The Initial Planning Phase

Our goal as Orthodox Christians is to constantly strive for union with God, theosis. When we sin, we are literally “missing the mark” – as in, the goal. Keep all of this in mind as you begin to plan your Orthodox resource for parents and teachers.  Ask yourself, maybe even outloud, “How is this resource going to help guide our children to You, O Lord?”

What are you wanting to teach our children with the help of this resource? Oftentimes, there are multiple skills being learned in a lesson, but we usually have one specific goal in mind. Let me explain.

Goal: When we hand a young child a piece of paper, a crayon, and then encourage them to draw us a picture, our goal may be to either work on strengthening their fine motor skills or to keep them busy for a moment while we’re doing something. Additional skills learned at the same time may be: following directions, learning colors, or waiting patiently while mom/dad/teacher is busy.

Goal: When we hand a young child a piece of paper with a line drawing on it, a crayon, and then encourage them to color in the picture, our goal may still be to keep them occupied for a moment but in the grander scheme of things the goal is to help them to fine tune their finger and hand strength to color as much inside the lines as possible.

Now, let’s place this in the context of an Orthodox home setting or church school classroom. We hand our young child a line drawing of an icon or an Orthodox scene. If our goal is to simply keep them occupied while we are doing something else, this is not achieving our ultimate goal of creating a resource that guides our children to God. Let’s dive into this a little deeper to understand why.

Let’s take the line drawing of the icon provided to the left here. Do our kids learn about the icon simply by coloring it, without any guidance from someone else? Do they learn:

• This is a major feast day.
• What is the name of this feast day and when do we celebrate it?
• Who is depicted in the icon?
• What is happening during this event?
• Where is this happening?

What is a S.M.A.R.T. goal?

Specific: Do not give yourself a vague goal, such as – I want them to learn about Jesus’ birth. Instead, write a more specific goal – I want them to learn how to read the icon of the Nativity of Christ.

Measurable: How are you going to check for understanding? How will you know if the child(ren) reached the goal you set through the use of this resource?

Attainable: Did you create a developmentally appropriate resource? When you are creating “the look” of your resource, are you correlating the “the look and feel” with the content? For example, if you are writing a picture book for children to teach them about icons, but each page is written as a chapter book, you have developed your resource for two different age groups and it will be difficult to use for either age group. (1. The younger kids will not sit through the super long pages, especially in a classroom setting, without the teachers needing to summarize each page. 2. The older kids will think it’s too “baby-ish” if the book is presented as a large picture book for little kids.)

Relevant: 1. Who is your audience? Is your resource for home use, classroom use, or both. (A piece of advice: Orthodox resources for children is an extremely niche market. If at all possible, develop your resource for both home and classroom use, thereby expanding those who might use it.) 2. What age group are you hoping will use this resource? For example, when creating a book, make it so that the parent / teacher doesn’t have to summarize the story for young children. This is the #1 feedback I get from my Pre-K to 2nd grade church school teachers when I hand them an Orthodox children’s book, “It’s too long. The class won’t sit and listen to it without us summarizing it.”  3. How will this resource guide our children towards God? For example, Will this resource provide the ability for greater participation (not distraction) during the Liturgy or other services, such as being able to sing along with the hymns for the feast of the Nativity of Christ? Will it guide them as they learn how to read icons? Will it help guide them how to prepare themselves for the Nativity of Christ at home through prayer, fasting, almsgiving, and reading the Bible?  4. Books about our saints are always fantastic for our kids! Keep the church school teachers and homeschool parents in mind too when writing about the lives of the saints. Group together saints for easy lesson planning or storytime to kids so parents and teachers don’t need multiple books for one lesson, such as: a) All of the disciples of Christ b) All of the myrrh-bearing women c) All four of the evangelists

Time Based: Always keep in mind the age of the student, as well as, the setting your resource will most likely be used.

What resources will parents & teachers use when teaching?

