This is a bit late in the season, but we are still getting snow storms here in Wyoming.
Are you struggling with colder weather, morning darkness, and lack of student attention? It’s the wintertime blahs. Warmer weather and sunlight always help to solve these problems, but what co you do in the mean time. We present just a few teaching strategies here that can shake things up enough in your class to re-stimulate those young minds you are nurturing, and help both you and your students have meaningful teaching moments.
Remember, telling is not teaching. Teaching is ‘presiding’ over learning. You preside and are charged with orchestrating learning classroom situations. Here a few suggestions to change up your normal teaching routine; in essence shed to bright light on what can be learned and taught at such an early hour.
SEMINARY HIGH SCHOOL
Seminary High School is a method of presenting your lesson concepts using a rotating class schedule, based on ‘subjects’ that you students might be studying during their regular school coursework. E.g., teach a mini class in History, going over the historical settings and happenings in your lesson block. Then teach another mini class in English, reviewing the writing techniques employed by the author in several verses. Get into the meaning of words, any similes, metaphors, etc. Give a vocabulary quiz. Teach another mini class – PE. Go to the gym for a short session of Sm Messy Basketball or SM Broom Hockey.
Well maybe you get the idea. Yes,this takes lots of prep time, but spring it on a Monday and your students will be engaged differently for the rest of the week. Follow up with mini-high school class sessions for the remainder of the years.
Here are several example outlines to help you plan your Seminary High School:
- Isaiah 36-47 Seminary High School
- Seminary High School - Sections 129 and 130
- Isaiah 48 - 52 Seminary High School
SILENT LESSON
Can you teach an entire lesson without uttering a word? Silence is golden, especially as a change up from the sometimes normal boisterous seminary classroom. Key to this type of lesson; you NEVER utter a word, but give directions to your students through overheads, flashcards, or a PowerPoint presentation. But NEVER SAY A WORD. E.g., create flashcards with pre-printed questions and answers, such as “Read Verse :12 and tell me what Joseph was instructed to do.” The silent lesson is most effective if you maintain the silence throughout the class period. Here are a couple of examples:
- PowerPoint: Gethsemane Silent Lesson
- Silent Lesson
Be sure and close with your written testimony, perhaps in a handout or card that they students can take with them.
I can tell you from personal experience that this technique can also work with a group of stodgy old High Priests. After I once taught a silent lesson to our HP group, several came up afterwards and thanked me for the most spiritual lesson in years. This can really work!
OUTSIDE TEACHER
Students tire of the same droning voice day after day (did I really write that? You don’t drone on do you? Remember, telling isn’t teaching, in many cases it is droning). Well change the voice at the head of the class. If you have a special topic and there is a spiritual giant or giantess in your midst, get them to each your lesson for one day. You could use your Bishop or a bishopric member, a member of the Stake Presidency, a Relief Society president, a Ward Mission leader, or even full time missionaries. The most important points are to
- Select the topic well in advance.
- Provide lesson materials, even photocopy the manual pages if necessary,
- Announce for several days prior that a special teacher is coming on (insert day).
- Make sure you are there to introduce the guest teacher and to help with class discipline (chances are there will no problems out of respect to the new teacher).
- Follow up in the days following the lesson with quizzes and quotes from the presentation.
STUDENTS TEACH THE LESSON
Assigning a student to teach a particular lesson has multiple benefits. Your students will pay different attention to a peer who is teaching, you can get a small break, and the student assigned will gain more from preparation and teaching than will ever get from just being a student. It is a proven fact that teaching a subject dramatically increases retention. If you have a student who might be struggling with a topic, assigning them to teach is a perfect opportunity to gain special knowledge.
Lots of advance preparation is required; you must provide a full set of lesson materials and lots of follow up as the student prepares to teach. You must also be there to provide classroom help and reinforcement. Any student who acts up during the presentation is a perfect candidate for the next student presentation, which is something you might announce to a more rambunctious class…
Lots of praise in front of the other students is very positive, as well as a private ‘atta boy or atta girl.’
Here’s how I solved a problem using this strategy. I had a particular female in one of my classes who was so bright, articulate, and dynamic, that she could frequently hijack an entire class period. She reveled in asking obscure questions that lead the class into off-subject discussions. She was a handful. I asked her to teach a lesson. She accepted the challenge with the look on her face of “this will be a piece of cake.” It was, until I asked her patented kind of obscure, off-topic question from the back of the room. In an instant I could tell from the look on her face that she got it. Her actions were causing chaos in the classroom and disrupting my efforts to lead her class though teaching moments. She now felt it. In the simple turn of the tables, and without a word being spoken between us, she changed completely and never again did lead us off the path. She turned out to be a wonderful contributor from that point forward and her lesson was pretty great too!
Examples:
Outline: Helping Students Teach Lessons
Students Teach Prophets
Student Taught Object Lesson
You can use this method to bring out some of your shy students as well as give your prospective missionaries a taste of teaching the gospel. It works!
MARCH MADNESS
If you have not started already, March Madness is a scripture mastery activity from Linda Harper, a master teacher in South Carolina. I will not take the time here to explain all of the rules, but here is a link to the Old Testament version: OT SM March Madness Scripture Chase. I will say that the March Madness theme plays on the NCAA (and high school to some point) basketball tournament and the way that some Cinderella teams can make it through the bracket.
Classes that I used March Madness with got so caught up in learning the scripture masteries and their subjects in general, that is was like a shot of nitrous oxide into our classroom (that’s NOS in student language). NOS supercharges are engine for a short powerful burst: March Madness can do the same for scripture mastery in your classroom.
The most important things I have learned in using March Madness:
- Make it a reward. It is so fun and chaotic that I used it as an end of day activity when the class was engaged and cooperative. If they weren’t, no MM.
- The more Madness the better; nothing causes more fun and confusion than outrageous consequences. If you class is super competitive, MM is ideal, teams are so much in flux that strong students are always paired with weaker students. Make them participate together.
- Use a nerf basketball and something to shoot into. It has to be real, the basketball portion. I had a basketball team starter that could NOT get that nerf ball into the waste basket from three feet. He could hit three pointers on the court all day long, but was completely inept with the nerf ball. That just added to the madness and thrilled non-athletic kids who could outshoot the star, in a good natured way. It is all in how you handle the class.
- Have a good reward for the winning team. I usually hosted the wining team for breakfast at my house, with mini-candy bars for everyone else. Of course that winning team and it’s members was not decided until the very last shot and question, so everyone stayed in engaged.
Well, that’s it enough for now. I hope these ideas will give you something to try with your classes and that you will have some special experiences in the coming months!
Courtney White’s newest LDS YW Lesson Handouts are now available! This set is for the 
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Serene fell in love with book binding after taking the book binding class at BYU while she was working on her graphic design degree. She so excelled that she was invited to teach the course a couple of times since she graduated. My son said he had wanted to take that class - it was a very popular class at BYU and very hard to get a spot in. I attended one of Serene’s classes as her guest one evening - they were doing paste paper that night, a paper decorating technique I had never done before. It was so fun!
