Jenna

Preparing Children for Sophisticated Unbelief

June 23, 2020 by Jenna

In April, Renton Rathbun, a former college professor and current Biblical Worldview Specialist at BJU Press, joined Heidi St. John on her podcast. They came together to talk about the agenda of secular colleges and universities to undermine the faith of their students. While that agenda is very real, it may not manifest itself in the way you might expect. Christian young people are expecting to go into secular universities, trade schools, and work places and have their faith blatantly mocked or rejected. But what they encounter is something that Renton calls sophisticated unbelief.

Sophisticated unbelief is a tactic that university professors take towards students with faith-based backgrounds. They come alongside these students and appear to support and value faith while also emphasizing that that student’s faith does not apply in the classroom.

The Dangers of Sophisticated Unbelief

These professors will be genuine, likeable, intelligent, and approachable people. These men and women are not villains who will publically mock and condemn your children for their beliefs. In fact, they will see themselves as the heroes your children need. From their perspective, they’re there to rescue your children from a primitive and backwards worldview. The danger comes in when they divide what they’re teaching in the classroom from your children’s biblical worldview. They want your children to have a two-story view of the world, because if they can disconnect the secular world from the Christian world, your children won’t be able to argue about where their worldview applies. And if your children aren’t prepared to encounter sophisticated unbelief, it’s easy for them to see how this intelligent and friendly new authority in their lives might be right about some things.

The Solution

As Renton points out, the best defense is to teach your children to truly study the Scriptures. Not just to know the Scriptures, but to see how they connect to all areas of their lives—math, science, history, and the English language arts. And to do that, they will need to be able to apply critical thinking skills to the Scriptures and to the subjects that they’re studying.

Studying the Bible and developing thinking skills will enable your children to defend their faith. Listen to the full discussion between Renton and Heidi for more!

The Building Blocks to Teaching Literature

May 12, 2020 by Jenna

If you love reading, you probably get excited about the idea of teaching reading and literature to your children. But literature can be one of the hardest subjects to teach well. The study of literature should open a student’s mind to new cultures, new perspectives, and new ideas. It should give students insight into experiences they aren’t likely to have. And it should challenge students to recognize biblical and unbiblical thinking in what they’re reading. It takes more than just a reading assignment and a list of comprehension questions to accomplish all that.

Teaching Literature with the Terms

Just like with poetry, you’ll need to build a foundation of terms you can use to talk about what your children are reading. Symbolism, satire, and allusion are all tools that writers use to tell their stories. Satire can help readers to reconsider the way they look at the world. Symbolism adds depth and meaning to stories. Allusion adds unity to a literary work by connecting different elements of the story.

Setting the Stage

You’ll also need to set the stage for your children. A writer’s history and family background has a huge influence on his or her literary work. Not only that, but the culture writers live in also affects how and what they write. Perhaps our children’s grandchildren and great-grandchildren will one day study the popularity of dystopian fiction in the late 20^th century and early 21^st century and what that says about how we think and believe as a culture.

Asking Thinking Questions

Once you’ve equipped your children with the relevant terminology and background, they should really think about what they’ve read. Those questions about who did what in a story are great for determining if your children understood what they read on a surface level, but they don’t get your child thinking about what’s below the surface. Asking what kind of creature Rikki-Tikki-Tavi is isn’t like asking what 499 ÷ 7 is. The math question requires a student to use and apply math skills to show understanding. The literature question only demonstrates recall. As your children progress in reading comprehension, questions should focus less on recall and more on critical thinking development. Focusing on critical thinking questions also helps make reading and literature lessons more interesting.

Confronting Unbiblical Thinking

Sadly, your children will not be able to go their whole lives without reading something that supports an unbiblical worldview. News articles, blogs, and even children’s books will support views you may not agree with—even something innocuous as “it’s ok to tell white lies to not hurt your friend’s feelings.” Those unbiblical concepts won’t be explicitly stated. Your children will need to learn to identify worldview implications so that they can respond appropriately. Studying literature can give your children the perfect opportunity to practice that kind of worldview discernment.

