Teaching Creatively
Teaching Creatively
Looking around at the excited faces of her class of six-year-olds, she asked, “Are you all ready?” “Yes, yes” came the replies from eight young voices. “Alright then, let’s go,” she said. At once the children fell into line in their right places. Two of the kids cautiously bore a little chair between them. That was the Ark of the Covenant of the Lord. Two conveyed cardboard rolls from paper towels. Those represented the trumpets. Two others held paper swords and the remaining two followed geared up to march wordlessly along acting as the Children of Israel. This class was marching round the city of Jericho (which chanced to comprise many cardboard boxes in the middle-of-the classroom). They had cautiously heeded the story of the magnificent triumph of Joshua’s people at Jericho. They appreciated the rules God gave His people and right away were ready to witness for themselves in an illustrative fashion the miracle that happened a lot of years ago.
The eight-year-old kids were playing “I see”. They had gone back in time to join the Israelites in the land of Egypt. Today they were hiding outside the family home of Moses’ parents. Whilst they peered into that dwelling in their imagination and then they followed on to the river bank, they alternated narrating what they encountered. “I see a baby crying, ” said one. “I see a mother threading a basket,” said another. On and on they went till the class had “conveyed” the whole object lesson of the baby Moses.
The young teenage class was assembling a newsprint account of Paul’s shipwreck and upstairs one of the grownup classes were having a discourse on the day’s lesson.
Teaching creatively isn’t for a couple of specially gifted teachers. Anybody could deliver creative lessons whenever they’re willing to commit a bit of additional time and effort to preparation and planning. Just about all creative people have gained the ability to be imaginative by perpetually searching for ideas that have worked for somebody else.
They’re people who study new spiritual magazines and periodicals, as well as “idea” books that may be discovered in just about most Christian bookstores. They’re zealous to attend teacher training sessions and to trade ideas with a different group of teachers.
They keep an eye on the activities that are used to heighten studying in the school their kids attend, and finally, they ask themselves, “If I was the pupil in my class, what would I love doing in order to understand this lesson? What would aid me most to see how I could put the truth of this lesson to work in my own life?”
We inhabit a world where we’re perpetually finding out by creative media demonstrations. Let’s get Sunday school “with-it” in order that our children will find the Sunday school class more fascinating and applicable than the evening news program broadcast or the Saturday morning animated cartoons. Apply audiovisual aid, roleplay games, dramatise, deliberate, give individual assignments and sing together. In that respect there are an infinite amount of activities to make studying a delight for all age levels. Whenever you’re willing to work at it, you are able to do it!