Ten Lepers

For my (and Rachel’s) Saturday class with the middle school girls, we have begun teaching English lessons centered around stories. We choose simple stories that will provide opportunity to teach vocabulary, to allow students to practice reading aloud, to answer comprehension questions, and to discuss. Here’s a lesson plan based on the story of the Ten Lepers from the book of Luke:

Before we read the story, we discuss and define several vocabulary words that I’ve chosen from the story. From this story, we use the following vocabulary words: Jerusalem, region, Samaria, to approach, mercy, foreigner, faith, Samaritan, Galilee, master, leper, Jew, thankful. Sometimes, if you don’t have a translator to help define the words, it’s good to take a dictionary. After defining the words, I sometimes break the students into pairs, assign them 2 or 3 of the words from the list (unless they are too difficult, such as Samaritan or Galilee), and have them work together to create new sentences. We then read the sentences to check students’ understanding.

In order to practice more grammar, I frequently choose a few verbs from the story and have the students practice putting them in different tenses (i.e. simple past tense, simple future tense, present progressive tense, etc.): to go, to keep, to show, to heal, to see

I take several copies of the story to class so that the students can have copies to read. We go around the group and have each student read one sentence. Because our friend, Ira, is fluent in English, Ukrainian, and Russian, we often ask the students to translate the sentences as we go, and Ira checks to be sure they understood it.

On the way to Jerusalem, Jesus was going through the region between Samaria and Galilee. As he entered a village, ten lepers approached him. Keeping their distance, they called out, saying, "Jesus, Master, have mercy on us!" When he saw them, he said to them, "Go and show yourselves to the priests." And as they went, they were healed. Then one of them, when he saw that he was healed, turned back, praising God with a loud voice. He threw himself at Jesus' feet and thanked him. And he was a Samaritan. Then Jesus asked, "Were not ten men healed? Where are the other nine men? Did none of them return and praise God except this foreigner?" Then Jesus said to the man, "Get up and go on your way; your faith has made you well."

After reading, we often go over some questions:

1. How many lepers returned to thank Jesus?
2. Was the thankful leper a Jew?
3. What did the other lepers do that was right?
4. Who else can we show our gratefulness to?
5. Name three reasons why the healed lepers would be grateful.

With the Saturday group, Ira often plans a craft to accompany the lesson. For this lesson, our group made small, “Thankfulness journals” to fill out during the week. We then discussed it the following week. To make the journals, Ira cut small squares of paper (approx. 3” x 3”) and stapled 8 of them together. The students were then able to decorate the front covers with markers, stamps, and stickers. The following week, the students brought their journals back, and we discussed the things they had been thankful for that week.