October 6th, 2009 | 
Author: 
I realize that my timing is probably really bad here, but I want to share with you some Sunday School material that is working really well for our church. It’s from Cokesbury and its called, “One Room Sunday School.” Because our Sunday school at both churches consist of about fifteen kids (if all of them show up), we found that the rotation Sunday school, wasn’t working as well as when we had a larger group.
The One Room Sunday School begins class, by having all the kids in the Sunday school gathering together to hear a story from the Bible. The story is shared in one of many different ways. After that, the group is divided into two groups and they then work on age appropriate material that delves deeper into the Bible story. We divide our classes into: pre-school through second grade and third through sixth grade.
Not only do the kids like it, we found we don’t have to “recruit” as many teachers, since we don’t have five grades needing teachers, and also when some kids don’t show up (which happens always!), it doesn’t leave the teacher with a single student.
Check it out, it may be what you’ve been looking for to meet your Sunday School needs. Dan
About the author
What had worked for us for several years was a smash-up of both one-room schoolhouse + rotation model. I ended up shaping a lot of the curriculum myself (with lots of help from http://www.rotation.org), but it incorporated the best gifts of both the rotation model and the one-room schoolhouse.
This year we've moved to another modification of the rotation model, because we have three distinct age groups. The major modification to the rotation model is that the teachers stay with their classes and are “experts” in all the lessons. They are all very competent and each have particular gifts with the particular ages with whom they are working.
Great site, by the way!
That sounds so exciting. I’d really be interested in hearing how you did this. Would you share a bit more with all of us? I’d love to share this idea with our Sunday School leaders, who liked the rotation but because of numbers found it wasn’t as effective as when there were more kids. Combining the two could be the best of both worlds! Please share any insights you have. God bless, Dan
I have heard of one room Sunday School program, and it seems like a good idea.
It’s published by Cokesbury and both our churches really like it. But notice that there is a message from Liturgy_Geek and their church has combined rotation Sunday school and One room Sunday School. That sounds really exciting to me. I’ve asked her to share more of what she did. Stay tuned! God bless, Dan.