Big Paper

I am a fan of big paper. Big paper breeds big ideas. A roll of wallpaper lining paper is a good investment. I paid about £3 for 10 metres but I'm sure you can get it cheaper. (Advice welcome). Here are two examples of how I recently used big paper.

1. To create/annotate a group diagram

The New Testament Teacher's Resource Manual has in the lesson for Luke 1-3 a section on the good examples which Mary and John the Baptist are.To teach this I divided the girls and the boys and gave the girls a large sheet on which I had drawn an outline of Mary and to the boys John the Baptist. (I copied this image for John the Baptist. Although there are a zillion images for Mary it was harder to find one suitable and I had to be a little more original). Using the scriptures pertaining to each character the students were then to annotate their drawing to reflect the various qualities which these two people had. The activity caught the imagination of both groups. Surprisingly to me the boys were more creative and added much drawing to the picture (a locust, some wine being rather graphically spat out of John's mouth, a ball and chain on his ankle symbolising the time spent in Herod's captivity) while the girls stuck to neat labels identifying Mary's faith, humility, obedience etc.


2. To help process narrative (Creating a Wiki).

Tying in with Christ's rebuke of the Pharisees in Matthew 15:11 Bruce R McConkie gave a discourse which is in the New Testament Institute manual under the title To Be Physically Clean is Not Enough. I covered my dining table in a length of the lining paper and got out the felt-tip pens. I instructed the students that while I slowly read this passage to them they were to record their ideas and impressions (in prose or picture) on the sheet. I told them to work big and to look at what their neighbours were writing so they could add to it and make links. At the end we had a giant colourful spider diagram where the students had recorded and connected many of the ideas in Elder McConkie's talk. The added bonus to me and my family was that we got to eat our dinner that night off  a very interesting and enriching tablecloth. We were physically and spiritually nourished. (My seminary class is in my own home. If you have a classroom you could certainly display such an item for a while after).
I realise, and I will probably say this many times on my blog, that I have a truly exceptionally wonderful seminary class, but I was pleased how they dived into the activity. The feedback was good - they really want to use that technique again.

I did these activities before I decided to blog my ideas so there are no photographs, alas. I shall not be so lax again.