In the front of each classic Sunday School lesson manual there was a section called Helps for the Teacher. It gives basic guidelines for how to use the lesson manual. It explains that each lesson contains certain sections including: purpose, preparation, attention activity, discussion and application, conclusion, and additional teaching ideas. The one section described as “the main part of the lesson” is Scripture Discussion and Application. Notice that the main part of the lesson is not Teacher Lecture. Monologues are for sacrament meeting and dialogues are for Sunday School.
The fact that Sunday School should be full of discussion is not a new idea. Most teachers know this and give a good attempt at doing so. After attempting to stimulate discussion it is easy to become discouraged by long moments of awkward silence.
Here are some thoughts to consider in order to stimulate class discussion.
1. Avoid Context Questions
When using a Church manual to teach, you will find the Scripture Discussion and Application section sprinkled with a variety of questions. Quite frankly, avoid these questions. It’s easy to assume that because the Church curriculum department put these questions in the manual, all teachers are required to use them. That’s simply not true and the teacher’s manual even says so (see Helps for the Teacher). Many of the questions in the manual are not effective because they are extremely broad and in most cases only focus on the context of the scripture story (i.e. How did Ammon respond to Limhi’s request?). Reading a verse and then asking the class to explain what is happening in the story rarely stimulates further discussion. Many inexperienced teachers don’t know what else to ask and use the questions in the manual as a crutch and receive short answers or awkward silence.
The main idea behind asking questions about the context is to lay out the story so the class can then reach a deeper level of discussion. However, the majority of the class time can disappear by trying to establish the context of the story—leaving only a few minutes at the end to have a deeper discussion about the doctrinal principles of the lesson.
Don’t get me wrong, the context is very important to establish, but can be done in more effective ways. For example, one class I taught in Sunday School, I asked a handful of individuals a week before to read specific chapters that related to the lesson, and then I had them summarize it at the beginning of my lesson. Within five minute the context was established and we were ready to move on. You could also quickly ask context questions in the beginning of the lesson simply to prime the pump to help them feel comfortable speaking up in class, but don’t let it consume large amounts of time.
2. Don’t Control the Discussion—Steer the Discussion
Once your lesson preparation ends and it is time to teach, there is no doubt you have discovered some fantastic concepts to share. Many have deep spiritual experiences as they prepare a lesson, which is exactly the reason teaching is one of the best callings in the church. Your spiritual preparation gets you excited to share your lesson plan. This excitement causes many teachers to launch into a lengthy lecture leaving the class wide-eyed and barely blinking. A teacher must come to terms with the idea that your detailed ideas and thoughts may never be heard in your lesson. You are not there to create lesson content you are there to steer the discussion.
The difference between a bad lesson and a good lesson is engagement. The only job you have as a teacher is to make sure engagement is in the room. The reason you planned for hours before the class is to step-in when the classroom discussion goes stale or off topic.
3. Engagement: Ask Questions in Advance
It’s no secret that the vast majority of individuals come to the class without a thought of what will be taught. If they did a little studying on their own, things would be much easier for the teacher. You can either run to the bishop and asked to be released or commit to being proactive.
Like my example a few paragraphs back, assigning ward members with specific tasks before your lesson is quite effective in getting them participating during your lesson. It forces them to engage in the topic and to put some thought into it. There is no right way to do this—just ask them to prepare a specific task.
4. Point & Ask a Question
Just like when you ask someone to say a prayer in class and people look at the ground—the same thing happens when you ask a question. The majority of people have an answer for the class but are waiting for someone else to raise their hand. If you throw a question out and nobody immediately responds, simply point at someone and ask them what they think. You’ll be amazed by the response rate.
5. Stop with the “White Slip” Madness
Every Saturday night across the general body of the church there are thousands of Sunday school teachers cutting out slips of numbered paper with quotes printed on them or scripture references. They eagerly pass these out before the lesson and consider class participation to be in the bag. Maybe this works for some teachers, but it is only a way to create artificial classroom participation. Just because you have people reading a slip of paper does not mean engagement is increasing. The same goes for calling on individuals to read a select verse of scriptures—engagement is still not increased by this task. I prefer the teacher read the scriptures because then they can take their time to accentuate specific parts of the verse that they would like to focus on.
I’m sure there are other tips teachers are using in order to get the class talking. What ideas have you found helpful? Comment below.
+1 for the white slip madness comment.
Fabulous ideas! Thanks for sharing, I can certainly use this when I teach the RS in our Branch. I especially like the suggestion for the teacher to read the scriptures. We have so many poor readers that the scriptures verses regularly get butchered. Here's a sample from my blog: http://plainandpreciousthing.blogspot.com/2013/02…
One thing we do in our RS is to watch the conference talk we are going to study (either on a first Sunday or fourth Sunday TFOT) so that the non-readers (and non-watchers) will all see and hear the talk. So many here don't watch conference and don't read the Ensign! Watching the talk has sparked discussion for us because it is fresh in their minds. I ask a few leading questions and the sisters really participate.
My recent post Lessons I Learned Too Late to Do Me Any Good, But Might Help My Children
Superb post!
"Avoid Context Questions" … Couldn't agree more!
