From the category archives:

Creative Moments

Teaching About Jesus Using “New Media”

by Joe on November 2, 2009

At the recent plenary assembly of the Pontifical Council for Social Communications, Pope Benedict XVI encouraged the use of new technologies of the digital age to spread the word of God.

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):

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:

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!

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Repetition – The Rosary

by Joe on October 26, 2009

What do all of the following have in common?

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!

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Voices of the Saints Quiz: Which One are You?

by Joe on October 23, 2009

Here’s a fun and engaging activity you can enjoy either by yourself or, if you have Internet capability in your classroom, with your students. It’s called the Voices of the Saints Quiz: Which One Are You?

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?

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Setting the Stage for Jesus

by Joe on October 19, 2009

For tonight’s class, my plan is to continue walking the young people through the story of salvation history in the Bible, setting the stage for the unit on Jesus that we are beginning.

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.

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October: Month of the Holy Rosary – How to Pray a Living Rosary

by Joe on October 14, 2009

RL000627_5 October, of course, is the month of the Holy Rosary, great opportunity to introduce young people to the devotion of praying the Rosary. Many parish schools and religious education programs have a “living Rosary” during October and the question often comes up, “How do you pray the living Rosary?” Here are sites that offer explanations and descriptions of praying a Living Rosary: