Unit Introduction
The Bible belongs in ELA classes. It is a foundation of the English language and its literature. And it makes great reading.
Proverbs and Ecclesiastes are the first books of the Bible that feature in First Literary Explorations. Proverbs are short enough for anyone to get into but also offer depth enough to have inspired thousands of years of study. To say nothing of Ecclesiastes!
This unit can last from 3–6 weeks, depending on depth, the extent of memorization you require, independent study time, writing integration, and other factors. I’ve taught it to grades 7–9, but for the older grades, you should probably plan on going deeper into Ecclesiastes.
If you plan on doing that, definitely pick up How to Read the Bible as Literature by Leland Ryken: this book and some of Ryken’s other works are where essentially all of the concepts in this unit are drawn from.
The foundational skills for analyzing proverbs are primarily figurative language and form (ie, parallelism). From there, it moves into using an understanding of the language to analyze its meaning, that is, the virtues, vices, and values at issue in each proverb and how they connect to the reader’s life.
The slides conclude with this video, which captures the culmination of how the unit is laid out.