Adapting Bible Classes to Adjust for Poor National Reading Test Scores

Believe it or not, when I was a child, the King James version of the Bible was the most popular. As elementary aged Bible students, we read and memorized the Bible in Shakespearean English! Granted, we were a little fuzzy on some aspects, but when we got to Shakespeare in school, we were already fluent! Fast forward to this week, when the latest national reading scores were released. A third of eighth graders read below a basic reading ability (read functionally illiterate) and 69% of fourth graders are reading below grade level. These are the worst results in thirty years, but no one is predicting a meaningful improvement any time in the near future.

What does this mean for the average Bible class teacher of children, teens and even some adults? You very likely have a class full of students who cannot read even the NIV version of the Bible independently, nor are they able to comprehend what they have read. Even if you have a general population of students who read well, you may still have one or two students who struggle with reading for a variety of reasons.

Thankfully there are some practical things you can do to make it easier for them to understand scripture, not only in class, but when they attempt to read the Bible independently.

  1. Make sure everyone has access to the NIrV version of the Bible. It’s not perfect, but it’s the closest you are going to get on the third grade reading level. Third grade is at the breaking point of functional literacy. This means even most struggling readers can understand it.
  2. Don’t let students read scripture out loud. This practice terrifies your struggling readers and can make them feel badly when a peer reads something with ease that they can barely read. Only adults should read from scripture – even if your students volunteer. Offer to let volunteers do something else instead.
  3. Spend time on vocabulary. No, you don’t have to give tests, but make sure you thoroughly define even what you may think are basic terms. For cultural items like oil lamps, show them photos or replicas so they know exactly what the item is.
  4. Stop periodically and have someone restate the passage from the Bible in their own words – even if it’s a story. Poor literacy skills, mean your students have poor reading comprehension skills. They may be able to sound the words out in a passage, but then have no idea what they just read means. Practicing stopping every few sentences to think about meaning can help them develop good habits.
  5. Talk about concepts like “main idea”, “tone” and other concepts that impact the meaning of a passage in scripture. If your students are struggling with comprehension, they won’t be able to pick out the main idea – or what God wants them to learn from a passage of scripture. If they can’t identify tone in writing, they may miss that something was meant to be sarcastic or someone was angry when they said something. You are not studying the Bible as literature, but some of the same skills are needed to learn from the Bible what God wants us to learn.
  6. Spend more focused efforts on application of scripture. If your students are struggling to read the words and then comprehend what they mean, they may not have the energy left to figure out how to apply a passage of scripture to their lives. Continually reinforce, that application is the point of scripture and teach them how to do it…. even if they have to take a break first.

You may not be able to improve our educational system, but you can adapt how you teach so even students who are struggling readers can still learn from scripture. Help all of your students become Bible literate.

Categories Bible, Elementary, Faith Based Academic Program, Mentoring, Parent Engagement, Special Needs, Teens
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