As I prepare for my first religious education class (September 10), I’ve put together a couple of simple but helpful resources that I’m happy to share with catechists.
The first is a Homework Notification Sheet. I’ve never had a whole lot of luck assigning homework in religious education and having kids complete it but part of it may be the fact that my assignments are probably never seen by parents. I thought it would be helpful to create a simple Homework Notification Sheet addressed to parents, informing them of the assignment and asking them to sign it. I plan to use this as a “cover sheet,” stapling it to whatever assignment I am sending home. The sheet contains fill-in fields so that you can insert the pertinent information before you make copies. I plan to give homework this year for weeks that we do not have class because of holidays.
Both of these open as Word documents.
As I come up with these helpful resources, I’ll pass them along to you should you wish to use them!
Update: I have updated the links to both of these resources, making them available in an older Word format since some folks were having trouble opening them up. Let me know if you’re having any problems opening these.
“I plan to give homework this year for weeks that we do not have class because of holidays.”
I never thought of that…I’ll be curious to know the assignments, and how well it works out for you.
Hi,
I generally give homework every week to the students (have had 2nd and 3rd graders the last 2 years). It’s generally some kind of drawing, crossword puzzle, or chapter reading for the next week or the handouts from the Sadlier website or the book. Most of the children complete it. I’m not sure how it will work with the 6th graders this year but we’ll see. Need more creative ideas.
Hi, Joe!
Thank you for sharing “A Couple of Helpful Resources.” Unfortunately, I have not been successful in opening the Homework Notification Sheet. Has anyone else had this difficulty? Tried to diagnose problem to no avail. If you can help me out, I’d appreciate it. Thank you!
Have a blessed day!
Dorothy Hilton
Thanks Dorothy. One of my colleagues here at LP just reminded me to save those documents in an “older” Word format so that folks who don’t have the latest versions can still open them. I’m updating this post to make that change so try again soon.
For 9/11 today, I showed the video on the usccb.org website entitled “A Prayer at Ground Zero”. It was a short video that really emphasized the spiritual aspect of the events of 9/11 in how people responded with such goodness and kindness. It was a wonderful way to show how good devours evil and how so many good things came out of such a horrific act of terror.
I don’t see all my classes today so I plan to show this video to sixth and seventh graders as well. THere are several other materials on the usccb.org that I have used in the past as well. THere are written reflections that I assigned for the 8th graders to read and each read a different reflection and shared each story with the class. I hope to reply again soon. THis website is very helpful.
Thanks for sharing Michele…good ideas!
I will be using this form this year. I give out weekly homeworks and it would be great to have the parent’s involvement. Thank you so much……..