, adapt and use as required. While there is no copyright on this text, the Writing Committee humbly request acknowledgement of our efforts in creating and producing this text in any subsequent copies, adaptations or productions.

PacificIsland Writing Committee

South Pacific Division of Seventh-day Adventists

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

in producing a textbook/resource like this many people are involved behind the scenes. The members of the writing committee are mentioned in the next section and I wish to thank them for their enthusiastic approach to this huge amount of work. To their schools who arranged for them to travel away for up to 2 weeks each year for the last 3 years a big thankyou also.

The South Pacific Division has contributed many dollars to this project and I thank them for their support and commitment to this project.

A number of schools and teachers have trialled some of our early attempts of story plans and their comments and evaluations have been most helpful. The final year Sonoma Teacher Trainees contributed significantly to the Volume 10 story plans. Thank you all for your input.

To the 100 plus teachers who took the time to respond to the initial survey that was sent out late in 2003, thank you for taking the time to respond. Your responses helped us form the basis for this project and helped us to remain focused on what the real needs were in the field, especially in isolated schools, many operating with untrained teachers.

I want to especially thank my Secretary, Cathy Kingston, who has typed all of this material many times over. It has been a huge job and required work at home at times. It has all been done most professionally, and without complaints.

Finally I wish to acknowledge God’s continued leading and inspiration in this work. From the initial inspiration of Uncle Arthur’s Bible Stories to the creativity that has been documented on the following pages, I give praise and honour to our Master Teacher. May these pages be used to draw many children to salvation and to working with others for their salvation as well.

Ken Weslake, Chairman

Pacific Bible Writing Committee

Introduction

The SPD goal for education is to “…have the image of God restored in each child attending an Adventist school.” This goal is achieved through all subjects taught and the example of teachers at the school. It is most directly taught through Bible. The Bible program is the heart of Adventist education.

A recent survey taken through the SDA schools in the Pacific indicated that very few schools were happy with their Bible program. Many texts were broken, missing, old, failed to have cultural relevance, and were difficult and complicated to use.

In 2004 a Pacific Bible Writing Committee was formed. The members were:

Joan Cornelius,MirriwinniGardens,NSW,AUC

Abbi Nason,Tau Primary School,Solomon Islands,TPUM

Kalo Tamale,Hilliard SDA Primary School,Tonga,TPUM

Maxine Tau,South Auckland SDA Primary School,New Zealand,NZPUC

Lucy Vuniwa,Suva SDA Primary School,Fiji,TPUM

Jeffrey Wadah,SonomaCollege,PNG,PNGUM

Ken Weslake,Chairman,SPD.

The goal for the work of the committee was:

To produce a high quality, easy to use Bible textbook/resource that will enable the SDA Primary teachers throughout PNGUM, TPUM and some of NZPUC to lead their students to Christ and develop a lifelong relationship with him.

Pilot schools were chosen to assist in the trialling and writing of story plans. These schools were

KempseyAdventistPrimary School,Beulah SDA Primary,Suva Adventist Primary,

MirriwinniGardensAboriginalAcademy,HilliardSDAPrimary School,KukumAdventistSchool,

SonomaDemonstrationSchool,AruligoAdventistSchool,

NapaparaAdventistSchool,AitutakiAdventistSchool.

The committee made a number of significant decisions as well.

That the Uncle Arthur Bible Stories set be used as the main supporting resource.

That each term will have a theme with a variety of stories for the teachers to choose from.

That activities be grouped around the multiple intelligences approach.

That the programme be run over an 8 year timeframe.

Yr 1Volumes 1 through to Book 2 part 2

LOWERYr 2Volumes 2 part 3 through to Book 3 part 4

CYCLEYr 3Volume 4

Yr 4Volumes 5 and 6

Yr 5Volume 7

UPPERYr 6Volume 8

CYCLEYr 7Volume 9

Yr 8Volume 10

That Goals, Aims and learning outcomes relate to the head, heart and hands approach.

That emphasis is placed on God’s relationship to me, my relationship to God and my relationship to others.

That the final document be written and formatted in such a way that untrained teachers would find it easy to use.

That the final document be written and formatted in such a way that teachers in isolated areas with very limited resources would find it easy to use.

