 With the Old Testament seminary school year ending for many, I’m going to give myself a break from posting each week, and prepare to start posting helps for the New Testament. On June 18th I will be back to posting each week again. Through the summer, the weekly posts will be preparation ideas to get geared up and ready to teach. Then as the school year begins again, the posts will be teaching ideas, worksheets, scripture mastery activities, and more. I’ll keep trying my best to send great helps your way. Thank you for all you each do in building the Kingdom of God by blessing the lives of these youth!
 By this far into the year, you should have gone over all the scripture mastery scriptures. In this activity, your students try to stump you as the teacher. Write on the top of the board “STUDENTS vs. TEACHER”. Have your students get out their Scripture Mastery cards. Then, one at a time, have them say any 5 consecutive words from the scripture, and you have to say the reference. If you get the reference right, “TEACHER” gets a point. If they stump you, “STUDENTS” get a point.
Half way through the time you wanted to play, switch it and make it Teacher vs. Students by you saying any 5 consecutive words and they have to say the reference.
Playing so the losers have to bring a treat the next day for the other can be a fun addition. Placing a 5 second time limit can also help. You can also do 5 consecutive words, but forwards or backwards.
 Click on the picture (OR CLICK HERE) to download the instructions. – For this scripture mastery game, the rules have been changed a bit from actual Bocce Ball. To play you will need some Bocce balls (Croquet balls work great) and a single golf ball. You will need to adjust this game depending on the size of your class. Divide your class into 3 teams . Place 3 chairs facing a wall (10-15 feet is good) with the middle chair having 2 balls on it and the other two chairs with only one ball on them. A scripture mastery clue is given and the first team to find the scripture gets to have the middle chair from where they will throw first in the round, and last. The teacher places “the Jack” (golf ball) between the chairs and the back wall. The players try to get their bocce ball as close to the Jack as they can. After all have thrown from their chairs, the team with their ball closest gets a point. It is okay if the balls hit or touch the Jack. It is also okay if the back wall is used. This game also works best on a carpeted floor. If the weather is good, it can also be played outside.
 I am sending out this idea now because so many are approaching the end of the year and this will take a bit of planning. This is a nice event to help end the year. On this day you will probably want to ask some parents and/or bishopric members to help cook and/or help kids pass off scriptures. Depending on your budget, you can also assign out to parents different parts of the breakfast to bring or help make (pancakes, bacon, juice, plates, forks…).
On the given day, the kids will walk into the seminary to the smell of an incredible breakfast (remember the power of bacon!). Then they will go to their class(es) and be given the instructions and score sheet. Then they have the next 25 minutes, or so, to pass off as many scriptures as they can in order to get to the needed 320 points. They can pass it off with strait memorization or using the first letter of each word (for fewer points). Tell the kids not to worry if they have already passed off scriptures. That will just make it much easier to pass it off again. Once they have passed off enough scriptures to you or your parent helpers, then they are released to go into the place where the breakfast is there for them. The paper is there ticket to eat.
I am sending this out as a Word document so you can adjust and modify to your needs. Good luck and have fun.
 As I have mentioned before, there is no real point to doing Scripture Mastery, unless it can become useful in real life situations. Here are two more worksheets where your students write down the Old Testament Scripture Mastery which best fits the situations. Click on the titles to download that work sheet.
The first is called, “Lots and Lots of Frustrations” where the students identify the scripture that would help this youth with his questions and concerns.
The second is called “Mastering Rhymes in the Latter Times” which is a bunch of two line rhymes that need to be matched up to the scripture mastery.
No, I am not putting in an answer key. I have found it is best to go over the worksheet after the appointed time and have your class say what they put for each number. If you find a discrepancy, have them back up why they chose the one over the other. This makes for a powerful learning experience.
Thanks again to Jared Moon for sharing these worksheets.
