Using Latin and Theatre with Jesus' Parables

Recently, I combined many subjects together during a Theology lesson with my third grade class. This is something that both my students and I enjoy. It's also a very "classical" way to teach. In Theology we were learning about and reading about the parable of the unforgiving servant where the master (Jesus) forgives his servant of a large sum of money. Then that servant goes and throws a friend, who owes him a little amount, in jail for not paying him. The master gets angry and throws the first servant into prison. (Read Matthew 18:23-35 for the whole story.)

Firstly, I knew that my class would enjoy acting the story out, while I read it out loud. Each student could have a part to play and students will often remember stories that they have acted out and therefore internalized. In fact, the birth of the theatre began in the church, when churches would put on plays to teach commoners the commandments and good morals. Likewise, one student acted out the wrong way to treat a friend by pretend-choking the friend, who owed him money, and one friend played the master, as the forgiving Lord of us all.

Now how did Latin fit into all that? The class had just learned the words for master and servant from Latin for Children Primer A. They had chanted the vocabulary and memorized the words, but here was an opportunity to tell the story using Latin words. I substituted the English words with the Latin words that they learned and in turn they internalized the parable and the Latin words. I hope to do both these things a lot during the year. I highly recommend using one or both of these ways to instill in your students the love of the Bible, acting, and languages.