We covered the book of Hebrews in 4 lessons, all in one week. It felt fast, and it was.
Hebrews 1-2
I am trying to do better with scripture mastery, and so I am working on getting the kids to learn the references and key phrases. Today I put up the four references from Corinithians on the board and asked the kids for the topics they address. I asked “How do they keep them straight?” They explained a little about how they remembered these topics.
Next I gave the class an introduction to Hebrews. I did a lot of reading on the source of Hebrews because the information in the Bible Dictionary is so breif as to be nearly useless. The manual information is slightly better, however. Here were the key points I hit on:
- If not Paul’s words, it’s his ideas.
- Written to show Hebrews how Christ fits into the old law and the place the old law fits into this new religion.
- Help Jews not fall into old ways.
On the board I drew a target shape with the word Christ in the center circle. There were three spaces total, with one having the word Christ in it. We did a Chalk Talk, and kids read Alma 7:11–13and Hebrews 4:15–16 to share what they learned about the characteristics of Christ on the board.
Then we read John 14:6–10, and we circled the characteristics that they wrote on the board that Jesus shares with Heavenly Father.
My intent was to have us next write inside the middle circle “something you can personally do to follow the Saviour or draw closer to him”. Before that happend our discussion changed, and I decided to wrap up on that topic instead of finishing as I had planned. Went okay, but I do remember thinking I wished we had been able to go with the lesson plan. I think I was the reason we derailed too….. Funny I can’t remember the details.
Hebrews 3-6
To start out class we went to the tables and cut out the New Testament Matching Game I made up. They cut out the strips and matched up the reference to the phrase. They are saving the strips in their cubbies, and I am using this as a time filler at the beginning of class if I know that our class will go short.
As I said before, I am trying to do better with scripture mastery, and so we are playing the matching game whenever I can fit it in so that we learn the references. I shoot for 100% “mastery”, and then jedi (memorizing the scriptures word-for-word, word-perfect) is our Ultimate Achievement. After the game, we had a brief talk about priesthood. Here are my notes from Evernote:
Priesthood authority
God can be trusted because he doesn’t lie.
Jesus > Moses Scripture mastery matching game Hebrews 5:4 strips for game
Yep, that’s the whole thing. Sometimes I look at my notes and wonder how I get 35 minutes out of junk like that….. Next I passed out a slip of paper to each student. I had printed the scripture mastery for Hebrews 5:4 in moderately sized letters for them to play a memorization game on slips of paper. The game was supposed to work like this:
- Students are given a few moments to memorize the passage
- Student tears his paper in two places, wherever he wants, but not in the middle of a word. They are making a puzzle. They pass their peices to the next person.
- Next person solves the puzzle, and tears twice.
- Pass again.
The idea is that you get a slightly different puzzle every time that you work to solve, thereby learning the passage.
Didn’t work.
The kids looked at me like I was crazy when I explained this, so I just dropped it. I suspect that part of the problem was the way I had the tables set up made passing the scriptures difficult (I had originally planned to do this as zones, but changed to all the tables together because so many kids unexpectedly passed off the passage right as we swapped to the game). Plus, the scripture was too short. I may try this game again, but not with such an easy passage.
The students who had already memorized the scripture were pulled aside, and I let them work independantly on some other scriptures. I had 1 Timothy 2:1–3 printed out to encourage them to memorize that one, since none of them had passed it off yet. We got about 20 passages jedi’d this day. Nice.
Hebrews 7-10
No notes, no nothing. I know we did a lesson. Promise.
Hebrews 11-13
On this day I talked about faith. On the easel I wrote “Faith is….” and we talked about Paul’s definition of faith in Hebrews 11:1. I made a handout on Faith that I used to guide the discussion, but honestly, I can’t remember a word of it and my notes have mysteriously disappeared. I want to think we watched a movie…. I remember we were around the tv….. There seems to be a pattern here. Maybe it’s dementia. Definitely demented, for sho.
Free Day
This week was teacher appreciation for mutual, and due to some scheduling conflicts, the activity got moved to Thursday instead of our regular mutual. I moved our free day to Friday to accommodate. I try to have Free Days on the day after mutual so that kids don’t have to read when they come home after mutual. Another ward was recently formed, which meant we got kicked out of the building that’s closest to us and moved to the stake center. The drive is about 35 minutes for me each way, and some kids are longer. By the time they get home, it can be well after nine, and many still have homework to complete.
One of my students invited me to the appreciation activity. I was honored to be seated with really great teachers from the high school and middle school. It was a really nice activity. I admit to being a little bit embarassed, but it was very kind of her to think of me.
This was a funny class. We were supposed to be celebrating birthdays for the month, but one of the kids forgot to bring the food. His mom called me before class started to say she and her husband were bringing food, but not to tell the kid so that he could “feel the heat”. hee hee. So we did the first 30 minutes of class thinking we were just going to eat bacon and juice. (No one was too sad about that, honestly.) We started out playing Connect Four, and on the second round in came the hero parents. The kid who forgot the food was marking on the board and saw them through the window bringing food. Cheers! Hooray! Joy! Hugs and Loves! So anyway, the game was toast, so we ate and hung out the rest of class. Ah, Seminary.
