The Bible Phonics Curriculum
The goal of the Bible Phonics Curriculum is to restore and commit to teach reading integrated with Bible stories. The objective of each lesson seeks to inure some altruistic learning along with the alphabetic principle. The stories, the readers, and workbook activities are student centered. The hope is that any who would indulge would not only become familiar with phonemic awareness but will after experiencing the wonderment of God’s word seek to make their life better.
The curriculum can be most helpful to you if you follow and abide by the guidelines in the instructional manual. This instructional tool will aid you in using this curriculum and achieving amazing results.
One of the components of the curriculum is that it is systematic, structured, and organized. The structure of the Bible lessons help to minimize teacher preparation. It is systematic in that the Bible lessons are easy to comprehend and to follow sequentially. The Bible lessons are also organized based on Bible people in ABC order. This will help enhance student’s recognition and articulation of the basic sounds in the alphabet. This will provide an opportunity for you, the instructor, to facilitate and assess student learning. Your students can spend time enjoying learning.
Emily Calhoun’s (1998) Picture Word Index Model helps the student to identify all familiar words in a picture. This process is also called "shaking out words".
The teacher then acts as a scribe by simply drawing a line from the visual image to chart paper or a whiteboard.
The teacher spells orally the words with students daily. This enhances children’s listening, speaking and writing vocabularies.
The teacher and students begin to make sentences using the words shared by the students.
After rehearsing the story four (4) times, the students can be scaffolded towards writing or dictating a story reviewing the beginning, middle, and end of each Bible story.
The teacher should utilize the Phonics song and Name song to help students become familiar with each letter’s sound. By so doing, the teacher creates the environment for each student to become a Reader. The other benefit is that those hidden curricula build Christian attributes and citizenry that are being embodied subconsciously in the minds of each student.
Things to Note:
Each lesson can be divided into days or weeks. The objective is to celebrate each letter for a month. These lessons can be utilized in a Bible curriculum-based school, church, homeschool environment or devotional setting. Note that days or weeks 1, 2, 3, and 4 can be rehearsed the same for each letter. Note this for the letter A. Follow this pattern for all of the letters.