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Teacher Skill Builders
Teacher Skill Builder
SUNDAY SCHOOL CAN BE A GOOD EXPERIENCE
You reach your classroom on Sunday morning with high hopes for an interesting class where everyone is involved. Your hopes are dashed when your lesson presentation is lost amid classroom chaos. As the last student leaves, you wonder what happened. Did you make a mistake by agreeing to teach?
If this sounds familiar, the following tips are for you.
Use variety.
An interesting presentation is crucial for maintaining student attention. An interested class has fewer behavior problems.
Practice your presentation during the week. Don’t read the entire lesson to the students. If you do, • your students will think you don’t know the material, • you won’t have eye contact, • you won’t see signs of potential misbehavior.
As you study your lesson, select activities to provide variety and evoke interest and understanding. Lecture has a place among teaching methods, but any method used all the time becomes monotonous. Students will be more interested in the lesson if variety is used in its presentation.
Let the students help set behavior boundaries.
Have an informal class discussion and let the students suggest what behaviors should or should not be permissible in Sunday School. List their suggestions on the marker board. Some students may try to be funny or shocking in their suggestions, but you will probably get several excellent ideas. Help the students understand that their conduct shows how much they love and respect God. You may be pleasantly sur
prised at how well the students respond to forming their own guidelines for behavior.
Communicate your own behavior expectations.
Tell the students what kind of behavior you expect from them. Explain, for example, that you want them to read their lesson before class or that you don’t want them to interrupt while you or someone else is talking. Telling them what you expect lets them know if their behavior is acceptable.
Reinforce the positive.
A misbehaving student receives attention while the well-behaved students are often ignored.
Children like to feel they are noticed and that they are pleasing the people who are important to them. By complimenting positive behavior, such as contributions and attentiveness while others are speaking, you are providing examples of how you want all the students to act.
Make your room cheerful.
A bright room filled with interesting items is inviting. Although you may face limitations in decorating as you wish, you can still do things to brighten a room. • Add brightly colored posters. Purchase inexpensive posters or let the students make them to give them a sense of ownership. • Work out arrangements with leaders of groups who share the room. Decorate portions of the walls assigned to you.
Teacher Skill Builder
Enjoy your students.
Children can sense if you want to be their teacher. When they know you want to be with them, misbehavior, apathy, or chaos is diminished and interest and involvement increases. • Like your students for who they are. • Consider the strengths or talents of each student. • What is particularly likable about each student? • Ask God to help you see positive characteristics in difficult students.
The more you enjoy your students as people, the more you will enjoy your teaching ministry. Your students will also sense they are accepted for who they are and will begin to relax and enjoy the class—and you.
ESSENTIALS FOR IMPROVEMENT
There will be days when it seems nothing works. Children are naturally more energetic during holidays or drastic changes in weather (the first snowfall, or the first few days of warm weather after winter). It is also impossible to know all the events happening in each student’s personal life. As a teacher who wants to improve, do these things:
Pray
Ask God to help you be the teacher He wants you to be. Ask Him to show you ways to improve your teaching ministry. Seek to be open to the Holy Spirit’s direction as He convicts and deals with students in your class.
Pray for each student individually. You may not know every need each student has, but God does. Pray in your classroom before the students arrive. Dedicate your class time to God to be used for His glory. God can work through your prayers.
Evaluate progress
After every class, evaluate it. • How did the students react to the lesson topic? • Did the students identify how the topic related to them? • Did your presentation keep them interested? • Did you give the students a chance to respond to the lesson topic? • Did you begin to lose control of the students? If so, when?
By evaluating each lesson, you will become more aware of which ideas work with your particular students and which ideas don’t. This will give you guidelines for future lessons.
Depend on God’s help
You are not alone in your teaching ministry. God wants you to be a successful teacher. He wants Sunday School to be a good experience for you and for your students. Let God help you be the teacher He wants you to be.
Teacher Skill Builder
GROWING SPIRITUALLY By Glen Ellard
Daily prayer and Bible study are essential for both you and your students. Daily Bible study and prayer can benefit you as a teacher by • helping your own life to grow spiritually stronger, making you a better role model. • providing spiritual help for your teaching ministry.
