Come, Lord Jesus! (I’m practicing!)

Advent begins on Sunday, November 29, 2009— are you ready? Joe Paprocki, National Consultant for Faith Formation for Loyola Press and veteran catechist, invites catechists, religion teachers, and RCIA leaders to join him in this Webinar that explores how to create engaging advent-themed faith-formation activities drawn from the Sunday Scripture Readings of Cycle C (the Gospel of Luke). Joe will take us through the readings for this Advent season, explore the theme for each week, and share some unique ways you can develop the theme into activities that inspire children, youth, and adults to enter more deeply into the beauty and holiness of Advent. In the days following the Webinar, Joe will offer additional Advent-related activities on his blog, Catechist’s Journey. If you are unable to attend the Webinar, you may view the video on Joe’s blog. It will be posted the week following the Webinar. This free Webinar is led by Joe Paprocki, an 8th-grade catechist in the Archdiocese of Chicago with over 30 years of experience in pastoral ministry. Joe, National Consultant for Faith Formation at Loyola Press, is the author of numerous books including the best-selling The Catechist’s Toolbox and A Well-Built Faith, as well as the host of the blog Catechist’s Journey. Register for this free Webinar today by clicking here. If you have additional questions about the Webinar, please contact Carrie Freyer at freyer@loyolapress.com.

Brought to you by

church history powerpoint in pdf part 1

church history powerpoint in pdf part 2

I’m happy to share the Powerpoint with you in pdf form:

Who is Jesus – complete presentation pdf

As we view the Powerpoint, I’ll have the young people read aloud the sections that they themselves were responsible for last week. In addition, the young people will take notes in a booklet I put together for them to use. You can access that here:

Who is Jesus booklet

Our song of the week will be Shania Twain’s Wanna Get to Know You.

Finally, we’ll finish by reflecting on a 10-minute PowerPoint on images of Jesus that I put together a few years back. Here it is in pdf form:  Images of Jesus pdf

Lots to do…so little time!

This was a big risk for me and I have to admit that I have a very hard time of letting go of things like this because I know how it should be done. However, I thought I’d give it a whirl and it turned out OK.

Good thing is, I have a small group and they like doing the guided reflections and they have been behaving very well during these experiences. So what I did was, I chose a student who is a good reader and I asked her before class if she would be willing to read the script that I had ready. I showed her the technique of counting slowly to 2 in her head after every sentence (to slow the pace down) and counting slowly to 5 in her head after every time the script said “pause” to allow for reflection.

I still did my part of getting everyone into their “sacred space” and quieting them down before turning it over to my volunteer. My aide and I were able to “patrol” the room as the reflection went on (I also had quiet music in the background and the lights dimmed).

In all, my volunteer did pretty well. She was a bit nervous and so her pace was a bit too quick but not terribly so. I slowed her down once but I basically let go and allowed her to do it on her own.

The script she used was from a book called Guided Reflections for Children – Volume 1: Praying with Scripture.  I would say that her reading part took about 8-10 minutes, including all of the built-in pauses. The rest of the group was as quiet as usual and perhaps more so since it was one of their peers leading them and since 2 adults were patrolling the room!

Afterwards, I thanked the volunteer and asked if anyone else would like to do this in the future and one young lady raised her hand, so I’m going to give it another try.

Has anyone else tried something like this?

I’m going to prod one of the young men to volunteer as well. I’ve been noticing how the guys often sit back and let the young ladies take the lead when it comes to speaking and leadership roles in RE. Years ago, young girls felt pressure to not assert themselves in learning situations…even feeling the need to “act dumb” in certain situations when they were around guys. Thankfully, that has changed. Unfortunately, now sometimes, it is the guys who feel they need to “act dumb” when around the girls (no big surprise when you see how men, especially fathers, are portrayed on TV and in the movies these days).

Anyone else noticing this?

Of the 3 groups, one did exceptionally well, due in no small part to the fact that one of the young ladies volunteered to type for her group mates and she was a whiz at keyboarding! Here is the work of that one successful group so you can see what they came up with (this is untouched by me so it still includes mispellings, etc.).

Group 3 Slides: The Words and Actions of Jesus

This is closest to what I envisioned however, even for this group, there was no time for them to add any clip art. The other 2 groups didn’t come close to completing their slides. I’m not upset about that because they did complete a hard copy first before they began typing, so I know that they did interact with the content of the session which is the most important thing.

I am finishing the Powerpoint and will use it next week to have them present about Jesus to the group, each one commenting on (or at least reading aloud)  the slides he or she was responsible for. I will have a Who Is Jesus? booklet put together for next week for everyone to take notes in throughout the presentation so that when they go home, they can show their parents how much they learned about Jesus. I’ll make that booklet available to you when I have it ready!

With that in mind, for the first time in my life as a catechist, this evening I will be having my students create Powerpoint presentations rather than posters!

