“Create a Pacing Guide Training,” Seminary Curriculum Training (2022)
“Create a Pacing Guide Training,” Seminary Curriculum Training
Create a Pacing Guide Training
Introduction
In seminary we follow the Come, Follow Me schedule. This places seminary in a supporting role to what students are learning at home. Although this approach has streamlined what seminary students are studying, it requires some adjustments in how local areas and programs will use the seminary curriculum. In many cases, because of the complexity of these adjustments, it may be best to have area administrators, coordinators, or program administrators create the pacing guide so teachers do not have to. Creating these guides for teachers will help save them time. However, some teachers will still need to make adaptations to the pacing guide you provide.
Guidelines for Creating a Seminary Pacing Guide
Prioritize Doctrinal Mastery
When creating the pacing guide, you will need to pay careful attention to when you will schedule doctrinal mastery lessons. The following are important guidelines for scheduling doctrinal mastery learning activities:
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Determine when to teach Acquiring Spiritual Knowledge, Parts 1, 2, and 3. These lessons introduce students to the principles of acquiring spiritual knowledge. They are best taught at the beginning of the academic school year before any doctrinal mastery passage lessons are taught.
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Ensure that the 24 doctrinal mastery passage lessons and their associated contextual lessons are included in the pacing guide so they will be taught while seminary is in session. Most doctrinal mastery passage lessons will come up naturally during the course of the year while seminary is in session. It is best to leave these lessons as close as possible to when their respective scripture block in the Come, Follow Me schedule will be studied. Determine which doctrinal mastery passage lessons students will miss when seminary is not in session. Move these lessons to a week that has a doctrinal mastery review, to be taught in place of the review. In addition to moving this lesson, also be sure to move the corresponding contextual lesson in which the passage is first introduced. The contextual lessons are found in the seminary teacher manual immediately before each doctrinal mastery passage lesson. Moving these two lessons means that a doctrinal mastery review and one other lesson during that week will need to be replaced.
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Schedule the doctrinal mastery assessment reviews and doctrinal mastery assessments. Teachers administer these end-of-semester reviews and assessments in their classes to help students assess how well they have learned the corresponding passages in the course. The pacing guide could include the “Doctrinal Mastery: Assessment 1 Review” after students have had all the doctrinal mastery passage lessons that correspond to the passages in the doctrinal mastery assessment. “Doctrinal Mastery: Assessment 1” could be scheduled approximately one week after the review. The pacing guide could likewise be adapted to incorporate the “Doctrinal Mastery: Assessment 2 Review” and “Doctrinal Mastery: Assessment 2” after students have studied the doctrinal mastery passage lessons that correspond to the passages in the doctrinal mastery assessment.
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Ensure that students have a weekly experience with doctrinal mastery. During weeks that do not have an acquiring spiritual knowledge lesson, a doctrinal mastery passage lesson, a doctrinal mastery assessment review lesson, or a doctrinal mastery assessment, schedule a doctrinal mastery review. There is a doctrinal mastery review already included in every week of lessons in the seminary teacher manual when there is not a doctrinal mastery passage or acquiring spiritual knowledge lesson.
Follow the Come, Follow Me Schedule
For the most part, follow the Come, Follow Me schedule when creating your pacing guide. There are some scripture blocks in the Come, Follow Me weekly schedule that are filled with particularly rich content and include multiple doctrinal mastery passages. To balance doctrinal mastery as a weekly experience with weeks that have especially rich scripture blocks, you may want to arrange lessons in the pacing guide so that students begin to study the scripture block in seminary in the week before it comes up in the Come, Follow Me schedule or continue to study it into the week that follows.
These occasions, however, should be rare. Students should usually study the same scripture block in seminary that they are studying at home with Come, Follow Me.
