I promised to write about this lesson some time ago, but hadn't gotten around to it.

The weekend before I taught this lesson was inservice meeting. For me, the actual lesson material is easy. I don't have any trouble reading a passage and picking out something awesome to share or have the kids discuss. What I need is "techniques". Now I know that you're probably reading "gimmicks" here. I don't mean cutesy little games and stuff to entertain my kids while slipping in a gospel golden nugget or two, I'm talking about actual techniques that teachers use that help them own and control a classroom so they can get maximum participation from their students. Read more »

This week is a weird one. The kids are off Wednesday and Thursday for exams. The other teacher is having a surgical procedure this week, too, and so his class isn't meeting Friday, which means mine isn't either. Next Monday is a school holiday (which I forgot). And yesterday, the federal government called a 2-hour delay because of ice, which meant the schools did as well, and so Seminary was canceled.

So I went from thinking I was going to do four lessons during the next few days to having to do my best with just one, so I rewrote my lesson yesterday. I suppose it was a lot like being a home study Seminary teacher, in that I have a lot of reading material assigned and I had to choose just the very best stuff to cover. Read more »

This was an easy week of lessons. I think I mentioned earlier that I am treating this section in Judges and Ruth like a biographical examination of some of the heroes (and losers) found in these passages of scripture. I am hoping these kids will see characteristics they want to emulate and avoid by studying these stories from people's lives.

Judges 2-3

We started out by looking at the maps section of the Bible. (Maps 2, 3). I talked about the Exodus (Map 2) and showed them on the map Kadeth-barnea. Then we talked about now (in Judges), the people have split up the land like in Map 3. Joshua is dead, and the people are being wicked again. Read more »

We had a regional inservice training the first weekend in January. In this area, Seminary and Institute teachers are invited to a Saturday training that lasts for several hours. This one went from 9 AM to 3 PM, and included lunch. Lunch was the best part :)

Our meetings start off with a kind of a keynote address and then we get to choose courses from two sessions in the morning, eat lunch, and then have two sessions in the afternoon. At the previous inservice, the meeting was cut short at lunch time due to a pending storm, and so during lunch there were some tables set up with different Seminary type activities and ideas that people could view at their leisure. Read more »

What a fantastic lesson we had in Seminary today! I'm not sure what happened to make things go so well, but wow, this was really a great lesson (from my point of view, anyway).

Class started off very silly -- like Monday silly -- and we even got started a little late with our opening song. We started so late that I only had them sing one verse of Praise to the Man.

We moved to the tables, and I started writing on the easel. My thought was to try to get their attention with the stuff I was writing on the easel. Normally I have everything already written out, and today I was thinking I would be able to draw their attention by writing. Not so much. They noticed, but they most talked amongst themselves. Here's what I wrote (it's from the manual):

It's my life. Read more »