Liturgy for a Lesson

​What you teach during a lesson is important.  But how you teach that lesson is just as important.  How we teach a lesson makes a huge impact on our children and their learning.  I want my children to know that learning is about discovering and delighting in God and His creation.  I want them to know that learning is about slowing down and digging in deep, not rushing through it to get it done and move on.  I want them to know that learning is to be enjoyed and savored.

How can I help my children understand all of that?  It all comes down to how we teach our lessons.  We need to think about the kind of message we send our children with the way we teach a lesson.

There is a form that we can follow, a structure that we can put in place, a liturgy for our lessons that will show our children over and over again what learning ought to be, what learning is really all about.  I first discovered this liturgy when listening to Jenny Rollins speak on "The Liturgical Classroom and Virtue Formation".  It has changed the way I think about the lessons I teach.

 In Latin, this liturgy is  lectio, meditatio, compositio, or read, meditate, compose.  

1.  Lectio (read)- gather, collect
2.  Meditatio (meditate)- digest, pray, contemplate, discuss
3.  Compositio (compose)- produce, create  

This can be explained using a metaphor for honey making.  To make honey, a bee must first gather the nectar.  Then, it must digest the nectar.  Finally, the bee can produce honey. 

If we follow this liturgy, this form or order, during our lessons, we are teaching our children that learning is about first gathering or collecting ideas and information.  Then, digesting the ideas and information through thinking deeply and carefully.  Finally, we can produce, create, or compose  something with the ideas and information.

This liturgy can be used in teaching any subject from history to science to literature.  In my next posts, I will  give specific ideas and details about how we can implement this liturgy for our lessons, one subject at a time.