Reflect the Local School Schedule and Address Local Needs
Include in the pacing guide local school holidays and other breaks in the school schedule as best you can. When a week in seminary is shortened because of the local school schedule, be sure to still prioritize doctrinal mastery. During these weeks, you will have to be selective about what other lessons you will include in the pacing guide. You may need to review the purpose statements of the different lessons in a weekly overview or even looking over the lessons themselves to determine which learning experiences would be best for students.
When creating the pacing guide, be sure to address the needs of students in your area or program. There are introductory lessons included in the front of the seminary teacher manual that could be incorporated in a pacing guide during the school year. Additionally, students may benefit from other types of learning experiences that are not necessarily included in the teacher manual. These experiences might include lessons that help students prepare for or reflect on a recent general conference or youth devotional. These kinds of activities could be incorporated into the pacing guide.
Case Studies
Below are two examples of case studies that illustrate how to apply these guidelines just discussed when making a pacing guide.
Stacie Richards, a Released-Time Seminary Principal
The second semester of the school year in the area where Sister Richards and her faculty teach goes from January 3 to May 27. Students are then released for summer break until August 22.
Sister Richards is able to create a pacing guide with minimal differences from how the teacher manual is organized for the first part of the semester. However, as she compares the school schedule to the pacing in Come, Follow Me, she notices that students will be on summer break when two of the doctrinal mastery passages that are included in the first half of the curriculum are scheduled to be taught. These passages are John 17:3 and Luke 24:36–39. Since one of the purposes of doctrinal mastery is to bridge the gap of what students will miss when school is not in session, she decides to find a place to include these passages during the current semester. She also knows she needs to schedule the “Doctrinal Mastery: Assessment 1 Review” and “Doctrinal Mastery: Assessment 1” lessons before students leave for summer break.
In order to make these adjustments, she decides to begin at the final week of the semester and work her way back until she is able to work in the assessment, assessment review, doctrinal mastery lessons and their accompanying contextual lessons, and any other desired lessons. She decides not to teach the “Doctrinal Mastery: Assessment 1” lesson during the final week of the semester because of how fluid the school schedule can be and how many students tend to be absent that week. The final week is, therefore, left as scheduled.
Knowing that the “Doctrinal Mastery: Assessment 1 Review” lesson should be taught before the assessment lesson, Sister Richards decides to insert it as the first lesson of the second-to-last week of the semester and to insert the assessment lesson as the final lesson of the week. This will allow students a few days to study passages that they might not be as familiar with after the review.
She then decides that the review would be most effective after students have studied all the doctrinal mastery passage lessons. By moving the Matthew 22:36–39 doctrinal mastery lesson with its corresponding contextual lesson to the end of the previous week, she is able to accomplish this objective while keeping a few days between the review and the assessment.
Sister Richards then sees an opportunity to insert the doctrinal mastery lesson John 17:3 along with its contextual lesson into the pacing guide. These lessons were originally scheduled to be taught during summer break. After reading the lesson purposes of each of the remaining lessons for the week, she chose to keep the three lessons that she felt students in her area most needed. She saw no need to make any changes to the week of April 24–30.
Sister Richards knew that there was just one remaining doctrinal mastery passage lesson, Luke 24:36–39, that still needed to be inserted. It would also normally have been taught during the time of summer break. She noticed that the week of April 17–23 has a doctrinal mastery review lesson that could be replaced with the Luke 24 lesson. But as she continued to look down the schedule, she noticed that Easter week did not have any scheduled lessons.
Knowing that the Luke 24 doctrinal mastery lesson, along with its corresponding contextual lesson, would be perfect for Easter week, she decides to insert it there. She then looks at the other lessons that students would miss during their summer break and decides that the most important lessons that she could teach from those lessons would be those that teach about the Savior’s suffering in Gethsemane, His Crucifixion, and the witnesses of His Resurrection. She completes the schedule for Easter week by inserting those lessons.
By selecting the lessons she did, Sister Richards was able to prioritize doctrinal mastery for students as well as provide students with valuable learning experiences that focus on the Savior during the Easter week.
For the rest of the semester, she was able to organize the lessons so that they followed the order in the teacher manual closely.