"Stop with the “White Slip” Madness" … 100 likes for this one!
Great post!! I appreciate all of the suggestions. Thank you!!
I am currently teaching the young women, so a slightly different situation. However, I often like to ask them, “Why should (such-and-such) matter to you? Does it matter to you?” I want the youth to focus on what these lessons do for them. At this point in their lives they need to be deciding what the truths are and how they can better their lives with the information the gospel provides. The same can go for Sunday School because we are all still learning, growing, and refining our testimonies.
Speaker DeAnna Murphy has a great podcast about “Teach by council.” In this podcast she says that there are 4 great questions to teach doctrine and engage students emotionally. These questions are: 1. What did you notice? 2. What is important about that? 3. What do you think it/he/she/ means? and 4. What will you do?
The teacher introduces the topic, reads a scripture then asks questions 1-4 to one person or several. This helps us to engage emotionally and when we engage emotionally, we can feel more connected to one another and learn about the gospel and each other- creating unity. Also God knows we will feel joy through knowledge of doctrine. John 17:13 Joy be fulfilled
DeAnna Murphy works with Gallop strengths, you can probably look her up. She is also a member of the church.
I agree with a previous comment, that youth are a bit of a different animal than adults.
But, as a whole, I think we need to stop thinking about those in front of a class as a “teacher.” Rather, we should be thinking about those in front of the class as a “facilitator.”
And, AMEN, on the white papers!
It’s funny you just wrote this. We are having a “train the trainer” training meeting this Sunday morning for all teachers who teach adults (the other teachers will come next).
These are the 4 main principles we want our teachers to know / do…
1. TEACH DOCTRINE OVER HISTORY (i.e. it’s more important to teach the doctrine found in the history or stories than it is to teach the history or stories. Focus on teaching doctrine found in the scripture block you’re teaching.)
2. FOLLOW THE 80/20 RULE (i.e. Most classes consist of teachers teaching 80% of the time with only 20% of the time left for discussion. Turn that around and make 80% of the class time discussion with only 20% of the time teacher teaching.)
3. PREPARE INSPIRED QUESTIONS IN ADVANCE (i.e. Go through the lesson and seek inspiration to come up with a list of questions that will help identify the doctrine. Ask Heavenly Father which questions you should to help people learn the doctrine in the history or the story.)
4. SEND SCRIPTURES AND QUESTIONS IN ADVANCE (i.e. Send the list of scriptures and your list of inspired questions several days in advance to class members and ask them to come prepared to answer the questions. This will give members the time to ponder and think about the answers to your questions, which will create much better doctrine-based discussions).
You have some good ideas David. I’d suggest you check out the resources under the Sunday School serving in the church section on lds.org. There are a couple of articles there that totally changed the way I looked at teaching and discussions specifically! Discussion is not a means to a end…we’ve got to tie it back to doctrine. So often we think if we have a couple of inspired questions we are good to go and can let the discussion teach…check it out. It’s really good stuff. And it can apply SO well to RS and Priesthood lessons on conference talks. I often leave feeling like that was a really great and interesting discussion and I am motivated to go and do but I think the doctrine doesn’t get taught as well, unless the teacher is purposely trying to tie the discussion back to the doctrine. Also, there was a great article in the Church News the end of December about teaching the Old Testament. The General Sunday School presidency laid out what they thought was important. HIstorical context is going to be an important part of teaching this year. Doesn’t need to take up the bulk of the lesson but it needs to be there. Good luck with your training! It sounds great!
I always tell the class that it isn’t about what Sister Morgan ( that would be me) knows but about each of us having an “ah ha” moment.
Just yesterday I had to teach course 13 with a nasty case of laryngitis (my husband is the SS president and he already had to find 3 subs. I didn’t want to to stress him out to find another.) and here is what I did to minimize my talking. It worked really well. I wrote a question and a couple of scripture references on the board. I divided the class into groups and had them look up the scriptures and answer the question. Then I had them present their findings to the class. Next, I showed a conference talk that covered the principle in greater detail. I had them look for three things in the talk they could do to gain a better understanding of the principle and I had a few students share what they learned. Lastly I issued an invitation to choose one thing they learned and put it into practice. I will be following up next week. I had several students tell me they liked the lesson more than others we have done. Sometimes you are faced with a less then ideal situation and you learn something in the process.
And I agree that we need to ditch the slips of paper. If you need to read scriptures write them on the board so everyone can follow along whether the teacher reads them or not. And the teacher needs to read the quotes. I’ve had teachers put them up on a projector or TV screen and that works really well.
Great insights on teaching Sunday school kids
I agree with everything and I have found it useful to ask people before hand if they could share an experience that demonstrates x principal in action.
The only tip I could add that goes a long with that is that, I’ve recently asked sisters who are not in class because of their service in primary or young women’s, or even inactive the moment, so that they too are edified and included and have a voice. I personally felt this was a powerful twist to asking someone whom I knew would be in the class in person. Those sisters felt thought of and of service.
it also works for Sunday talks to ask others for their testimonies of a doctrine. Especially maybe those who are inactive or still shy. They can remain anonymous but when we share stories and testimonies of people within our own ward, it can be more effective than the story of someone far away.