Perfecting the Saints — One Lesson at a Time
I sat in a class the other day and the teacher posed a question which invited not only responses but perhaps a personal story to illustrate the response. It was a good question and a response came quickly, coupled with a personal story to strengthen it…
Karl G. Maeser, a leading 19th century educator, once said, “A great question is often worth ten answers.” Think about that for a minute. We generally think of getting answers as the goal of asking questions. The teacher asks, the students answer, and …
When I was a brand new, full time seminary teacher I went to a training meeting. I was eager for it. One of the men doing the training had set up, on the table in front of him, a stack of all of the resources available to us as teachers. There were res…
I recently was in a class and watched a teacher do a very ‘teacher-like’ thing: he made a list on the white board. He had the students read a passage, then went back with them to pick out certain things from the passage that answered a question he had …
If you want to accelerate learning for your students it is helpful to create a little tension in the classroom. Tension needs resolution and the process of trying to resolve a problem and ease the tension opens up the mind to learning new things, not j…
I once visited a teacher’s class that did not go well. We talked afterwards and we both knew it was weak. A month later I visited and it was a much better class. I asked him if he could pinpoint the difference and what had happened in the last 4-5 week…
Details matter. Sometimes in lesson preparation I think of large themes and big things to do in class. But if I forget the details I lose some of the power that the lesson could have. For example, there are some words that pop up frequently that beg fo…
Here is something I wanted to write about a while back and thought I did, but was reminded by a friend that it never happened. So here it is now.The question is how do you get more students to open up and speak more often? Teachers will tell me that th…
It almost seems silly to ask if you want to get better as a teacher. If you don’t seek improvement, what are you doing? Students change, curriculum modifies, technology grows. If you’re not improving with it you are being left behind. I feel contractua…
The proliferation of machinery and electronic gadgetry in and around the classroom has been a real blessing in teaching and learning. I can remember using a mimeograph machine to make multiple copies of something for the whole class; also saving my nic…
By Scott Knecht It is satisfying at the end of a class to sit back and think how well I covered the material for the students. Teachers love to cover things and to say things like “we covered that really well in class today and the students are all ready for the test.” I think we feel victorious when we can acknowledge that our coverage was great. But here is…
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We are moving to http://NoBoringLessons.com/ where you can find Come Follow Me Lesson ideas for the new 2019 curriculum Dismiss