The whole course on one page, band by band: every unit with its chapters, sections and numbered lessons. Tap a lesson to open it. A tick means you got all three checks right.
Drawn scene: a lamplit reading room at night, a long table holding a stack of closed books, a rolled scroll, an open codex under a magnifying lens and a bound palm-leaf manuscript, with stars in the arched window behind
The storyThree Books Behind the Glass — A class on a field trip stops at one museum case and finds three sacred texts, each treated in a different way.
Drawn scene: a desert at dusk with a distant mountain under the first stars, dark tents lit from within across the sand, and the two wooden rollers of a Torah scroll in the foreground with the parchment shown as plain columns
The storyThe Youngest Child Asks the Question — On a spring night in Skokie, a family opens a book that tells them to remember the night of the Exodus as if they had been there.
The storyOne Psalm, Three Languages — In a single week in Chicago, a high school junior hears the same ancient poem at a funeral, a Sabbath table and a Sunday Mass.
Drawn scene: a lakeshore in Galilee at evening, two wooden fishing boats drawn up on the stones with nets drying, and a road winding up to a small hill town with lit windows
The storyThe Story on the Ashland Bus — A tired rider retells a two-thousand-year-old story to a bored nephew, and the whole back of the bus starts listening.
The storyA Letter Arrives in Corinth — Around 54 CE, a small community crowds into a house in a Greek port city to hear what its absent founder has written.
Drawn scene: a Sabbath table at dusk with two lit candles, a loaf of challah under an embroidered cover and a cup, and through the window the rooftops of a city at sunset
The storyEighteen Minutes Before Sunset — On a Friday in November, a Chicago family stops the week on purpose, and the house changes in a way you can hear.
The storyEight Lights or One? — In a synagogue study hall in Skokie, two students open a page of Talmud and find an argument that is two thousand years old and still going.
Drawn scene: an empty mosque courtyard at dusk, a row of pointed arches lit from within, a fountain for washing at the center, a dome and a minaret against the gold sky and a crescent moon high above
Drawn scene: stone river steps at dawn with small oil lamps floating on the water, shade umbrellas on the ghats and a curved temple tower rising behind
The storyLamps on a West Ridge Windowsill — On one autumn night, a row of small clay lamps turns an ordinary Chicago apartment into a place of welcome.
Drawn scene: a quiet monastery on a hillside at evening with lamplit windows, a bronze bell hanging under a small roofed frame and a broad bodhi tree with heart-shaped leaves
The storyFour Sights Beyond the Wall — As Buddhist tradition tells it, a sheltered prince rode out of his palace four times and came back a different man.
The storyTwo Bells, One Tradition — On a winter night in Kyoto and a Sunday morning in Chicago, a bell calls Buddhists together, and the two sounds are linked by more than two thousand years of travel.
Drawn scene: a scholar garden at evening, a pavilion with upturned eaves beside flowing water, a writing table with a brush, an ink stone and a blank sheet of paper, and misty mountains under a full moon beyond
The storyFour Answers to One Question — In a small state in ancient China, a teacher gives four students four different answers to the same question about their parents.
Drawn scene: a golden-domed temple reflected in a still pool on one side and a baobab tree under a sky full of stars on the other, joined by a single horizon line at dusk
9Unit
Sikhism, Jainism, and the Traditions of Africa and the Americas
The storyThe Kitchen With No Head of the Table — In a gurdwara kitchen northwest of Chicago, a retired engineer and a first-year student peel the same pile of onions, and no one asks who is more important.
The storyThe Story That Stays in the Room — On a winter afternoon in Chicago, an Anishinaabe elder tells a class how the land was made, and then asks them to put their pens down.
Drawn scene: a city skyline at night where a dome, a church steeple, a pagoda roof, the rounded front of a synagogue and a gurdwara dome stand side by side among apartment blocks, lit windows everywhere
The storyThree Doors, Three Communities — A hospital, a food pantry and a school, each opened by a community of faith, and each open to anyone who walks through the door.
The storyThe Front Row at Selma — In March 1965 clergy of many faiths answered a call to Selma, Alabama, and walked beside the marchers who were demanding the right to vote.
Drawn scene: a single path leading to a crossroads under a starry sky, where it divides into several branches toward the hills, each lined with small glowing lanterns
The storyOne Question on the Board — A teacher writes seven words on a whiteboard, and six students discover that they have each been handed an answer before they ever heard the question.
Drawn scene: a long library table at night covered in open books and scrolls, a student seen from behind writing in a notebook, and a tall window full of stars
The storyThe Question She Could Not Put Down — A senior has one week to pick a capstone question, and the one she wants has been waiting since the Hebrew Bible unit.
The course is the academic study of religion, not the practice of it: how to read a sacred text, then the major traditions through their own texts, then the questions they share — as units, chapters, sections and numbered lessons, in original text written at each band’s reading level. Beliefs are always attributed (“Muslims believe…”, “the Torah teaches…”), traditions are never ranked, and every lesson ends with three checks answerable from its reading.
Progress ticks live on this device only. Print any unit page for a paper copy.