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#30 – Break It Up (Tips For Large Group Teaching)

March 4, 2010 in Teaching Tips with 0 Comments

Welcome to a continuing series of tips on working with large groups of children. I hope that you will find these tips useful and be able to implement them in your dealings with large groups of kids. If you do, please leave a comment and let us know. For a complete list of posts in this series, please see the index page. So, without further introduction, here is today’s installment.

Kids do not naturally have long attention spans.  I was at a movie with a toddler over Christmas vacation, and this point was drive home for me in a very real way.  Even Alvin and the Chipmunks couldn’t keep that child engaged.  After about twenty minutes, she was all over that theater until her mother finally had to take her out into the lobby.  If you’ve ever been seated behind a four year old on a cross-country flight, then you’ve likely experience this truth with all five of your senses.

The culture we live in has exasperated this problem by catering to the short attention spans of kids through the entertainment and games it offers to kids.  These influences have had the collective effective of reducing attention spans even more (as an aside, this problem isn’t limited to kids).  One of my mantras when it comes to working with kids is that we must make sure not to underestimate them.  That said, it is still a good idea to break up your lesson into smaller components to keep the kids’ attention.  Put your musical worship segment right in the middle of the lesson to give kids a chance to get up on their feet and worship God.  Tell your story and then show a video to reinforce the point.  Use announcements to give the kids a short break from the teaching.  Have the kids come up and act out the story to get them moving around.  Play a little game in the middle of your lesson to reinforce the main point.  Whatever you can think of, break the lesson into clear and distinct segments so that the kids don’t feel like they are sitting through one long teaching.  Trust me, you’ll enjoy the lesson more that way too!
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#29 – Don’t Read Your Lesson (Tips For Large Group Teaching)

March 3, 2010 in Teaching Tips with 0 Comments

Welcome to a continuing series of tips on working with large groups of children. I hope that you will find these tips useful and be able to implement them in your dealings with large groups of kids. If you do, please leave a comment and let us know. For a complete list of posts in this series, please see the index page. So, without further introduction, here is today’s installment.

When I agreed to take over the large group teaching segment of our curriculum at my church, the first thing I did was I started to read.  I looked for books with tips and helpful advice on teaching and presenting and children’s ministry in general so that I could do the best job possible.  As I was browsing at my local Christian Book Store, I came across a book that looked like it would be really helpful.  I started to browse through it a little bit at the store, and I came to a chapter with some interesting advice.  The author’s very first piece of advice was that you should memorize your lesson every week.  Well, I promptly put that book down and found something else.  How was I going to manage to memorize a lesson every week and take care of everything else in my life?   It wasn’t advice I cared for, so I did what most of us would do in the situation – I ignored it!

A couple of weeks later, I found myself back in that same store looking for more books on teaching and Children’s Ministry.  I picked up the book again and browsed some of the other chapters.  It seemed to have enough good stuff in it to make it worthwhile, so I decided to overlook the whole “you should memorize your lesson” thing and go ahead and buy the book.  I’m glad I did.  The book was chocked full of great advice, some which I have since used and is now incorporated into this series, but I found myself most convicted by the idea of memorizing the lesson.  As I frequently do when I am convicted about something and don’t really care for it, I chalked it all up to indigestion and continued reading.  As the time for me to start teaching the class grew closer and closer, the thought of memorizing the lesson continued to swirl around and around in my head.  Finally, I decided I would give it a shot.  Well, to make a long story a little bit shorter, it worked out pretty well.  I found that by memorizing the lesson, it allowed me to freedom to adapt on the fly a whole lot easier and to deliver a better message.

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#28 – See the World Through Their Eyes (Tips For Large Group Teaching)

March 1, 2010 in Teaching Tips with 2 Comments

Welcome to a continuing series of tips on working with large groups of children. I hope that you will find these tips useful and be able to implement them in your dealings with large groups of kids. If you do, please leave a comment and let us know. For a complete list of posts in this series, please see the index page. So, without further introduction, here is today’s installment.

As a teacher in Children’s Ministry, you put a lot of time and thought into preparing your lesson (at least, you should).  You’ve thought about methods for reaching the kids.  You’ve tried to pick activities and stories that will keep the kids engaged in the story.  You’ve researched the Bible lesson you are present.  You’ve tried to keep things interesting.  But, there is one more step in making sure that your lesson will work for your audience.  After you’ve prepared your lesson and you think it is ready to go, there is one more critical step in your preparation.  You must step back out of the weeds and view your lessons through the eyes of your intended audience.  Picture yourself as a six-year old boy or girl (or whatever age you teach) and work through your lesson.  Answer these questions through their eyes:

  • What do like about the lesson?
  • What don’t you like?
  • Would you have trouble paying attention?
  • Are there parts of the lesson where you will find your mind wandering?
  • What would make the lesson more interesting to you?
  • Do you understand the lesson?
  • What questions would you have about the lesson?

Step away from your role as teacher and become the student.  Put aside all the knowledge you have gathered in preparing your lesson and pretend you have never heard the story before.  Now pretend that you’re a kid who has grown up in church and heard this particular Bible story twenty times before.  Will you tune the lesson out immediately as something you already know, or is the presentation and lesson innovative enough to keep your attention?  Try to look at your lesson through the eyes of all of the different kids in your classroom.

