SLA uses primarily the A Beka curriculum, which emphasizes quality teaching in a practical educational approach, with strong emphasis on intensive phonics for basic reading.
A Beka Curriculum
An important job of educators is teaching critical thinking skills. The A Beka Curriculum developed and proven through Pensacola Christian School of Pensacola, Florida, teaches students to think using the following methods.
1. We teach students to think by giving them something to think about.
We teach universal truths and help our students store their minds with useful, interesting, important facts, and ideas. With this foundation, the students are able to learn how to think. We present the material in a sensible way so that the students can compare ideas as the come before their minds, see the relationships of those ideas, and systematize them.
2. We teach students to think by using traditional methods of teaching subject matter.
a. Bible class gives students the foundation of all wisdom. The Bible gives us the universal truths which are necessary for all thinking. “Thinking” that does not begin with fear of the Lord is foolishness.
b. Intensive phonics training in contrast to the rote-memorization, sight-word method of beginning reading, trains students in analytical thinking.
c. Reading lessons in the A Beka Book program place emphasis on reading for meaning.
d. Grammar study requires students to figure out how the parts of a sentence go together to form a whole, how the parts are related to each other, and how the main idea can be distinguished from supporting details.
e. Vocabulary training further sharpens students’ thinking skills as they deal with the precise meaning of words and the history of their formation.
f. Literature helps students to fill their minds with thoughts from some of the world’s greatest writers so that they may think great thoughts and learn to express them to others.
Composition is thinking.
h. Spelling and handwriting free students’ minds from the mechanics of written language so that they can think.
i. History teaches students what man has done with the time God has given him, and what have been the consequences of man’s thoughts and actions. History enables the students to make reasonable decisions for their own lives and times.
j. Science taught in Christian perspective helps students to think God’s thoughts after Him. It opens their minds to the wonders of creation and shows them how man can subdue the physical creation for the glory of God and the benefit of mankind.
k. Traditional mathematics trains students to think clearly, precisely, and mathematically. It lends them to analyze problems, see connections, and work for solutions. Learning mathematics trains them in logic.
