Planning for Week One

This coming Monday is week one of religious ed classes. Looking ahead, my overall goals are the following:

1. to get there early to look over my classroom to see how I can set it up so that the arrangement will be conducive to faith sharing and good behavior
2. to have name tents ready to place on their seats as they arrive (I will assign seating striving for boy-girl, boy-girl, as much as possible) so that I can begin using their names right away.
3. to greet each of them as they enter the room
4. to introduce my self and my aide
5. to invite them to join in a brief opening prayer in which we prayerfully distribute their textbooks
6. to do introductions in which we get to know one another better
7. to do an ice-breaker activity based on the theme of trust
8. to have the students work on chapter 1: We Trust in God’s Goodness (the young people will do paired interviews: half the class reads one article, the other half reads the other article and then then interview one another to summarize what was learned)
9. to lead a guided reflection on Psalm 8 focusing on the goodness of God (this will be short and the focus will be on introducing them to reflective prayer and being silent for an extended period of time)
10. to close with an exercise that encourages the young people to respect God’s creation and to share the earth’s resources

Of course, this is plan A! On the first night, lots of interruptions and distractions tend to take place, so I will need to be flexible!

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