Welcome to our latest BCOQ Youth curriculum, Rooted, a resource designed to help students find their roots in Christ Jesus. Rooted explores the stories of Christ, the paradoxes of Scripture and the challenges and blessings of the Christian Life in general.

Several years ago, BCOQ Youth made a commitment to meet a need in our youth ministry family. The decision to create an educational resource for high school ministries started with stories from our local church youth leaders who felt taxed by the heavy burden of putting together relevant, engaging, scripture-based lessons for their ministries. Many youth pastors and volunteers feel stretched to put the necessary work into planning lessons that are creative, interactive, and thoughtful. Our vision for creating the curriculum was that youth leaders of all kinds would be freed up from the intensive preparation of weekly lessons, freed up to work in their areas of passion, by relying on a resource that was written by their peers with their particular contexts in mind. You may notice that sometimes, lesson themes from one module overlap with ideas and concepts from other modules, and in so doing, they show the strength of Christ’s roots throughout scripture.

This curriculum is designed to be used as a part of a larger youth ministry strategy; it is not designed to be youth-group-in-a-box. What it can do is assist youth leaders in preparing an environment where students can learn about their faith and grow in their maturity as followers of Jesus Christ. Rooted is driven by the educational metaphor of guided discovery, in which you are the guide who enables students to discover important lessons as they explore together. The lessons take a constructivist, student-centred approach, rather than the more traditional “sage on the stage” style to teaching. The writers recognize that this type of methodology, while grounded in research, may still be new for some leaders. More information is provided later in this introduction, and opportunities for professional development are also being explored, so that group leaders and youth pastors might come together and learn more about student-centred, constructivist teaching and learning in the Christian context.

We expect and encourage youth leaders to use this curriculum in a way that makes sense to them, according to their particular context and their gifts. If you are creative or want to invest more time in lesson preparation, you can spend a few hours a week to adapt the curriculum to your needs. If you have very little time at all, you can teach the lessons as they are with minimal preparation. Rooted is here for you to use as you see fit. It is here to serve you as you minister to students!

### Folder Format

Again this year, we have packaged the curriculum in a user-friendly folder. This will allow quick reference to each module (and its handouts, if applicable). It will allow you to do things such as share series with volunteer leaders and keep all of your supplies together in an easy-to-carry pack. We hope you like it!

At the beginning of the folder you will find this introductory guide, which is full of information about the resource. Then you will find one of our six modules in a separate, clear folder that includes a module overview as well as the lessons and handouts for that module.

Also included is a CD-Rom that includes all of the lessons and handouts for those who prefer an electronic format. The CD is easy to navigate and allows the user to adapt the handouts to best suit his or her own context. To read the modules, you'll need Adobe Reader (you can install it by clicking here).

### Modules

Included in Rooted are six modules, each encompassing an introduction (overview of that module) and 3-5 lessons. Each lesson takes approximately 60 minutes to lead and requires approximately half an hour of preparation (i.e. reading through the material, making photocopies, doing extra reading, renting movies, and/or a variety of other activities).

Although the curriculum is designed with a ten month youth ministry calendar in mind, these twenty-three lessons will not fill every week of the ministry year. This is to allow room for local ministries to insert their own concerns into their yearly planning. Plan to use these lessons according to the needs of your own context.

Thematically, the Rooted modules can be taught in any order. We’ve put the module entitled “Rooted in Jesus” first, since it may serve to draw in new(er) believers in your group. However, none of the modules is dependent on another, and so youth pastors/group leaders may wish to select their own order of modules, or perhaps even just use some modules and not others, to suit their group’s needs.

### Lesson Format

On the first page of each lesson, you’ll notice the module name and lesson number/name. Following this are some objectives for the lesson, as well as a materials list.

- Objectives: Lesson Objectives are the engine that drives a lesson. We have spent our time researching topics and scripture so that you can reduce your preparation time. We have condensed our research into clear, concise, measurable objectives that express what students should be able to do as a result of each lesson. The point of each lesson is to achieve the Lesson Objectives, and we have designed each lesson to do just that. You will also notice that Lesson Objectives are framed in terms of the students rather than the teacher. That is because the point of education is not teaching; it is learning.
- Materials Needed: At the beginning of every session, you will find a list of materials that we suggest using as part of that lesson. Minimum preparation for teaching should include reading the lesson over carefully and gathering all of the necessary materials. Consider keeping a box or drawer with some frequently used items such as pens, scrap paper, board markers, index cards and so on. It will save you time in the long run. We have not included a DVD player and screen in the Materials Needed lists but obviously, if there is a DVD clip suggested, you will need the player and the screen. These are also good things to have in your regular room. VHS is another excellent tool for the classroom; in many ways it is better suited for the classroom than DVD. We have simply used the DVD references here because the chapter and minute references make it easy to find the clip. You will also find “Board and Markers” listed frequently in the Materials Needed. This is a general term that could mean a) a chalk board and chalk, b) a white board and markers, c) an overhead projector, blank overheads and overhead pens, d) chart paper and markers, or e) anything else that works for you in the space that you use.

Please note regarding media use: Please note that presenting a video in public (e.g. in a church) does require a license (similar to a CCLI license for music). You can obtain a license that will cover most distributors such as Universal, Disney and 20th Century Fox, at Audio Cine Film. Also, it is important that you preview the movie clips suggested and decide whether they are appropriate for your group.

The subsequent pages of each lesson are arranged in a three-part lesson plan: Minds on, Action and Consolidate/Debrief. Like every industry, education has its buzz words and lingo. Note also that the words italicized are places where the leader would interject some comments. Below is an explanation of these three terms:

- Minds On: This section acts as a type of “warm-up” or introduction to the lesson, something to engage the group and get them interested in or thinking about the topic.
- Action: This section is typically – though not always – the longest part; it is the “meat” of the lesson, the part where students may be working on constructing a concept or idea, often by working through a “problem” of sorts. This section may consist of one larger task or several smaller related steps.
- Consolidate/Debrief: This is the lesson summary, and provides an opportunity for students to consolidate their learning and clarify their understanding by doing some type of independent or shared reflective activity to link new ideas to already-existing “files” of a similar nature in their brains. Often this section ends with ideas being brought together in a group prayer of sorts. Sometimes students are encouraged to pray or reflect individually on the topic explored in the preceding lesson.

Educational research tells us that the three-part lesson plan approach ensures a well-rounded learning experience that will better enable students to really link new understanding to already-existing ideas in their frame of reference. In this way, important concepts uncovered in Rooted will hopefully “take root” and grow in students’ hearts and minds!

### Curriculum Team

Many people contributed to this resource in a variety of ways. The lessons in this resource were conceived and written by Leanne Friesen, Chris Heise, Tim Teakle, Gino Dube, Tim McCoy and Alvin Lau. They were edited by Vera C. Teschow, a Program Resource Consultant with a school board in the Greater Toronto Area. We are a group of men and women from various churches across our denomination who are serving God as youth pastors, senior pastors, associate pastors, denominational servants, educators, and youth ministry volunteers. We are diverse in our perspectives, ethnicities, contexts and experiences, and we hope that you can relate to some or all of our styles and perspectives.

Finally, it is our hope that this resource will be a tool that will encourage us to grow together as we explore our roots in God and His Word. We invite and encourage your feedback on any aspect of Rooted, and can be reached by email.