Year 9 RE at STM

I have sent the 9A assessment home to those who were in Northern Ireland last week. This assessment should be completed by Monday 29 October.

I promised those who were in school to receive the assessment that I would put sentence starters on this blog to help you out, so here they are!

Vocation means …
The three types of Christian vocation are ….

Those Christians called to serve God as Religious take three vows. These are …

The vow of _________ means ….
For example, a nun or monk promises to …
This might affect their life by …
I think this vow would help a Religious because …
This vow might be hard to take because …

(Repeat this type of answer for each of the three vows.)

I think the vows are / are not necessary for a Religious because …

However, others might disagree with me because …

If I were a Religious, the vow that I would find hardest would be the vow of ________ because …

This is only a very brief outline which should help you aim for at least a Level 5. However, you will have to include a lot more detail! Remember, you should spend about 40 minutes or so on your answer, and I would expect about a page and a half to two pages. You can type up your answer if you want.

Marco found a useful site that clearly explains what the vows mean at the Archdiocese of Boston’s site. Remember, if you include quotes from this, or other documents, to put them in quotation marks and clearly reference them. See the post above, “Bibliographies”, on how to do this. We can then all help each other to learn more, since I can share useful webpages on this site.

All the best!

9A Assessment is on Monday 15 October.
9G Assessment is on Thursday 11 October.

Your assessment will involve writing an essay in class. You will have one question to answer, but your answer should show that you understand the whole topic of Vocation.

Therefore, your homework is to revise this topic; in particular you should learn the key words and their meanings. (There are two links there, to the words and to the meanings – these are pdf files that can be printed out and stuck to cards to help you learn and revise all the key words for year 9 – you will need to work out which ones are the necessary meanings for this term!)

Key Words:
Service, Vocation, Laity, Ordained, Religious, Discernment, Lay Ministry, Chrism, ‘Priest, Prophet, King’, Storge, Eros, Philia, Agape, Vows, Consent, Fidelity, Nuptial Mass, Marriage Register, Prostrate, Charism, Minister, Seminary, Deacon, Divine Office, Anoint, Laying on of Hands, Monastery, Habit, Contemplative, Friar, Monk, Nun, Apostolic, Religious Order.

One very good way to revise a topic is to use a mindmap. I would recommend using lots of colour pens on a piece of paper, but you can download Freemind, a free mindmapping software written in Java. The school has OpenMind installed in the ICT suites – perhaps some of you might have that at home.

Follow the links to find images of mindmaps.

If you prefer a more linear way of learning and revising, then you could write bullet points about Vocation, and ask your parents to test you. It would be especially good to buy some index cards and highlighters to help you with this!

Here are the topics we have covered in this unit:

What is vocation?
Christian Vocation
Discernment
Taking Flight (or Taking Risks – What if God wants us to do something we don’t want to do?)
Lay Vocation (’Priest, Prophet and King’ and what can be learnt from the Second Vatican Council)
Marriage
Rite of Marriage
Holy Orders
Priestly Life
Religious Life (The three vows of Obedience, Chastity and Poverty)