What Are We Doing In Primary 5?

     Dear Parents,
        I have been teaching your child for 10 weeks now and I would love to share my insights with you. Your children are truly hardworking and eager to learn about the gospel of Jesus Christ. They had a wonderful teacher before me and she laid a strong and secure foundation of behavior expectations and quality of learning.
   I have not been in Primary for decades and when I read through the curriculum I was amazed. Could we really be teaching the Doctrine and Covenants along with Church History to these 7-8 year olds? Coming from being a seminary teacher I had a few ideas up my sleeve. I wanted to know just how far these youths could go in learning and absorbing he gospel.
   My first goal was to make sure each child could find scriptures in the Doctrine and Covenants. This is the perfect book to search in since the sections are numbered.

   Then I started working with journals. I love ongoing journals because they allow creativity, collections of ideas, and they become an assessment tool as we review material from week to week. My students loved them, as well. Each week we have a journal activity. It may be inserting missing words into a scripture passage, or finding information on a map, or assembling ideas on a foldable. A foldable is a multi-dimensional graphic organizer. Here is one I am working on for this week's Article of Faith
 lesson.

   My desire is to teach the gospel simply and truthfully with as many hands on activities as time allows. Thank-you for sending scriptures with your child. You may see highlighter tape in them to mark our scriptures. This tape is removable.

 
From time to time our journals will come home. This can be an excellent opportunity to use them at Family Home Evening. Ask your child to teach a lesson using her journal. Whatever you use them for I  have certainly enjoyed watching each child hard at work.

   Thanks for entrusting your child in our care and I hope we support your gospel teaching at home.