Literacy training in prisons using Bible storytelling

For those desiring to use literacy or English teaching to reach others for Christ, here is some inexpensive, effective and easy-to use material based on 30 Bible stories.

The Language Olympics literacy program was originally designed for prison use, and is being used in several areas in United States prisons to move individuals from total illiteracy to fifth grade reading level in 30 lessons. But the material can be used in many other contexts.  A Language Olympics six week summer reading program for children helps them advance (on average) one grade level in reading and half a grade in spelling. Now it is being supplemented and used in local churches to help people learn English as a second language.

One of the delightful results is that students learning to read, remember and tell the 30 vocabulary-graded Bible stories, all while improving pronunciation, spelling, grammar and vocabulary. In many cases the tutors are also English learners, sharing their enthusiasm for learning.  The website has helpful instructional videos for tutors as well.

How were these developed?

John Walsh had been invited to bring Bible Telling into the worst of the US prisons by a Baptist warden, and it was such a great success the program is now being run by inmates. When John was asked to help with the need for literacy, Jan Walsh felt God wanted them to do so. She spent six years designing, testing  and developing the curriculum. The material previously in use took seven years to get someone to first grade levels, because of the prisoners’ lack of self-confidence. Jan had been using some traditional essay material, and in the advanced lessons adding a Bible story at the end. In prison there are people from every background, and some of the non-Christian inmates asked to have the stories moved earlier in the sequence of lessons, because they were easy to remember.

No other reading material was producing as good a result, and when they decided to publish the material, copyright become an issue with the essays. So they did a rewrite on the Bible stories, starting with Creation, and simplified the vocabulary. By the time a student comes to read the Creation story, they have already been exposed to and learned 70% of the vocabulary. By the end of the book (five stories) they know 99%.

There are six booklets, and the rave reviews from even non-Christian students prove ‘the power of a story simply told’, as John would say. It can change lives, and does, through this non-evangelistic pre-conversion discipleship method, which lets people learn about God by what He does and says and how He interacts with sinful people.

For more information see the Language Olympics website.