Recognizing God’s Design in Literature

Have you ever read about themes and symbolism in a certain piece of literature and thought “Maybe the author wasn’t thinking that at all”? It’s a tempting—and realistic—thought. As a writer myself, I enjoy using literary tools, but in general, my first priority is telling a good, cohesive story, not burying hidden meanings in what colors I use. But it’s undeniable that there is a unity of design in every work of literature—even if that unity is unintentional or accidental. You can find meaningful symbolism in seemingly random works, and you can trace themes in even the most chaotic literature. No matter how random a work of literature may seem, the image of God in the author—however marred—will come through in the writing. As we’re teaching literature, we can study man’s creative designs, and we can grow to appreciate God’s grand design as the ultimate Creator.

The BJU Press Approach to Phonics

May 5, 2020 by Jenna

For most of us, by the time we reach adulthood, reading comes naturally. We don’t have to think about which letters make what sounds or the rules for making different sounds. We just read. But then you look at your young children who have only been talking for a short while. How do you even begin to teach them to read? Naturally, the ABCs are a great place to start, but what comes after that? What is phonics and how are you supposed to teach it?

BJU Press’s approach to phonics in early learning and Grade 1—and even beyond to Grade 3—is fairly straightforward. If your children can talk, then they already know most of the words that they’ll be reading. You just need to give them the tools to read them.

Laying the Groundwork with Fun and Games

As a homeschool parent, you might hear a lot about sneaky learning—the idea of hiding learning opportunities in games and activities that your kids enjoy. But when your kids are just learning to read, there’s no point in hiding learning because all they do is learn, and most of the things they do are fun and games. All you need to do is direct them towards fun that will prepare them for future learning. Songs that teach rhymes, alphabet games, tracing activities, even reading to them while they look over your shoulder all help prepare your kids for the next step in learning to read. And it sets up a strong foundation to build on.

That’s why each of BJU Press’s early learning programs—Pathways for Preschool, Footsteps for Fours, and Focus on Fives—focuses heavily on activities, games, and characters that will keep children engaged and prepare them for learning.

Building Awareness

Why do you spend so much time laying the groundwork? You’re helping your children associate the sounds they hear and use to communicate with the letters and words they see on the page. It’s a big step from auditory and oral functions to visual functions.

Letter Sound Associations

Before they can read words, they’ll need to identify the sounds they hear. And that requires phonemic awareness—the ability to hear and recognize the individual sounds, or phonemes, that make up words. The s sound, the i sound, and the t sound in sit, for example. In Focus on Fives, Phonics 1, and English 1, we use numerous strategies for building phonemic awareness, including phonics stories and characters, phonics songs, rhyming songs, and read-alouds.

Manipulating Sounds

But phonemic awareness goes beyond just recognizing sounds. It’s also about being able to use and manipulate them. If your child knows the letter sounds for sit, as well as other consonant sounds, he or she can manipulate those consonant sounds into other members of the _it word family. With phonemic awareness and word families, children can learn proper pronunciation and find meaning rapidly. For children learning phonics, the words they’re starting with are usually words they already know. They need to be able to associate the letters they don’t know with the sounds they do know, so it’s less about building vocabulary and more about being able to decode sounds from letters. As they learn new sounds, they can practice combining letters and sounds into real words, and even find new words by looking for familiar patterns.

Keeping It Fun

Instead of teaching one word at a time, you’re equipping your children with the tools they need for reading all kinds of words. Tools like short and long vowels, consonant blends, r-influenced words, special vowel sounds, silent consonants, suffixes, and syllable division. Of course, most of these tools don’t have much meaning to a 5- or a 6-year-old who’s learning to read. That’s where we bring the fun back in with characters and games. Mr. Short, Miss Long, Marker E, Bossy R, and Miss Silent all give engaging visual cues that help your children learn and remember.

