"The Good, the Better, and the Bottom LineDoing your best for your Sunday school class involves three things: the abilityto help students discover God's truth for themselves (your God-given giftedness),the amount of time you have to prepare and teach, and the resources that areavailable to you. One of the resources that can have a significant impact onyour effectiveness in the classroom is the curriculum you use.Have you had a chance to take a hard look at your curriculum? Have you checkedit over to find out how well it connects with your students? We recently checkedout several popular curricula to see how they fared.The good news was that the basic plan of most of them-the strategy behind theeducational, spiritual, and interactive parts of the curriculum-was sound.The better news was that there were things that could be done to make curriculumwork even more effectively for students like yours. Like you, we've noticedthe blank stares and silence that sometimes met our approach in the classroom.Those were often painful and discouraging experiences for us. There had to bea way to reach those students we seemed to be missing.We sensed it might be time for some changes. So we sought out ways to shapea curriculum that could reach this generation of students right where they are-inyour classroom. These adjustments were based on proven methods that gave a freshapproach to educational and developmental ideas that have stood the test oftime.The bottom line was that adjustments were needed in two general categories:(1) the natural learning cycle; and(2) age grouping.The "why" and "how" of these adjustments make up the majority of this book.