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:

• 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.

• 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.

• 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.

• 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.

André Morales, a Coordinator

The students in the region where Brother Morales coordinates the seminary program begin school on March 6. He begins preparing a pacing guide for the teachers of these students so the teachers won’t have to. He begins by looking at the Come, Follow Me schedule to see what scripture block would be studied that week. He notices that for the week of March 6, the scripture block is Matthew 9–10, Mark 5, and Luke 9. For that week in the seminary teacher manual he sees the following five lessons:

Brother Morales understands that many students will be new to seminary, so he decides to begin the semester by picking a few of the lessons from the introductory materials in the New Testament Seminary Teacher Manual. He chooses “Introduction to the New Testament” and “Studying the Scriptures.”

Brother Morales feels good about these first two lessons but is struggling to know which other lessons he should plan for this first week. He looks at the weekly overview document for this week and reviews the lesson purposes for each of the lessons. He really feels like students would have a great experience with the two lessons in Mark 5, but he also recognizes that students need to be introduced to doctrinal mastery. So, he adds the “Introduction to Doctrinal Mastery” lesson. For the other two lessons, he decided to include both lessons in Mark 5. So the first week in the pacing guide looks like this:

The next week in the schedule, Brother Morales sees that there is a doctrinal mastery passage for Matthew 11:28–30.

He feels like students should really understand the principles of acquiring spiritual knowledge before they have the doctrinal mastery passage lesson on Matthew 11:28–30. He decides to schedule all three lessons about acquiring spiritual knowledge into the first part of this week. He then schedules the contextual lesson and the corresponding doctrinal mastery passage lesson on Matthew 11:28–30.

For each of the subsequent weeks, he decides to follow the order the lessons are organized in the teacher manual, with a few exceptions. He looks at the Come, Follow Me schedule and notices that while the students were on summer break and seminary was not in session, there were four other doctrinal mastery passages that were studied. He still needs to include in the pacing guide the doctrinal mastery passage lessons and corresponding contextual lessons for those four passages: Luke 2:10–12, John 3:5, John 3:16, and Matthew 5:14–16. Notice how he altered the next couple of weeks to ensure that students received all the doctrinal mastery passages and their associated contextual lessons.

After Brother Morales finishes the pacing guide to this point, he notices that the next week is Easter. The seminary teacher manual does not include any content for the Easter or Christmas weeks included in Come, Follow Me, so Brother Morales can schedule any lessons he chooses to for this week. He could decide to include other lessons students may have missed over the summer. He decides to schedule during this week the two remaining doctrinal mastery passage lessons and their associated contextual lessons that were covered during the time of summer break. He still has one other spot for a lesson and decides to add a lesson from the introductory materials that students haven’t had yet.

Now that Brother Morales has included all the doctrinal mastery passage lessons and the associated contextual lessons in the pacing guide, he follows the order of lessons in the teacher manual. Occasionally, there are weeks with a day off from school. During these weeks he still prioritizes doctrinal mastery learning experiences and decides which one of the other lessons in the week to not include in the pacing guide.

Brother Morales follows this pattern until the last few weeks of the first half of the course. With two weeks remaining, he includes the “Doctrinal Mastery: Assessment 1 Review” lesson in place of a doctrinal mastery review. The following week, which is the final week of the first half of the course, he decides to schedule the “Doctrinal Mastery: Assessment 1” lesson. He schedules it early in the week so students have a few more days to take it if any are absent on the day it is administered or need to retake it.

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.