For the last few years, during the Jesus unit, I have had my classes work at Jesus Learning Stations, fromwhich they prepared posters to teach about Jesus to the rest of the class. This year, I’ve decided to do something very different.

It turns out that I have access to 3 laptop computers: my own, a work laptop, and my daughter’s laptop. With 10 students, I can easily form groups of 3 or 4 and have each group work with a laptop to create Powerpoint presentations that teach about Jesus. I will have 3 groups (I rearranged the material from the previous 5 learning stations into 3 groups):

• The World of Jesus and the People of Jesus
• The Words and Actions of Jesus
• The Death and Resurrection of Jesus

As you’ll see from clicking on each of the above, I am providing a resource packet to each group with all of the information they need to create their presentation on their assigned topic. I will be telling them to imagine that they are going to be explaining who Jesus is to someone who’s never heard of him before.

Before they do any work on the computers, however, they will have to show me a hard copy of their plan. I have created the “templates” for each of their PowerPoints and will provide hard copies of the slides they need to complete…each slide includes a header that asks a question they need to answer using the information from their resource packets. Each group will divvy up the slides they are to complete and then will get to work. Here are the slides:

• The World of Jesus and the People of Jesus SLIDES
• The Words of Jesus and Actions of Jesus SLIDES
• The Death and Resurrection of Jesus SLIDES

This week, they are to complete their slides which I will take home and combine into one presentation. Next week, we will show the PowerPoint presentation and each of them will “narrate” their slide.

The one “fly in the ointment” is that the clip art gallery on each computer does not have much in the way of Christian clip art so I’m going to need to spend some time this afternoon downloading some clip art that will be readily available to them (the classroom does not have wi-fi access) so that they can “dress up” their slides.

I’m excited and nervous about this new venture. I’m so accustomed to working with paper, scissors, and glue, but I’ve been curious about how to use technology in the classroom so I think this is a perfect opportunity. Pray that we meet with success.

Any pointers and suggestions are most welcome!

• “The Giants win the pennant! The Giants win the pennant! The Giants win the pennant!”
• “There’s no place like home. There’s no place like home. There’s no place like home.”
• “I think I can. I think I can. I think I can.”

Repetition, of course. We human beings tend to repeat ourselves whenever we feel strongly about something, are excited about something, or want to convince ourselves about something. And just in case you’re thinking that this is old-fashioned, take a look at the opening lyrics of a top ten song by the Black-Eyed Peas, I’ve Got a Feeling. (don’t show the music video or give lyrics of the entire song to you’re class…innappropriate).

Repetition has NOT gone out of style!

I plan to use this as an introduction to praying a decade of the Rosary with all of the 8th graders tonight before we view a segment of the video Jesus of Nazareth. Since October is the month of the Holy Rosary, we thought it would be appropriate to pray a decade of the Rosary tonight…we’ll pray the 5th Sorrowful Mystery, Jesus dies on the Cross, since that is the segment of the video we will be viewing – the crucifixion of Jesus.

One of the things that young people often complain about is that the Rosary is just repeating the Hail Mary over and over again. Precisely. We repeat ourselves whenever we feel strongly about something, are excited about something, or want to convince ourselves about something.

But I think I already said that!

It’s a fun way to learn about the saints as described by Bert Ghezzi in his book, Voices of the Saints: A 365-Day Journey with Our Spiritual Companions.

I turned out to be Saint Anthony of Padua, who, the site tells me, “generated spiritual renewal,” had great “speaking abilities,” and “was physically unimpressive.” How’d they know?

You may recall that 2 weeks ago (we were off last week for Columbus Day), I began walking them through the story of salvation history in the Bible and, because of a few interruptions (fire drill, etc.) only got as far as the Exodus event.

Tonight, we’ll begin with the giving of the Ten Commandments and move forward using the Bible in a Nutshell outline that I created. I can tell that the young people are not particularly thrilled with reading all of these Bible passages but they have been pretty well-behaved and I know that as we go through the unit on Jesus, we will find ourselves referring back to many of the things that we read in the Old Testament. It’s important for them to see the “whole story.”

We will also, this evening, be distributing their confirmation packets which contain all of the information they need to prepare for the sacrament (service, confirmation name, sponsor, etc.) I plan to give this to them at the door as they enter so that they immediately realize that they’ve got some work to do!

Finally, I absolutely must leave time for sacred space tonight (reflective prayer). Last time I had to go without it and they were disappointed, one of them saying, “But that’s my favorite part!”

I hope you all have a good week of classes. I’ll fill you in on how tonight’s class goes and I’ll also give some details about the Jesus unit we are beginning and how we will be using a segment of the film Jesus of Nazareth.

http://www.archatl.com//offices/reled/marian/The_Living_Rosary.pdf

http://www.dioceseofraleigh.org/news/livingrosary.aspx

http://www.catholicvoiceoakland.org/07-11-05/aroundthediocese.htm

If you have any experiences, tips, suggestions, or questions about praying a Living Rosary, let’s hear from you!