The resources parents and teachers choose to use while teaching should be age appropriate, help us achieve our goal, and help us engage the child(ren) while learning.

Oral explanation and discussion are great teaching tools, in the right circumstances. When we add one of the other senses as well, we increase the likelihood of the child staying focused on the topic and remembering the lesson later.

Think about the Divine Liturgy. This is a teaching service where our senses of sight, smell, taste, touch, and hearing are all engaged. When appropriate and relevant to the learning moment, choose resources that engage as many of the senses as possible with your children / students. With that being said, don’t use a resource just because it adds one or two more senses. The resource should be relevant to your teaching goal.

The photo and video to the left are an example of a file folder activity we created and use in our Pre-K to 2nd grade church school classes. The goal is to learn about the icons on our parish’s iconostasis: a) Who is depicted on each of the icons? b) Where do they belong on the iconostasis?

This activity for the younger kids was a sub-goal for our main goal of teaching our church school kids how to read icons. We are familiarizing the younger kids with icons depicting Christ, the Theotokos, and St. John the Baptist as part of our study of the Gospels. (Learning the letters before reading, per se)

How can the resource help us assess what the child has learned?

When we ask our kids a question about their lesson, ask them to narrate back a story, or ask them to point to specific people in an icon – we are assessing how much they learned. Essentially, we are assessing the effectiveness of our lesson and teaching methods. Did we reach the goal we set before ourselves when we created the lesson?

Additionally, when we ask kids to recall information from a lesson, we encourage their brains to store it in long term memory. The more times our brain recalls a piece of information, the more likely it will say – Hey, this must be important! Let’s remember it!

We can use resources as part of that assessment and encouragement to store the information in long term memory.

For example:

• Patron Saints Unit: When learning about the patron saints of each student in the class, you can create a bulletin board showing an icon of the saint and where they are from on a world map. For review, you can ask kids to name as many of the saints as they can and write down on a post-it note all the information they remember about that saint. These post-it notes can become part of the bulletin board as well.
• Major Feast Days Unit: When my older kids were younger, we had two shelves in our living room for icons of the major feast days. We placed a cross above the next, upcoming feast day, learned how to read each of the icons, learned when these feast days are celebrated, went to liturgy on those days, and then reviewed what we had learned throughout the year. For the review, sometimes I took down the icons, put them on the nearby table all mixed up, and then asked them to put them in the correct order (according to the ecclesiastical year). Other times, I would ask them a few questions about the feast days. Other times, I would take down one icon and ask them to tell me as much as they remember about who is in the icon and what is happening.

What do parents and teachers need from you, the resource creator?

• When researching, find and use multiple sources before creating the resource. Do not use blogs, an Orthodox children’s book, or wikipedia as your primary sources. That’s fine if they are part of your research, but back it up with Scriptures, the Church Fathers, an understanding of iconography, the Synaxarion of the Lives of the Saints, etc. Whenever possible, ask your priest to look over the resource you created and be receptive to his feedback.
• Think about how the parents and teachers might use this resource and provide the necessary content they need in one place. a) All of us are busy and it makes it so much easier when you have an Orthodox children’s book with all four of the evangelists, instead of two of them or all twelve of the disciples, instead of four. b) When you create a resource on the Three Hierarchs, what are some of the main topics parents and teachers want to cover about these three saints?  Why are these three men celebrated together? Share information about their lives in regards to the Divine Liturgy, helping others, or the importance of their writings/sermons – in addition to when and where they lived.
• Resources that help our family or class develop a better understanding of how to live our lives as Orthodox Christians – during our church services, incorporating Christ into our daily lives, or learning more about our Orthodox Christian beliefs.
• Let’s be especially careful of “diposable” resources that are used for the sake of a time filler. The resources should be created to aid the parent or teacher in teaching their children about a specific aspect of being an Orthodox Christian. In addition to this, we always want to cultivate an atmosphere of love and respect, especially in regards to the icons we send home with our kids.