What's Up: Discovering the Gospel, Jesus, and Who You Really Are (Teacher Guide)

Have you ever asked a middle–school kid you know what’s up with “the gospel”? Can they explain what it is and why it matters to a kid? Or do they suspect that being good, listening to parents, and obeying rules is ultimately what God expects?

What’s Up? is a flexible middle–school curriculum workbook using illustrations, stories, and interactive activities to help kids understand why the gospel really is good news. A practical application of Klumpenhower’s best–selling Show Them Jesus, What’s Up answers the real questions of identity and purpose that begin to unfold in middle–school hearts and minds. Revealing God’s love, forgiveness, and power to change, What’s Up? helps fourth through eighth–grade students understand that the gospel is all about God making us into who he meant us to be all along. As they learn how to lean wholly (and happily) on Jesus through these formative years, their lives are changed from the inside out.

The curriculum guides middle–school age students in discovering Jesus through fifteen 90–minute lessons that can be expanded to cover twenty–seven weeks. The student guide offers age–appropriate activities, fun illustrations, questions to think about, and personal application activities for home. Teachers will find easy–to understand instructions and notes, helps and directions to make teaching the gospel to children clear and simple in the corresponding teacher guide. What’s Up? is easily adapted to a wide variety of group settings, including Sunday school, youth group, Christian school, and homeschool.

Features:

• Practically applies the gospel–centered teaching philosophy outlined in Klumpenhower’s best–selling Show Them Jesus to a middle school context.
• Intentionally flexible, What’s Up? can be used with middle–school kids in small groups, Sunday school, or even one-on-one discipleship settings at home or church.
• Provides 15 90-minute lessons or 26 45-minute lessons.
• Middle schoolers learn by engaging, so What’s Up? keeps kids interacting with the Bible and with one another.
• What’s Up? is for churched and unchurched kids alike since it allows them to read the stories before guiding them deeper, providing new insights, and driving biblical truth home in personal ways.
• This curriculum gets personal. What’s Up? is about sharing lives and watching Christ change people from the inside out.
• Student Guide is filled with age–appropriate activities, fun illustrations, questions to think about, and personal application activities for home.
• Teacher Guide offers easy–to–understand instructions and notes, helps, and directions to make teaching the gospel to children clear and simple. Requires little work outside of the classroom or teaching setting.

Deborah Harrell is the Overseas Educational Advisor for Serge. she graduated with a BS degree in Child Development and Family Relations from the University of Arizona. Deborah is the author of the award–winning children’s novel, Pinto’s Hope, and contributing author of numerous articles in professional journals. She lives in North Carolina with her husband Jason and daughter Sarah.

Deborah Harrell is a Bible teacher and a children’s ministry curriculum writer with more than thirty years of experience. He has created Bible lessons and taught children about Jesus at churches, camps, clubs, conferences, and Christian schools all over the world, including Serge conferences. He is the author of Show Them Jesus: Teaching the Gospel to Kids. He lives with his wife and two children in Durango, CO.