In an age when students are saturated by narratives in music, cinema and literature, these courses are designed for teachers who believe that, in the message of the Bible, we have the best story to tell in this generation.

Our challenge as Christian studies / R.E teachers is to tell it well!

The courses aim to address the issue of Biblical illiteracy in students and empower and inspire them to read the Bible and engage with its message.

As a teacher taking on this challenge, it is important that you know you are not alone! Biblical Turning Points wants to support you as teach these courses. We also want to hear your own creative ideas so we can share them with other teachers around the country.

The resources on this site are here for your benefit and support. Files are free to download and use. We hope that the notes for each chapter in the books will help with your planning and teaching.

While the books are designed to be the backbone of the courses, we know that an inspirational semester of study needs much more than just a good book!

As you come up with creative ideas that work well in your class, we'd love to hear about them! Please email us so we can share these great ideas with other teachers. (Please note: submitted resources will be credited to the author.)

Don’t worry about formatting them to look nice…we'll do that for you!

The course has been designed around a Bible reading plan. When students come to class, they will have already read the background to the lesson before the teacher starts to speak about it.

It is really important to take time at the start of each lesson to talk about the reading or allow your students to ask questions. The aim here is not to shame students who haven’t done it, but to demonstrate to the class the importance of them reading the Bible.

Question: What if students don’t do the reading?
Experience has taught us that if students think the reading is optional, they won’t do it. The challenge is to find the balance between enforcing the set reading and not causing students to hate reading the Bible. It can be helpful to ask students who fall behind to meet up with you at recess or lunch and do the reading together. It normally only takes one or two meetings to get them regularly reading. It is also important to communicate with parents in the school about the reading requirements of the course.

It won’t take long before a student asks you what circumcision is, or you see your teenage boys in the back row reading through Song of Songs! When provocative topics in the Bible come up, you are encouraged to talk about them with the students and not avoid them.

Let students know from the start that nothing is off limits. This is the course where they can ask their BIG questions about God, the Bible etc., without any fear of being inappropriate or laughed at for not knowing something. When the course is presented well, there will be times when they are confronted by parts of the Bible and challenged about the way they see the world. Try and create an environment from the start where all questions are welcomed. Note: This does not mean that you can’t share why you might disagree with a viewpoint expressed.

The Bible as a piece of literature has some extremely graphic accounts of human depravity and the day-to-day realities of the human body! We want students to see this as they undertake their study.

You don’t need to have answers to all of their questions. Be honest and tell your students when you are not sure of something and then get back to them. You can even email us questions if you get stuck!

Assessment in Christian Studies classes can be challenging. It is highly probable that you have students in your class who may have never read the Bible before, or who come from families that are not Christians.

For this reason, our strong recommendation is to keep all assessment activities objective. Focus on the student’s knowledge of the Biblical story, not their response to it.

Students should be able to passionately engage with the Bible’s story throughout the course of a semester - and perhaps even take great exception to the entire book itself -and still get a good result on their assessment because they have learnt the Bible’s story.

This does not mean that students shouldn’t be encouraged to engage with the claims of the Bible. The book finishes by looking at what the Bible says about the future and salvation. These topics are not swept under the carpet. We want students to feel they can be honest about what they are engaging with and not have to pretend they believe something they may not!

This means that assignments need to be carefully written so that students can be encouraged to think at a deep level about the implications of particular parts of the Biblical story and not feel that their 'faith response' is being graded.

Use discretion when conducting class discussions.

These books aim to be a resource that students can come back to in future years. We also wanted the quality of the book to reflect the importance of the story we are trying tell!

We strongly encourage teachers to ask students to write down questions that arise from their weekly reading in the ‘notes’ section at the start of each chapter. You may even like to encourage them to use a reading tool like ‘SOAP’ and apply it to one of the chapters each week.

As you plan out your assessment for the course, it's a good idea to work in to students' overall assessment the work that they have done in their books. Perhaps include a general workbook mark or select a number of the activities as assessable items.

There are a number of activities that have the flexibility to be undertaken in a number of different ways. Some activities can be done as individual exercises, group activities or class presentations. The book has deliberately been designed to give you that flexibility as a teacher.

You also shouldn’t feel pressure to use all of the material in each chapter.

Most teachers would not use all of the information each week. The chapters have been written to be able to stand alone. As you read through the tips for each week you will notice there are times when we suggest that you show a DVD or look for a completely different way of engaging the students with the focus of that chapter.

As discussed above, if you come up with a great idea, send it through to us at admin@biblicalturningpoints.com.au so we can share it with other teachers.

The large visual aids have been designed to help students grasp hold of the one story that is told through the 66 books of the Bible in a quick, interesting and non-verbose way.

When used throughout the course of a semester by the teacher to reinforce where the class is up to in the story, the visual aids are powerful and effective tools for building a scaffold that the students can build upon.

They allow you, the teacher to visually demonstrate in a matter of moments what would take many hours to verbally explain.

While it is not essential to use the large visual aids, it is highly recommended, as it is a distinguishing element of the course. It is also highly recommended that each student receive a copy of the small fold-out visual aids for their own reference.

Because not all classrooms may be able to accommodate the large visual aids, the handheld versions will still allow students to see the concept and gain a better understanding of how the story fits together!

The visual aids can be ordered through this website. We are also happy to speak with you about alternative printing options if you know of a cheaper way of producing them for your classroom.

There may be parts of the courses where you want to focus on a particular part of the Bible’s storyline in more detail than the book. For example, you may want to run a Passover activity in your class where you share a Passover meal and use the opportunity to demonstrate how Jesus Christ was the ultimate fulfilment of that event and celebration.

Alternatively, you may want to incorporate a geography exercise into the course and ask students to map out the missionary journeys of Paul.

We welcome teachers adding to the courses in this way, particularly a creative and engaging exercise that helps students see the significance and relevance of what you are studying. Again, as we have made many activities freely available on the website, we would ask you to email us those ideas so we can make them freely available to other teachers to use!

As with all courses you teach, you will find that students can develop 'topic drift' as the term progresses. It might be helpful to have small celebrations to mark your journey through the Bible.

Encourage students to bring some food to share and have a time where you talk about what you have learnt so far.

The courses have been designed to fit into a semester of study. Different schools will have different allocations per week for their subject so you may find that you want to run the course over a year.

We are happy for you to run the courses over a timeframe that works best for you. Our only warning is that studying the one course for a year does come at a high risk of ‘topic drift’ and you will need to carefully plan how you are going to keep students engaged with the course as the year progresses.

The courses have been run in schools with a number of different age group. Our experience is that junior students in Year 7 often ask more complex questions than senior students. Our advice is to think about the secondary school age group that you are running the course with and think about where you can tailor the course to meet them in their particular stage of development.

For example, if you are running the course with a senior class you may want to incorporate an apologetic edge to it where you not only challenge students to learn the storyline of the Bible, but learn to grapple with it and respond to common objections that people have made about it. If you are running the course with a junior class you would want to really focus on the narrative side of the course as students in early secondary are very open to this.

If you want advice on tailoring the courses to a particular age group in your school please contact us. We're happy to help!