When teaching middle schoolers about the world’s religions, many educators lean on a “silo approach,” a term borrowed from grain silos. It means teaching each religion as its own separate, self-contained unit: This is Judaism. This is Hinduism. This is Islam. Etc.
It’s an understandable way to organize a curriculum. But it comes with a real problem.
The Trouble With Silos
Teaching religions in isolation from one another can unintentionally create division and “othering,” not because of the content itself, but because of the pedagogical approach. When each faith tradition is presented as its own island, students miss the chance to notice what religions actually have in common. It also makes it much harder to compare genuinely interesting features across traditions, like the special spaces where people gather to worship or their use of sacred texts.
A Better Starting Point
Instead of starting with standardized vocabulary (churches, synagogues, mosques, temples), try flipping the approach. Start by asking students why religions might have special spaces in the first place.
Here are a few questions to open that conversation:
- Do you have special spaces in your own life? A spot in nature, a place where your family gathers, somewhere your team, band, or choir meets?
- What do you do there? How did that space become important to you? Why does it stay important over time?
Once students have reflected on their own experience of meaningful spaces, guide them to think about why different religions might have their own special spaces too.
Why This Works
This approach helps students see, right from the start, that religions share something in common: sacred spaces where people gather to chant, pray, sing, and learn. Rather than treating places of worship as a list of vocabulary words to memorize, students start to understand the human need behind them. That shift, from isolated facts to shared human experience, is at the heart of teaching religious literacy well.
Grab the Free Resource
Want to bring this lesson into your own classroom? We’ve put together a Sacred Spaces worksheet that you can use with your students to help get the discussion started.
📥 Grab your Sacred Spaces worksheet here
Watch the accompanying reel for a quick walkthrough of this teaching approach in action.