The work of the committee represents an exciting new period in resourcing Pacific education. We believe the expertise and resourcing lies within the grasp of Pacific teachers themselves. It has been a pleasure to assist in co-ordinating and producing this new Bible resource for the Pacific.

As you progress through this text you will find ideas that work well and some that don't seem to work or fit your particular school setting. If you do develop a new activity or idea that works well for you, why not share it around? There will be a future revised edition of this text, perhaps within the next 5 years. Please share your successes, failures and frustrations with me as this will assist in refining the text for future users. Please note my e-mail address at the end of the Acknowledgement page.

May God bless each of you as you reveal God through the stories and lead the students to love and commit their lives to Him through the supporting activities from His word.

Adventist World View

All cultural groups have a world view. This simply means the way in which we see the world. We are not talking visually seeing, but rather how we answer questions like

Who is God?
Who is man?
What happened to man after creation?
What has God done to rectify this situation?
What is the part of the teacher in this process?
How is everything going to end?

Answers to these and many more questions are found in the scriptures and become the important areas that students need to know as they progress through the Bible.

Put simply the Bible tells us that God is an infinite God of supreme love. From this love flowed a desire to create man and woman. These He gave freedom of choice to obey or disobey. Unfortunately Adam and Eve decided to disobey. God then carried out His plan of saving them for His kingdom. To achieve this He sent His only Son Jesus who lived as one of us, but sinlessly, and died for and because of our sins. As a result he is coming to take all who have given their lives to Him back to heaven, so that the perfect world that God originally planned can exist at last.

Christians believe this story, with Seventh-day Adventist believing it with an emphasis on the worship of God on each Sabbath day and the belief that Jesus is soon to return to this earth to save all who have accepted him.

This world view is reflected in the Uncle Arthur Bible stories. These volumes form the basis of this Bible program. As the stories are used, teachers need to remember that they are to be used to build an understanding of the big picture - the world view. Often in the past the story was all important and often stood alone. Now it is important for the student to see and understand how each story fits into the Adventist world view and how each story forms part of the big picture God is trying to draw for us.

The Structure of the Bible Program

As mentioned earlier this Bible program is based on Uncle Arthur’s Bible Stories. The Uncle Arthur Bible stories are divided into 10 Volumes. These volumes or books cover the main stories of the Bible from Genesis through to Revelation. Each book is divided into 4 Parts. These parts are given themes which relate to the group of stories covered by each part. Each part is divided into individual stories. Some parts have as few as 6 stories or as many as 15 depending on the grouping.

The Story Plans

The Story Plan is a series of teaching activities based on a Bible story. It is not a lesson plan, but as the title indicates, is a group of lessons based on the story. There are a number of key parts to the Story Plan. These will now be listed and explained.

THEME

The theme will match the theme from the Bible Story book. For example it may be Stories of Jacob, Esau and Joseph.

STORY

The title here will match the story title in the Bible Story book. For example it may be Blood on the Doorposts

BIBLE

This will match the Bible reference listed under the story title. For example it may be Genesis 41:1 – 43

UABS

This stands for Uncle Arthur’s Bible Stories and gives the Volume/Part/Story Number. For example 6/1/7 would mean Volume 6, Part 1, Story 7 which is Thrown into the Flames

PAGES

This is the page reference for the story. For example it may be

9 – 14

MEMORY VERSE

The memory verse for the story is listed and should be taught to each child along with the reference. It may be. Proverbs 20:11 Even a child is known by his doing, by whether his work be pure and right.

FOCUS

This gives the focus or main idea to be developed through the lesson activities for the story. For example it could be God keeps His promise.

FOCUS QUESTIONS

These questions are used to introduce a story by discussion with the students. For example it could be Have you seen a bird’s nest with chicks inside? What did you see? Encourage the students to answer and discuss these questions. Feel free to build on the student’s ideas and expressions of feelings during these discussions and ask more questions of your own.

OUTCOMES

This column has three main boxes and will be explained in more detail below. There are outcome statements listed for each of the sections. The Teaching Strategies will usually match and support these statements.

This symbol represents the Head. This means the outcomes are knowledge based and deal with the details of the story. They involve recall, remembering, believing and developing understanding of some of the bigger issues of the story.