If you have a hard time developing a consistent pattern of Bible study and prayer, perhaps the following points may help.
1. Make an appointment with God. Develop a habit of having your devotions at the same time every day when you can be alone with God. Remember, God spoke to Elijah in a still, small voice (1 Kings 19:11–13). Hearing God speak is easier if your mind is uncluttered with the day’s activities. If necessary, keep a notepad handy. When something you need to remember comes to mind, jot it down, then return to your devotions.
If you begin to have your devotions at the same time each day, this will soon become a normal, yet special, part of your day’s schedule. The day may even seem incomplete if you fail to have your time with God. It is a spiritually uplifting habit.
2. Find a “secret place.” This may be nothing more than sitting beside a certain window or in a favorite chair during your devotions. In your secret place you can shut yourself away from the problems and trials of daily life and spend special moments with God.
3. Pray for the Holy Spirit’s guidance. Jesus knew we could not understand His Word by using our minds alone. We need His help to understand spiritual truths. The Holy Spirit provides that help.
Before you read God’s Word, ask the Holy Spirit to help you understand what it says and how you can apply it to your life. Then be sensitive to the Spirit’s direction.
4. Come just as you are. Prayer is a privilege God has given us to express our deepest feelings to Him. Talk honestly with God. He knows how you feel. Psalm 139:4 says, “Before a word is on my tongue you know it completely, O Lord” (NIV). God wants you to come to Him as you are. He understands you because He created you.
5. Incorporate praise. Prayer is also a time to praise God for who He is. God deserves our praise and adoration. God can do great things in and for us as we praise Him. He commanded the army of Jehoshaphat to let the singers lead them into battle. When they obeyed, they found their enemy completely destroyed. There is power in praise (2 Chronicles 20:20–24).
6. Include your teaching ministry. As you spend time in prayer, ask God to prepare you for the coming Sunday. Let the Holy Spirit guide you into a deeper understanding of the truths you teach your students. The Holy Spirit may also reveal additional passages of Scripture that will be useful in teaching your class. Then pray for each student in your class.
7. Share your devotions. Tell your students about some new things you have learned from God’s Word or an answer to prayer you have had in your personal devotions. You will set a good example of daily devotions for them to follow. They need to know you practice what you teach.
Personal devotions is a time to grow in Christ. Let God speak to you as you in turn speak to Him. Then minister to others through your growing, maturing spiritual life.
God the Father
In this unit of study, you will be looking at the nature of God in His relationship with us. His nature is to be true to His word. He will keep His promises to love us, to help us, and to provide a home in heaven for us. We can trust this God above all gods. He has made a way for us to know Him and to become part of His family forever. No other god could do that.
discuss how Noah showed confidence in God’s faithfulness, explain how God showed himself a living God by the sign He gave Israel, and summarize how God’s love for them should affect their relationships with others. By the end of this unit, your students should be able to
UNIT VERSE
KJV: Thus saith the Lord the King of Israel, and his redeemer the Lord of hosts; I am the first, and I am the last; and beside me there is no God. Isaiah 44:6
NIV: “This is what the Lord says— Israel’s King and Redeemer, the Lord Almighty: I am the first and I am the last; apart from me there is no God.” Isaiah 44:6
The unit memory verse is provided for those teachers who prefer that the students learn one verse each unit rather than a new verse each week. The unit memory verse can be learned over the course of an entire unit.
UNIT REVIEW
Give each student a copy of the review from Copy Master 1 at the beginning of the quarter to see what they need to learn. Give the review again at the end of the quarter to see what they learned. See below.
CLASS PROJECT IDEA
Graffiti Wall
You will need a large sheet of paper, markers, and tape.
Post a large sheet of paper on the wall of your classroom. Tell the students this is a graffiti wall where they can jot down things they’ve learned in class, encouraging messages to friends, prayer requests, and praise reports. It gets students involved and encourages interaction and communication. You may even start things out by writing your own encouraging note to the class. Leave the paper up for this unit, allowing the students to add to it each week. At the end of the unit, use the graffiti poster to review the lessons and talk about answered prayers.
