The Impact of an Orange Curriculum on Student Engagement and Learning
Orange creates experiences and resources that promote the alignment of church and home to develop a spiritual life in kids. They have a curriculum, app, parenting blog, and yearly plan that help churches partner with parents to make the most significant impact on kids.
They use customizable lesson plans, storytelling visuals, and drama sketches to connect with kids, leaders, and parents. However, it appears that Orange has been infected with progressive Christianity and does not uphold the Bible as God’s Word.
Creating a Culture of Learning
When students find a task exciting and challenging, they are more likely to engage with it. This is why the Orange Curriculum uses storytelling visuals, drama sketches, music videos, and social media content to help students learn. In addition to these tools, the curriculum also incorporates interactive songs and activities to make learning fun for students.
Another aspect of the Orange Curriculum is its focus on family. They understand that parents are the primary influence on their kids and work to create content that encourages the church and home to collaborate. They even have an annual family ministry conference that churches can use to connect with their families.
Moreover, they understand that teaching kids how to study the Bible and converse with their parents is essential. To that end, they provide a Parent Cue with every monthly theme for kids and preschoolers and every series in elementary, middle, and high school.
These Parent Cues are an excellent way to communicate with parents about what their kids are learning in small groups and how they can support their faith growth at home. The content is well-written and easy to follow. It’s not hard to see why it is so popular with many church leaders.
Creating a Culture of Community
Students want to be active participants in their education and seek ways to strengthen their employability skills throughout their school (Cook-Sather Citation, 2017). To do so, they need educators prepared to engage students with critical and emancipatory student learning perspectives.
Using the Orange curriculum, a teacher can set up class expectations, engage the students in collaborative projects, and encourage them to learn through their experiences. This approach to teaching and learning can help students develop a more holistic understanding of the world and their place within it.
In addition, the curriculum provides students with resources that allow them to connect. This can be done through storytelling visuals, drama sketches, and music playlists. Orange also focuses on building relationships with parents and families. It does so by encouraging the use of a parent app, weekly church curricula, and events that allow family members to discuss these lessons at home.
Finally, the curriculum focuses on fostering community by providing small group leaders with tools to build relationships with students and provide them with a safe space for learning. This can be done by providing small groups with fun activities to engage the children before they go into the large group setting for the Bible story. This ensures the children are engaged and can concentrate on the Bible story without distraction.
Creating a Culture of Engagement
In the Orange curriculum, they understand parents have the most significant impact on kids. So, they create content for families to help them grow together in faith and build strong family bonds. This is why they use yellow and red in their logo – it represents that church and family must work together.
The Orange curriculum focuses on creating an interactive, engaging, and fun learning environment for students. They utilize 21st-century technology to create age-appropriate content that helps students see God for who He is and fuels their passion to follow Him. This is accomplished using songs, visuals, drama, and music videos to connect with students.
Another critical aspect of the Orange curriculum is how it helps students develop social-emotional skills, recognizing and managing emotions. These skills are essential for students to have a healthy self-image, cope with challenges, and have resilient relationships. The Orange curriculum includes activities and scripts teachers can use to teach social-emotional skills in small group settings and during extensive group sessions.
Additionally, the Orange curriculum provides teachers with weekly teaching materials that include small group guides, video training, and a variety of resources to help them connect with students and guide their discussions. The curriculum also provides tools to recruit and train volunteers to lead small groups.
Creating a Culture of Collaboration
Orange creates a community that connects students and the larger faith community by using various learning materials, including customizable lesson plans, storytelling visuals, drama sketches, and music playlists. It also provides families with better tools to equip their kids for faith conversations at home.
While the Orange curriculum offers many positive learning opportunities, it also appears to be infected with progressive Christianity. The director of their children and preteen curriculum lists advanced spiritual practices on his Twitter bio, regularly retweets well-known progressive Christians, and seems to be embracing a stance that does not uphold the Bible as God’s Word.
Collaborative work is not easy for most people, especially kids. But the benefits are great—it helps kids develop essential life skills that will last a lifetime. It allows them to build friendships with their peers and enables them to experience the joy of working together.
While Orange strives to unite the church and school, they must note that they cannot do it alone. Parents, grandparents, or guardians have an average of 3,000 hours a year to influence the lives of their kids and teens, and they have to be engaged for this to occur. That is why it is crucial to support teachers, administrators, and parents as they work together to meet the needs of their students.