Reading Readiness

The goal of phonics instruction is for your children to be ready to read with comprehension and confidence. But teaching phonics alone can’t get you all the way there. Your children will also need opportunities to apply phonics principles in reading lessons. One key to that will be a phonics and reading program that supports them as they develop their skills. In Focus on Fives, we teach phonics and reading together, but in Grade 1, phonics and reading are two correlated subjects, and children practice and apply their skills separately. We continue to support phonics through Reading 3. Additionally, your children will need regular opportunities to read silently to develop reading comprehension, and to read orally to develop fluency. When children practice reading aloud, they learn to apply speaking rules (pauses, emphasis, and pacing) to their reading, adding depth and meaning. This kind of practice also improves their ability to communicate verbally.

Ultimately, you are preparing your children to read the Bible with confidence and clarity so that they can build their worldview on its principles. The way there is just one step after another. Your kids will be life-long readers before you know it!

Research Papers: Embrace the Opportunities

April 28, 2020 by Jenna

Sometimes, I feel like people don’t talk enough about research papers or give them enough credit. They might just be one of the most valuable learning opportunities you can give your children. After all, isn’t learning about a topic, knowing how to gather reliable information about that topic, formulating an opinion about it, and logically supporting that opinion with facts exactly what you want your children to be able to do?

Unfortunately, we’ve all seen—or written—one of those research papers that was all fluff, no substance, and somehow still got a good grade. I will readily admit that I’ve written a few of those myself. Obviously, the writer didn’t really learn anything, so what’s the point of assigning it? Research papers shouldn’t be just busywork. Each research paper you present to your kids is a beautiful opportunity for them to apply all the lessons you’ve been working on this year. And for you, a research paper is an opportunity to see how well your children have learned.

The Opportunity for Application

Science courses don’t include labs just for fun. Math courses don’t give math problems just to make it hard. Students need a chance to apply what they’ve learned in a new way so that it really sticks. And that’s as true for writing and reasoning skills as it is for the water cycle or long division. In a research paper, students can use those grammar rules they’ve learned to clearly communicate what they’re thinking. And, as they practice formulating an argument, they can use what they’ve learned about logical fallacies to make their argument strong.

Now, perhaps you think that the application questions in your child’s grammar workbook are enough. But applying grammar or logic rules to a sentence you’re expecting to be wrong is different from using those rules while you’re writing. Writers don’t think about the rules as they’re writing; they’re thinking about the next point they need to make or how thoughts connect. When you see your children’s writing, you’ll be able to know whether they really understand the rule. A research paper is a real-life, low-stakes opportunity to apply the rules—good practice for a job application letter or college entrance exam.

The Opportunity to Practice Critical Thinking

When students do a research paper properly, a lot of thought goes into the process. What kinds of information will validly support their thesis? How will they address information that contradicts their thesis? In addition to shaping their argument, they’re going to have to find and address questions that they might not expect. If they’ve never written a longer paper, they will need to learn how to adjust their process to account for the greater detail they’ll need. But it goes beyond just crafting the argument and planning out the project.

Researching also demands critical thinking skills. Remember that old saying, you can lead a horse to water, but you can’t make it drink? You can write book after book about research techniques and finding information, but it’s all useless if the students don’t read comprehensively and consider the meaning. To research any topic, students need to actually think about the information they’re reading—which is something you often try to have your children do in a literature course. When they’re looking for information that supports an argument, it demands a whole new level of reading comprehension. I’ve had countless students who cited inappropriate sources for support because they didn’t actually read what their sources said. A research paper will tell you whether your children have developed their reading comprehension well enough to read information critically and apply it to their argument.

The Opportunity for Excitement

Have you ever found that, after spending hours on a single topic, you develop a unique interest in that topic? Writing about anything will leave that kind of impact. No matter what your feelings were about a topic before you decided to write about it, once you’ve spent hours researching it, developing an opinion, and writing and rewriting your argument, you’re going to have an interest in it and—dare I say?—an excitement about it. The same thing happens for your children when they write a research paper. They might not admit it. They might not follow up on that interest. But in the process, they will come away knowing something new.

While it is important to allow your children to write about what they love, they also need to be able to embrace a new, unfamiliar subject. Research papers are a valuable way to introduce children to new topics—even though they may not want that introduction.

In your homeschool, every chapter, every lesson, and every assignment is another opportunity for your children. Research papers may be a more challenging opportunity, but clear communication, reasoning skills, and learning are worth the effort.

