1. Prayer
2. Song
3. What's in the Box?
I always start class off by walking in the room and asking the girls "Who do we need to pray for?" I wanted to start with a routine for class, so we always start with the prayer. That way as soon as the girls get in the classroom at church, they know exactly what I'm going to say first, so they are already thinking of who we should pray for.
We then discuss the people that are sick, tests coming up, and other various things like school assignments and ball games that the kids are concerned about. Then I ask for a volunteer to lead us in prayer...sometimes it takes a little prying, but the girls will usually volunteer, or volunteer each other (this is an all girls class)...sometimes no one is in a talking mood, so I'll lead us. We've found they are more willing to lead the prayer if someone keeps a list while we are discussing who to remember in prayer. This is a good opportunity for them to learn how to pray, and how other people pray too!
Next on the agenda is a song. I wanted to make sure these girls were caught up to speed on some of the Youth Songs I had learned when I was their age. This church is a very small church, and they didn't know many of the youth songs when I first started attending there. Going to a large congregation when I was their age definitely had its perks, like having a Youth Minister, going on Youth Retreats, and attending various other activities that helped prepare me to be able to teach youth at church. We take our youth to the Challenge Youth Conference, and I wanted to make sure the girls knew the songs for worship there.
After prayer and song, I knew I wanted to teach the girls how to take notes during a sermon. So many times our minds drift off into "La La Land" and we lose focus of what we are listening to. I find that taking notes during worship allows me to stay focused and actively learning. I gave each of the girls a composition book to take notes, and we even decorated the fronts (after wrapping with contact paper.) Being young, not all of the girls were used to taking notes, so I walked them through some tips for taking notes:
1. DON'T WRITE EVERYTHING DOWN!!! Short, concise, main ideas
2. Date and title each page
3. Just write down the verse number, not the entire verse, unless its something you want to make sure you remember, or a theme verse that is really important to the lesson
4. Star important points, or number them
5. Write down words you don't know at the top or in the column so you know to look them up later
6. Highlight or put a box around sections to make it "pop" off the page
7. Use different color highlighters if that's your thing
8. Scribble out instead of erasing (because that takes too much time)
9. If a question comes up in your head, write it in the side column so you can ask it later, or look it up
10. Write down people's names and what they did so you can remember better
Then came the first "What's in the box?" experiment. I wasn't sure if the girls would like the activity, but they loved it.
I told them I had put something in the box before church, and I wanted to see if they could guess what was in it. We begin passing the box around. Each girl shook the box, listening fervently, and guessed what they believed was in the box. Then we would reveal what was actually in the box, and begin my lesson.
No comments:
Post a Comment