Saints are an important part of any Catholic religion program, and it always makes me sad that my students know so few. A few years ago our art teacher as school started incorporating writing icons into her curriculum, and it seemed like a great opportunity to work more saint research into religion class. So now every year, right at the beginning of October, the 7th graders start on the Pick a Patron Saint project. Throughout the project they will do initial research on as many as 12 saints, and then eventually they will choose one potential patron saint and create a paper based Facebook page for the saint.
For the first step of the project, I gather as many old saint books as I can from around the school. The library has a complete set of the old classic Butlers Lives of the Saints, and I really like the Picture Book of Saints as well. Using the Pick A Patron Saint Project Library the students research the lives of saints whose feast day is on or near their birthdays, as well as saints with their name or a similar name.
The next step is the computer research phase. Once students have completed the library research, they use the Pick A Patron Saint Project Computer worksheet to research the patron saints of things that relate to them, such as athletes, brothers, sisters, students etc. Because each page has a spot for six different saints, and two per sheet that the student has researched more thoroughly, they now have a lot of information to sort through to pick the saint they want to have as their patron.
Once the students have picked a saint, they then create a “Saintsbook” page for the saint. Here is my example one for Saint Gianna that I created in class last year with the students.
Here is the SaintsBook Project assignment sheet that I used last year and the SaintsBook Rubric 2018 that I used to grade students. I know that I normally attach files as a PDF, but because the websites change and you may want to tweak the requirements to meet your needs, I have left everything editable.
I hope these ideas help to make your class’s celebration of All Saints even more meaningful!