This symbol represents the Heart. This means the outcomes are responsive and linked with the emotional part of our being. They involve feelings, accepting Christ into our lives, conviction, commitment, willingness.

This symbol represents the Hands. This means the outcomes are about service. These activities are about responding to the story in practical ways in service to others.

TEACHING STRATEGIES

This section of 5 columns lists a variety of teaching activities for each of the 3 sets of outcomes. These columns are based around the multiple intelligences approach to learning. Basically we now understand that we all learn differently. The 5 main ways used in the Story Plans are Talking/Writing, Ordering, Touching/Making, Looking/Seeing, Musical/Hearing. It is interesting to note that in PacificIsland and PNG teachers’ in-services the multiple intelligences of musical/artistic and talking were assumed to be the preferred learning style as both of these styles feature strongly in the Polynesian and Melanesian cultures. But testing has found otherwise. For some people ordering and looking are the strongest. So for the students, they will have different learning styles also. The column headings mean:

Talking/Writing (Verbal) This represents the learning that comes via language, for example reading, writing and speaking. Such students may enjoy reading, speaking, writing, playing word games, making up stories and poems, debating, and creative writing.

Ordering (Logical) This represents the learning that comes through understanding patterns and relationships. Such students may enjoy puzzle solving, experimenting, analysing, working with numbers, solving problems, and organising events.

Touching/Making (Kinaesthetic) This represents the learning that comes through doing. This learning is linked to body movement. Such students may enjoy physical movement, dancing, making and inventing things with their hands, acting, drama, mimicking other’s actions, helping to set up rooms.

Looking/Seeing (Visual) This represents learning that comes through seeing. This learning is linked to images, patterns, designs and visual pictures in the head. Such students may enjoy drawing, painting, patterns, jigsaw puzzles, pretending, and imagining.

Musical/Hearing (Musical) This represents learning that comes through sound, tones, beats and musical patterns. Such students may enjoy creating music, listening to music and sound patterns, mimicking sounds, and creating poetry.

There are two other sections that are not listed but need to be mentioned in terms of learning styles. They are Individual and Group work. There are no separate sections listed on the Story Plan for these, but it must be kept in mind that some students learn better while working on their own and others prefer to learn in groups. Neither way is better, but each represents a style more suited to some students than to the rest. Therefore as you plan your teaching activities recognise that some students prefer to work on their own while some prefer to work in groups.

WRAP UP QUESTION

This question remains the same for each Story Plan. It needs to be asked at the end of each Story Plan and discussed with the students. In other words, they have learned many things from the story but they need to be drawn back to the big picture question again and again. How is God working in this story? What part does this story play in the big picture of God rescuing this world from sin? What is God really saying or doing or being in this story?

As students discuss this question with the teacher and other class members they broaden their understanding of the Bible stories and its meaning and application to their lives.

HOW DO WE TEACH FROM THIS TEXTBOOK?

Planning - Before School Begins.

In consultation with your Principal decide which book you will be teaching from for the year. In a large school where there is only 1 grade per classroom the program will operate across the school on a 1 year cycle. In other words each class will cover the same material each year. Where there are 2 grades in each class the class will operate a 2 year cycle. For example in the first year the book covered may be volume 3, while the following year the book will be volume 4. Where the class has 3 grades then a 3 year cycle will operate and so on.

Take the Bible Story book and browse through it along with the textbook. Notice how they match each other in the themes and range of stories. Think about some of the interesting activities that you could do with the students. Notice that you will not usually have to write any notes on the chalk board nor draw pictures. Those days are gone. Students learn best by being active and involved and this textbook tries to make the most of that.

Now set about dividing the book into your school terms. Where there are 4 terms in the year this should be fairly easy. Where there are 3 terms in the year the division will not be as clear cut.

For Year 1 students you will need to plan how you will deal with 48 stories over a period of up to 40 weeks. This is a similar problem for Year 4 students who have to cover volume 5 and 6 in one year. That is 81 stories in around 40 weeks.

It is important to remember that we want to use the stories to lead the students to give their lives in total commitment to Christ. Each story can build on this process. So it is not as important to cover every story. It is better to cover a few stories well and enjoyably than to cover them all quickly and without time for the students to respond in a meaningful way to them.