About The Rotation.org "Writing Team"
In addition to the thousands of publicly available lessons, ideas, and resources contributed by volunteers, two or three times a year we convene a group of Christian educators, teachers, and pastors to work together to produce a creative, broadly graded set of Sunday School lessons for one major Bible story.
We call them "The Writing Team."
Access to all of the Team's extra-creative lessons (in addition to everything in our free public forums) requires a Supporting Membership ($45). Become a Supporting Member today!
People join the Team by invitation and typically come from many different denominational backgrounds and church experiences, including church staff and volunteers. The Team is led by Neil MacQueen, our resident creative lesson writing expert and one of the founders of the Rotation Model. Part of Neil's style is to encourage the brainstorming of new and exciting ways to teach. He also works individually with each writer helping them to expand their ability to write for others and meet WT lesson guidelines. Members of the Rotation.org Board read each Team's work and there's usually a director or two writing on each Team.
Read: An Interview with the Writing Team Lead Writer
WT lesson plans are not "quickie story and craft" lessons for little kids.
WT lesson plans feature real art, do-able drama, games with life application, media, and new techniques. Each set includes lessons that explore new techniques and refresh tried-and-true ones. And each lesson has a level of detail, options, how-to, and "why-to" heretofore unseen in any other curriculum.
Each WT lesson set usually includes 6 different broadly-graded workshop-style lessons to choose from (art, drama, video, music, games, cooking, computer, etc), plus a teacher-friendly Bible Background.
WT lessons emphasize creativity, interactivity, and life application.
Most WT lessons are designed for 35-40 minute class times, with adaptations for older and younger students, and shorter and longer classes.
The WT's target audience is 2nd-4th grade, but each lesson comes with younger and older student adaptations.
Many of the WT's lessons are also easily adaptable for younger youth and intergenerational use.
While the lessons are primarily designed for Rotation-style workshop classrooms, our members using the traditional model (new story each week) also find our "WT" sets a great source of inspiration.
The Team's theological perspective is mainline and kid-friendly. Our writers are experienced Christian educators and teachers, and our process is collaborative and peer-reviewed. And of course, every lesson can easily be modified because they are digital.
WT Bible Story Scope and Sequence
The WT writes lessons for the "major" stories of the Bible. Our public forums have lesson plans and ideas for many of the Bible stories educators would consider "2nd tier." For example, our public forum has lesson resources on Samson but the WT doesn't consider Samson a "major" story for kids.
The Team's History, Present, and Exciting Future
From 2004 to 2013, a volunteer group of Christian educators posted over 250 Rotation-style creative lessons at Rotation.org.
From 2015 to 2018 we replaced those original lessons with lessons that were more creative, more detailed, better formatted, and had better age-range adaptations. This re-imagining and rewriting was led by Neil MacQueen and Luanne Payne.
In 2019, we began writing lesson sets on stories we had previously not worked on. At that time we also changed the Team's development process to include more training, more collaboration, and more creative and editorial leadership. Led by Lead Writer Neil MacQueen, the Team's goal is to grow great lessons and share creative lesson writing skills. Read this post if you're interested in joining the Team.
Want to see what a Writing Team lesson set looks like?
We've given everyone access to all the lessons in the Writing Team's
Join the Team!
Read this post below about joining the Team.
Become a Supporting Member
...and get access to all the Writing Team's lesson sets!
♥ Go to the WT's Old Testament lesson menu ♥
♥ Go to the WT's New Testament lesson menu ♥
♥ See the Team's upcoming writing schedule ♥
♥ Become a Supporting Member ♥
and get access to all the Writing Team's lesson sets!
♥ Learn about joining the Writing Team ♥