Latter-day Village Square

We have just launched a new subscription product that I am really excited about. Donna McAllister of Belle Vista, California is writing LDS Sunday School Lesson Plans based on the Gospel Doctrine manual for this year - The Book of Mormon.

What is significant about Donna’s plans is that she has geared them for the youth Sunday School courses - 14-17. These youth classes use the same lesson manual that is used for adult Gospel Doctrine lessons, and there is no additional material to help focus the lessons on the youth. I have to admit, I was unaware of this situation. I have never taught youth Sunday School classes, and assumed there was a set of youth SS manuals! Or if the same manuals were used, there would be suggestions for ways to present the material to youth. That isn’t the case.

Donna recognized this problem years ago when she was called to teach youth SS. So she has been preparing new plans for youth based on the adult lessons - and now she is sharing her work with us - and with you! The response so far has been very positive! One teacher wrote in:

I am a Sunday school teacher and am absolutely thrilled about “Donna’s Lesson plans” I used the sample lesson in my class today and it was perfect.

Another user wrote in:

I wanted to THANK [Donna] for sharing the SS lesson plans. My husband started teaching the youth ages 13-17 back in the summer. He tells me almost every week how difficult it is to put the lesson on a youths level, especially now that the course of study is the Book of Mormon. He says he knows it’s sometimes above their heads, but he has a good group.

Tonight I showed him Donna’s lesson help and he loved it. Men don’t always think about word strips and posters of the quotes. He was excited to know that he’s a step ahead with Donna’s lesson.

Donna includes a very detailed lesson plan, and the visuals, posters, word strips, puzzles, handouts, supplemental articles from the New Era, etc that fit into the lesson. It is great to have all of this at your fingertips, ready to go to present a lesson to our youth each week.

You can find Donna’s Lesson Plans at http://latter-dayvillage.com/pages/ss/gdbm1.html

We’ve added a new Sunday School Menu item from our horizontal menu bar that appears on almost every page of LDV. And we’ve also added additional Sunday School resources to our Free Sampler. http://latter-dayvillage.com/sampler/category.php?id=119

The Sr. Primary, Youth Sunday School, and adult Sunday School classes are correlated so families should be studying the same basic material in their various classes each week - but without a doubt, the material needs to be presented at the level of the class - and so we are excited to offer this great tool for helping our youth SS teachers do that.

~Debra