President Dieter F. Uchtdorf (Oct. 17): "Three Sisters"

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The Activity:

Instead of a traditional activity for this talk, I have envisioned a graphic organizer.  A graphic organizer is simply a way to help class members make sense of a topic by graphically depicting it in a way that is more helpful.  In this case, the graphic organizer is very simple—a table, but it seems to me that organizing the information in this way would be helpful to class members to make sure that they get as much as possible out of the message.  Here is the graphic organizer:

Sister
Characteristics
Consequences
Remedies/
Safety Nets
Sad



Mad



Glad






Using the Activity:

This is a rather flexible strategy (graphic organizers).  You can pass them out and let the class members use them as they will to record the information.  You can use it on the board as a way of structuring the class discussion.  You could break the class up into smaller groups to fill out all of the boxes or to simply focus on a single sister before coming back together to discuss the entirety of the message.  Use it as seems best to you.

There is, I fear, a danger with this message that we paint with broad strokes and say that some of the sisters are weak or simply bad while the last sister is naïve or too good.  In reality, we are all each of the sisters at different times.  As Pres. Uchtdorf says in his talk, people are not this simple, but we all see parts of these three in ourselves and those around us.  The goal, therefore, is not to dismiss or demean any particular way of being, it is to acknowledge that each attitude is present in each of us and to focus on improving ourselves line upon line, which means something different for each of us and something that most likely none of us will actually know about those sitting around us, despite what we may imagine.  J

I pray that this strategy will be of use to you.  It is not meant as a copout.  I often think in terms of tables and charts in my own head and this graphic would not really leave my mind as I tried to envision a teaching strategy for this talk.  May God bless you.

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