Scripture: Daniel 5
Learning Objectives:
- Students will learn God expects everyone on earth to worship and obey Him.
- Students will learn God will not allow other gods or religions to replace what He has given us.
- Students will learn God sometimes gives earthly consequences for rejecting Him.
- Students will learn how to find out the meaning of unknown words.
Guiding Question: How can unknown words be determined and understood?
Materials: Materials from links in Procedure section
Procedure: Review the story of the writing on the wall. Remind students that the writing meant nothing to the king until Daniel told him what it meant. Explain to students that the Bible was not originally written in English. Ask students if they know what those three languages were. Explain that the Old Testament was written in Hebrew, the New Testament was written in Greek with some Aramaic and Hebrew. Tell students that many of our words today come from these origins that the old and New Testament were written in.
Introduce the activity. Teach students ways to try and figure out the meaning of an unknown word when they don’t have access to a dictionary. These ways include the use of word roots, suffix, prefix, and context. Use the following links to help teach each strategy
-Roots, Prefix, Suffix: https://www.readingrockets.org/article/root-words-roots-and-affixes
http://www.readwritethink.org/files/resources/printouts/content-area-roots.pdf
-Context clues:
https://www.flocabulary.com/context-clues-lesson/
Additional Questions: How can root words be used within other words?
Supplemental Activity: Have the students create a root word tree: http://www.fcrr.org/studentactivities/v_015c.pdf