 Here are two helps for teaching the book of Ezekiel. Click on the picture to download the two handouts. The first is for teaching Ezekiel 38-39. Those chapters describe the battle of Gog and Magog that is prior to the Lord’s return. In those chapters it mentions a bunch of nations and places that will be involved. The older Institute manual said what each of those places were that would fight against Israel (Iran, Russia…) while the newer manual (post 1989) has it taken out because of the post cold war world environment. It is very interesting as these relationships are being formed in the Middle East today.
The second help has to do with the temple described in Ezekiel 47. Sometimes students worry the Second Coming could come any day. This glue in and quote from Joseph Smith make it very clear that certain events (such as the building of the temple in Jerusalem) MUST happen before the Lord’s return. It is fun to read the quote and try to identify which have happened and which have not.
 Click on the image to download the instructions for Bucket Ball (minus the cool looking kid). This far into the school year, you should not let students tell each other the references when a clue is given. Otherwise, what is the point of the game. If someone is stuck, then let the other students on their team tell them to turn pages one way or the other, but not tell the reference.
 Have you ever thought about what the purpose of Scripture Mastery is? I hope we give our students a vision of the usefulness of scripture mastery and a vision of these scriptures helping themselves, and giving them the ability to bless the lives of others around them.
So now that we are getting closer to the end of the year, students need to get to this application level in their understanding of scripture mastery. Scripture Masteries must become applicable to life. In real life, students are not even given the key words before they need to share a Scripture Mastery; they only have real life situations that come up. This handout helps them use the Old Testament Scripture Masteries and translate them into everyday situations. If student’s can’t make this transition to real life situation, then all our work with Scripture Mastery was in VAIN.
Maybe for the rest of the year, instead of giving them key words or other clues for chasing, try only giving them real life situations like the ones on this work sheet. Not only do I use this as a class assignment, but I also use it for role-play situations.
 First off, thank you to Sister Linda Sutton for sharing this idea with me. I have modified things a bit, but the general idea is from what she shared with me. Click on the picture, or HERE to get the instructions.
A quick summary of the game is that you assign students to make 4 multiple choice questions while they are watching General Conference. Then when you have seminary, you have the classroom set up like Family Feud and you play with the questions they provided. The instructions give the needed details.
Feel free to stop during the bowl, or after to discuss what inspired them.
 Part of our charge as seminary teachers is to teach the words of the living Prophets. And there is no better time for this then General Conference.
I wanted to get this out a bit early because this weekend is the General Young Women’s Broadcast. And many of you will be having Spring Break before that so you will want to get some of these items in their hands before that.
Because of our charge to teach the living Prophets, I’ve always given one day of makeup work for every hour they watch (and at least one page of notes for that hour). So all of our students would be able to make up 10 days (or hours) of makeup work in a short period of time. For the Young Ladies, you get to 10 hours by counting the broadcast this weekend.
So here are some helps. The first handout HERE is a simple conference report form for 5 speakers. It has them name the speaker, summarize, share principles from the talk, and list any Old Testament stories or scripture masteries that were mentioned. Also in the corner it has a place where they can write personal notes on how the Lord is directing them as they listen. I like to assign at least one of these pages as homework, regardless of makeup work. But I let them use the form or their own notes.
The handout HERE is simply the pictures of all 15 living prophets. Your students should learn to recognize them by sight (in case they run into them on vacation) so this is a fill in the blank for their names. This is fun to do before Conference, and then quiz them again after conference. You can use an overhead projector for this too.
The last handout HERE is a list of interesting facts about all 15 living prophets. This may be best to use before conference to get them excited to watch. Thank you Brother McArthur for sharing some of these!
The next time you have seminary after Conference, and before they turn in their notes, have them share what they liked. If you give them prompts, they will have a lot to share. Those are great seminary lessons. Maybe see who watched the most hours and have a surprise for them.
Here is another great resource. http://www.lds.org/study/prophets-speak-today/what-are-prophets?lang=eng
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