January 1st, 2013

Dear R.E. Teacher / Chaplain,

 
“You are never too old to set another goal or to dream a new dream.” C.S. Lewis
 
Happy New Year and I hope you all had a lovely Christmas break. The new term starts next Monday and below are details of new resources for next week and other useful links. Best of luck to the Mater Dei students heading into schools for Teaching Practice. I remember teaching my first R.E. classes back in 1997 when cutting and pasting resources was done with a scissors and glue. If you have a Mater Dei student taking some classes for you this month make sure to support them and make them familiar with your R.E. Subject Plan and how to use available technology in the classroom. A reminder that I have added an R.E. News Blog section on our website and it contains all the contents from emails I have sent last term and the last 13 editions of the R.E. News. The BLOG contains regular updates of resources, weblinks and information for R.E teachers & chaplains.
 
 

January The Month of the Holy Name of Jesus: A PowerPoint presentation about the history of the names for God in Scripture, the Feast of the Holy Name and how we can show respect for God’s name.

New Year Reflections PowerPoint: This PowerPoint contains several slides with reflections for the New Year. If your school has display screens you might put it on a loop next week or you could use some of them at an assembly or just at the start of a class.
 
January 6th: Feast of the Epiphany of Our Lord: An excellent essay by Richard Rohr is available to download and you can also listen to a podcast about the definiton of the word epiphany, it’s misuse in modern tongue and the origins of the Feast of the Epiphany and the roles of the Magi (a.k.a. the Three Kings or Three Wise Men.) at http://bustedhalo.com/podcasts/the-word-epiphany .
 
January 7th: Baptism of our Lord: The first day of term is the Feast of the Baptism of the Lord and uploaded is a short PowerPoint of the story of the baptism of Jesus by John the Baptist which finishes with an animation of the story. Following from showing this to your R.E. class you can teach a class on the Sacrament of Baptism and uploaded is a new slide show video explaining the basics of the sacrament and also a link to RE:Quest which contains excellent resources for use with R.E. classes.
 
Useful Links
 
Year of Faith:The Nicene Creed is the prayer for the Year of Faith and you can view it and other resources by clicking here.
 
Salt & Light Catholic Media Foundation: have an impressive website which contains a lot of interesting video material on aspects of Catholic faith. Click here to view the website.
 
YouTube Channels: Click here for links to several useful YouTube channels for R.E. including my own channel.
 
 
Kind regards,
 
Gary