Catholic Teaching Ideas
- Catholic educators can use creative teaching methods to teach about Catholicism.catholic church image by Alina Goncharova from Fotolia.com
Catholic educators can succeed in teaching the doctrines and articles of the Catholic religion by using innovative and creative teaching strategies. Parents who send their children to a Catholic school expect that the children will learn about their religion and religious heritage. New ideas for religious educators give Catholic teachers tools for imparting these teachings in a manner that will encourage and motivate their students. - Teach a unit about the saints, including resources from classroom books and the Internet. Present general information about Catholic saints, including the process of choosing saints, the place of saints in the Catholic religion and the relationship of Catholics to their saints. Teach the unit, discussing the saints that you want the children to recognize. As a final project, divide up the class into teams and play a Patrons Saints trivia game. Ask each team, in turn, questions from the Patron Saints Trivia Game. You can teach this lesson to upper elementary-aged children.
- Create pages, each with about 20 words. Most of the words should have a common thread, such as a connection to a holy day, a prayer, a season such as Lent or a Bible story. A few of the words will have no connection with the page's theme. Let the children try to piece together the main theme of each page, and discuss which words have a connection with the theme and which words do not. Challenge the children to create their own theme pages and let them switch the pages among themselves to see if they can stump their friends. This activity will work with younger elementary-aged children.
- Draw a chart on the board with columns. At the top of each column, write a Biblical theme, such as poverty, obedience, modesty, faith, relationship to God, relationship to fellow man, etc. Ask the students to copy the chart in their own notebooks. Pass out Bibles to the students and challenge them to find Biblical passages that connect with these themes. Turn the activity into a competition to see who can find the most passages for each theme. Students can work in small groups or teams on this lesson plan. This lesson plan meets the abilities of upper elementary school aged children and older.
