2 Nephi 29-30
Today I used the ideas from Teaching the Book of Mormon Part One to teach my lesson. I loved the Fred example from the book and modified it into a comic strip form so that every kids could participate in finding a respoonse to someone who may not be interested in the BoM because they believe God has not shared any of His word anywhere besides the Bible. I also used the twisty wood object lesson from the book (page 145), too, to show how the Bible and Book of Mormon work together to anchor the Word. I had a couple of shims around and so I used those. Easy. I love TTBoM1!
I used a couple of important questions from the manual to wrap up my handout on 2 Nephi 29-30, and *poof* — easy lesson.
I left a bit of time at the end of class to work on devotionals so that kids could write letters to missionaries on our flex day.
Flex Day
For today’s Flex Day, we wrote letters to missionaries. We took photos of each zone to email to the missionaries. To kick off the class, I used a talk from the June 1973 New Era titled Letters? Clippings? Candy? What to Send to a Missionary by Sharon W. Allred. It’s a report on questions asked of 200 missionaries about what they like and don’t like hearing or receiving from home. Fantastically helpful.
We also spent time filling out the missing entries on our sign in sheets. My students don’t always remember to sign in, especially if they are absent, and so I take some time every so often to have them go back over the sheets and update any missing information.
WISE
I’m using the online WISE system to track attendance this year. At first I was really annoyed with it, because the past two years I have used a spreadsheet thing that our previous SI type used. I had it all tricked out to automatically create report cards, track Scripture Mastery, report Seminary credit stats, and such. All I had to do was enter kids’ names, type the scripture mastery passages in once, and keep up on attendance or tardies. It was awesome. Using WISE means that I will have to enter the attendance by hand into my reportcards, but it also means that Bishops can have access to the data at any time. It has also made attendance tracking a bit easier. Our area is not allowing teachers enough permissions to really control WISE, and so it’s slightly annoying to me, because I can see the potential in the software.
I’d love to have the ability to make custom reports. I need to be able to track scripture mastery memorization. I also need to be able to track daily reading. All of that would be super easy to implement.
The ability to create a temporary student was helpful. So is the merge student function. I was able to enter the student data for the new member for whom we didn’t have membership information yet, and when his record were created in Salt Lake, I could merge his data from a temp student into the regular student section and not need to enter anything new. I also have my nonmember listed as a temporary student. I am reluctant to provide a birthday or other information to the church for these kids. The Church is way too Big Brother-esque sometimes.
