Talmido:Frequently Asked Questions

These are some of the questions that have been asked. We will continue to update .. hope these answers help!

General Questions

Is there a mock calendar for each grade for the SS academic year?

There is a Sunday School Calendar available from the DSWA Sunday School which we can see about sharing out. There is also a nice liturgical calendar with all the feast days and bible readings on the LRD App (available on iPhone and Android).

Concerning this curriculum, each lesson is designed to be taught over the course of 2 classroom sessions. For example: for a 1st grade class, that may mean taking them on a tour of the church the first week, and then sitting down and learning the lesson from the textbook the second week. Since each parish has to adjust their Sunday School schedule according to the start of their school year and their parish feasts and events, we will not have a standard schedule for when each lesson should be completed. What we would like to see is that 8 lessons be completed by the end of December, and the following 8 lessons completed by the end of the school year in May/June.

Is it possible for students or parents to access the site Talmido?

Yes! Talmido is a resource for the WHOLE Church. All are invited to visit and make use of its resources.

Does Talmido also provide help or topics on projects that can be given to students?

Yes! As resources expand we will have crowd sourced project ideas. Teachers can submit projects, discussions, activities, and other materials to resources@talmido.org

Is there an easy way to find LO (topics) by each grade - for example, if I have to find what are the learning outcomes for grade 4?

"Great Question! The Grade topics can be accessed either through the Scope & Sequence link or by going to Lessons by Grade and selecting the Grade link (e.g., this is the link for Grade 4).

Is there anything for PreKG/Kindergarten?

Yes! A very special set of lessons has been developed for Pre-K and KG with supplemental coloring pages and an Audiobook, and as with other grades resources will continue to grow through the year. Pre-Kindergarten and Kindergarten can be accessed along with all other grades using the Lessons by Grade link.

Is there an area on Talmido where recordings of church hymns for specific feast days are available for easy access?

Yes, this is an ongoing project that we are working on getting uploaded on Talmido. We hope to upload recordings of songs that are used in our lessons. If you see any other songs/hymns/prayers that are relevant to our lessons, please share it with us at resources@talmido.org.

If you are looking for a more complete set of recordings for the feast days in English, you can find them on the DS-WA site

Is there a way to email the pdf textbook?

The PDF versions of all textbooks are available for download from Talmido and the copy can then be emailed. Alternatively, the link to the PDF itself can be emailed.

How can I help? Supplemental help?

Right now, we could use help with resources for specific lessons on Talmido. If you have a resource that you feel would be useful to share with other teachers, please email resources@talmido.org and we will review it for posting. Please do the same if you know of any resources online as well.

Can we convert to epub?

Great suggestion, we will look into this so that the textbook can be opened on e-Reader devices.

What is the plan for centralized exams?

Centralized Exams are specifically for the Northeast Diocese, and The NEAD Sunday School Board has not decided yet what we will do about centralized exams. This will be announced to the respective parishes when a decision is made.

Curriculum

Is it 53 topics in the curriculum and each grade will have 16 lessons?

Yes, there are a total of 53 topics that are taught in the whole of the curriuclum. Each of the topics are taught at least once in each phase of the curriculum (Introduction, Development, Mastery). So every topic will not be taught in each grade, but will be taught in each phase. By the time they finish 12th grade, they will have been taught each topic at least 3 times.

Does the new curriculum consider a gradual/easing transition especially for the senior students?

The senior students unfortunately will not have the benefit of having gone through the younger grades. But we think they will find the new textbooks and resources their teacher finds from Talmido very engaging. If questions arise, the textbooks for the same topic in the younger grades are also very easily found on Talmido when clicking Lessons by Topic on the left panel. As a result, we do not anticipate that they will feel overwhelmed but instead will be equipped with a variety of resources to learn from.

So I noticed on the textbook that there are midterm/final months. Will questions be released closer to those months?

We do not have plans currently to make questions for midterms and finals. If that becomes something that teachers are wanting to develop, we can take submissions and post them on to Talmido.

Will there be workbooks?

There are pages from the Northeast Diocese workbooks that have been linked to some of our lessons already. We are hoping to create some sort of workbook/worksheets in the future, however, getting the lessons out are our priority at this time. If you see a page in one of the old workbooks that would be relevant to our new lessons, send it to us at resources@talmido.org and we'll be happy to link it on Talmido!

Teaching

How can we use Talmido to address knowledge gaps in children within the same grade (especially for higher grades)?

If you click on Lessons by Topic on the side panel, you can find the learning outcomes for the topic throughout all the years. If some knowledge gap is present, we suggest you take a resource from the previous grades and use it to supplement the current grade lesson. In addition, we are hoping that the multitude of types of resources will allow the teacher to adjust for each child's differing learning styles as well.

What are the methods to evaluate the learning outcomes from children?

At the end of each lesson there are Reflection Questions that hopefully will give the children opportunities to interact with the materials in a way that connects concepts and real life. It also will help the teacher to see if they are reaching the stated learning objectives. Because each lesson is covered in at least 2 classes, the teacher will have time to circle back with resources from Talmido to reinforce any of the LO's.

Can a teacher choose what to teach and how to teach if they keep in mind the LOs?

The teacher has the lessons that cover the LO's but also is equipped with supplementary material to further reinforce the lessons through interactive learning strategies.

How will we be able to upskill students in the higher grades?

The lessons in the higher grades are all developed for the Mastery level. They are designed to engage the older children in critical thinking and application to the world around them. You will find that they are not as knowledge focused as the previous two stages: Introductory and Developing. Instead you will find them taking that knowledge and working through them in order for them to be able to form their own thoughts and truly "always be ready to give a defense to everyone who asks you a reason for the hope that is in you," (1 Peter 3:15)

Do we need to give the printout to the children?

You do not need to print out the lessons for the children for the coming year. If you wish to do so, you are welcome to do that. But, we also suggest you email the lesson to the students and/or parents so that they can pull them up on a device or print them out themselves.

Technical Support

Is there an iPhone and/or iPad version of the website?

The Talmido.org website is designed so that it can be used on an iPhone, iPad, as well as other mobile devices. On the upper left corner there are three lines that when clicked will open up the menu so that you can navigate through the pages. You can also download the textbooks to your devices as well.

Textbook Questions

Is everything online? no physical copy? or is that up to each church/principal?

For the current 2022-2023 school year, the textbooks will be available as individual lessons or as a book digitally as PDFs. These files are formatted so that it can still be printed and given to the children.

This approach allows us to receive feedback, edits, improvements as the year progresses and update the books. After we finish this academic year, we will move to finalize the books for printing for the 2023-2024 school year. We ask for your patience for this one year only, because it will add to the overall quality of the books in the long run.