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Teach Your Kids Bad Theology: Lying Is Easy

February 27, 2010 in Teaching Tips with 0 Comments

From Insight for Living, this is a followup video to the “Teach Your Kids Bad Theology: A How-to Guide” video featured earlier on this blog:

<a href=”http://waynestocks.com/2009/05/09/teach-your-kids-bad-theology-a-how-to-guide-tanglecom/”>Teach Your Kids Bad Theology: A How-to Guide</a>

#27 – Love Them Like Jesus (Tips For Large Group Teaching)

February 25, 2010 in Teaching Tips with 2 Comments

Welcome to a continuing series of tips on working with large groups of children. I hope that you will find these tips useful and be able to implement them in your dealings with large groups of kids. If you do, please leave a comment and let us know. For a complete list of posts in this series, please see the index page. So, without further introduction, here is today’s installment.

It is a well known refrain from a well know Children’s song:

Jesus loves the little children,
All the children of the world.
Red and yellow, black and white,
All are precious in His sight,
Jesus loves the little children of the world.

The song is the well known song “Jesus Loves the Little Children.”  Along with “Jesus Loves Me” it is arguably the most well known children’s songs of all time.  It also reflects a fundamental truth about the God that we serve – he loves children.  That love is evident throughout the Bible including verses like Mark 10:13-16:

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#26 – Always Be On The Lookout (Tips For Large Group Teaching)

February 24, 2010 in Teaching Tips with 0 Comments

Welcome to a continuing series of tips on working with large groups of children. I hope that you will find these tips useful and be able to implement them in your dealings with large groups of kids. If you do, please leave a comment and let us know. For a complete list of posts in this series, please see the index page. So, without further introduction, here is today’s installment.

When you’re flipping through television stations, do you stop at the Cartoon Channel to see what’s on?  Do you frequently check out the best-seller listing of top children’s books to know what kids are reading?  Do you subscribe to magazines aimed at kids? Do you watch commercials on Saturday morning to get a feel for toys are popular with kids today?  Do you go out of your way to find kids’ movies?  Do you walk up and down the aisles at toy stores to see what they’re playing with?  As workers in Children’s Ministry, we must be acutely aware of the culture that the kids in our ministry are living in.  We must understand it in order to converse with the kids on their level and in order to take steps to counteract any negative impacts that our culture may have on them.  After all, the Bible tells us to be in the world but not of the world, and we should have the same goal for the kids we minister to.   We must appreciate the subculture of kids in order to relate to them on their level.

Furthermore, it’s important to always keep your eyes and ears open.  You never know where you might find a great story or an object lesson you can use on a Sunday morning.  Jesus taught in parables that were relevant and understandable to those he was teaching.  Where possible, we should try to do the same thing with the kids we minister to.

A word of warning though is appropriate here.  The gospel and the Bible are timeless and are as good for teaching children today as they were a thousand years ago.  I am not talking about “updating” the Bible or the gospel in order to make it relevant to kids.  What I am suggesting is that in order to build relationships with kids that will enable us to speak the gospel and Word of God into their lives, we must understand and learn from the kid culture.  In order to connect with kids, we must understand the world that they live in on a daily basis.

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#25 – Understanding Different Learning Styles (Tips For Large Group Teaching)

February 22, 2010 in Teaching Tips with 2 Comments

Welcome to a continuing series of tips on working with large groups of children. I hope that you will find these tips useful and be able to implement them in your dealings with large groups of kids. If you do, please leave a comment and let us know. For a complete list of posts in this series, please see the index page. So, without further introduction, here is today’s installment.

There are essentially three different types of learners – auditory, visual and kinesthetic.  The different types of learners are defined principally based on how the best take in and process information.  As teachers in Children’s Ministry, we must understand each of these types of learners, including their strengths and weaknesses, so that we can design our lessons to meet the needs of all three types of learners.  Every lesson that we prepare should include elements that appeal to each of the different types.

Auditory learners represent about 30% of the population.  Auditory learners learn best by listening to the spoken word.  In many respects, these kids are a teacher’s dream in many respects.  Stand in front of them and present your lesson and they will take it all in.  It no surprise then that most traditional education techniques are geared towards auditory learners.  These learners learn best by hearing either others or themselves.  They tend to like talking and often talk to themselves.  They also process information by asking questions and giving feedback on what they do and do not understand.  They are more apt to remember names than faces.  They tend to enjoy music, and often learn well by converting things to song.  Bible verses might be easier for this type of learner to retain if they are put to song or if you have them repeat verses and information back to you.  This type of learner may be easily distracted by sounds so you might not want to overload your lesson with background sound.  The auditory learner should be engaged in conversations about spiritual things and provided plenty of opportunities to share their own stories and experiences.  This may include interview them as part of the lesson or having them answer questions during the course of the lesson.

About 60% of people are visual learners.  Visual learners learn best by what they see.  They learn much more from written or video material than spoken material.  They think in terms of pictures and benefit from seeing the facial expressions of their teachers.  Pictures and videos and skits work best with these kids in terms of retention.  They like books with pictures and illustrations.  During an oral lesson, these kids may seem distracted and may daydream.  They tend to remember faces rather than names.  Ideas for helping them learn include having them draw a picture of what they have been taught and writing out questions and answers so that they can see them visually.  The visual learner will react well to pictures, posters and lots of different colors in your classroom.  If you are relating a Bible story such as the Mary and Joseph’s trip from Nazareth to Bethlehem, point out the places on a map so the visual learner can “see the story.”  Incorporate visual questions into your lesson like, “What do you think the expression on Mary’s face was when the angel Gabriel visited her?”  Anything you can do to help visual learns process your lesson in terms of pictures will help them to retain the lesson.

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