Good Morning! I've been a little quiet around here lately, but I promise to get back into things. It seems like I'm constantly saying that though. I really need to set out an hour a day to do what I need to do!
Last Sunday, religious education classes started back up for our church. Last year, I took a small break because of things happening around here and my torn rotator cuff. I filled in as a substitute as needed, but didn't teach my first graders. I am back to teaching first grade again. I have 13 children, as of last week. Only 4 girls this year. I have 9 boys!!! That many boys in a small room always changes the dynamics of the group.
My goal this year is to document our class: theme, what we work on, what we are learning, crafts, games, etc. So today, I thought I'd go over how I structure my class. One thing I've learned over the last 11 years teaching first graders, you have to keep it fun, enjoyable, and always moving. They can not sit there at a desk for 1.5 hours reading a boring book. Plus, first graders are all over the board in their reading and writing skills. I know first hand that some children pick up reading quickly, while others struggle at that age. So I try to make the class a stress-free zone.
So how do I teach?
I have class broken up into segments!
I open class with prayer. We usually stand (or kneel) and recite the Our Father together. After prayer, we review what was taught in the previous Sunday's class. Then we jump into class!
Each Sunday, we go over the following materials: prayers, a saint, a virtue, a Bible or religious story, and lesson for the week.
The first graders work hard on learning their prayers. We focus on the Sign of the Cross, Our Father, the Hail Mary, the Glory Be, and the Guardian Angel prayer. We also go over the Blessing before Meals prayer too. I also make a cute tracking system to help them learn their prayers. I love seeing the children encourage each other and help each other learn their prayers.
Every Sunday, I introduce the children to a new Catholic saint and virtue. This helps them learn more about their faith and they will hopefully have some knowledge about various saints when they have to pick a saint name for when they are confirmed in 8th grade. Plant the seed when they are young. For teaching about the saints, I use a few different resources.
I also have a small collection of the Book of Saints from Reverend Lovasik. These are perfect for the kids to look through and read a short story about different saints.
After they are introduced to the saint and learn a little about their life and death, I introduce a virtue that the saint exemplified. I use a free Virtue Program that I found for my kids years ago from the Dominican Sisters of Saint Cecilia in Nashville. They offer workbooks for children in K through 8th grade. It's a fantastic program.
After learning about the saint and virtue, I add the saint's picture to our saint poster and add the word(virtue) to our virtue poster. This helps with the review. The first few weeks are easy since the boards do not have too many pictures/words on them, but after the first 2 months, it gets a little trickier. I'm always amazed by all the details they remember.
Next up is the first part of our lesson, we learn and talk about a specific topic. We are currently using the Spirit of Truth God is Love program. It's not a bad program. I find it a little too heavy in the reading and writing for first graders in my opinion. It does help a child learn their faith. I can't say I love it, but I can't say I dislike it either. It's definitely one of the better options our diocese recommends using.
After our lesson, we have a short bathroom break, a water break, and a short recess. I encourage the kids to get up, walk around, and stretch their little legs.
Following our break, we have storytime. The stories are usually a bible story, a religious story about a saint, or a short story that relates to the topic of the lesson.
After storytime, we either do a craft, play a game, or complete some other types of activity.
We ask the children about any good deeds they have done during the week and add them to our goods deed jar.
The goal for the children is to have it overflowing so the lid will not screw on!
Class is usually done by the time we are done with this. Sometimes, we even run out of time and have to finish up the following week.
At the end of class, we recite our prayers again.
Till Next Time,
Monique
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