Learning Together: The Heart of Teaching

March 24, 2020 by Jenna

Go back in time with me. Remember that moment—it may have been 20 years ago, or maybe it was a few months ago—when you started to seriously think about what this crazy homeschooling thing would look like for you. You had a picture in your head of you and your kids learning together. Maybe you saw your children huddled in your arms as you read to them. Maybe you saw books scattered on a table, forgotten, as you talked over the moral implications of the Civil War. Or maybe you saw yourself on a nature walk with your children, looking at birds, flowers, or the shapes of clouds together.

When that image came to you, you probably weren’t thinking about why you homeschool or what you hope to accomplish in the next twelve or more years. It was just a little dream of what your journey might look like day-to-day. And you know what the most important part of your dream was? You and your kids working together to learn something. That’s really all that education has ever been—teachers and students learning together.

But the problem is, there’s usually only one of you. When looking for solutions to their homeschool needs, many parents believe that the best resources are ones that their children can use completely independently. Just give the kids the textbook and let them go. Textbooks can be a key part of your homeschool, but they’re not the most important piece. A textbook just can’t replace what you can offer your children as a personal, involved teacher.

Children miss out when they only have a textbook.

You hear a lot about learning styles and customizing your children’s education to their needs. But the truth of the matter is, there’s no magic formula or combination to tell you how your child learns. No child is strictly a tactile learner, strictly a verbal learner, or strictly an auditory learner. Some kids are genuinely good at learning by reading from a textbook, but not all are. In fact, few can learn well from using only a textbook.

Most kids can’t just sit down with a book and siphon up information. They have to work with it to get it. They need to squish it through their fingers, taste it on their tongues, watch it bounce around, and hear what other people think about it. And a book can’t do all that. A book can present information, ask questions, give assignments, or even suggest activities. But it can’t hold a conversation or let a child really experience the information. Even a well-designed textbook will leave your children wanting if that’s all they have for their education.

If you’re involved in their learning process, you can customize their education. When you’re working one-on-one with your children, you’ll know which activities will help them learn and which won’t. It’s not about assigning every activity and hoping that doing them all will help them learn. It’s about picking the ones that are best for your child.

You can encourage understanding through communication.

When I was in high school, I remember moments when a teacher would misspeak or write the wrong number up on the board. Or there were times when students misheard or misunderstood something. When the class was comfortable and open with the teacher, the misunderstanding was usually something minor to fix. All we had to do was ask a clarifying question and we could move on. But there are some students who don’t feel comfortable asking simple questions. Who don’t want to interrupt no matter how confused they are.

Children need someone guiding them through their lessons to help them through moments of confusion. Someone they trust, who they can communicate with easily. My teachers weren’t always good at recognizing when they’d lost a student, but when you’re working directly with your children, learning together, you can usually tell when they’re following or when they’re still two pages behind.

It’s time for a reality check.

Now, we’ve been talking about an ideal—how things should be, and how things are meant to be. But we need to take a good hard look at how things are. Is this one-on-one teaching really possible for you? How many students are you teaching? How much time do you really have to devote to teaching your children yourself? If you’re going to have to spend 20 to 30 minutes teaching per subject and per child, then there’s no way you’ll have time for much of anything besides teaching, especially if you’re teaching more than 3 children. And that’s why you might want to allow your kids to work independently sometimes.

But remember that this isn’t school at home. You’re not confined to teaching specific subjects to specific children at specific times. You can shape your homeschool so that you can realize that dream you had when you started. And so that you and your children can go forward learning together. What will that look like? That’s up to you. It could mean year-round homeschooling. Or it could mean supplementing your teaching with video courses. Maybe it means forgetting about grade levels and teaching everyone together. The point is, it’s up to you how you make it work.

One-room school houses didn’t work because of government regulations and state standards. Having the right rules in place has never been the thing that makes classrooms work. They work because there’s a teacher invested in the lives of the students. At the end of the day, a textbook is just a tool. What children really need is for someone to direct them and partner with them in learning. And who better than you?