Teaching No Greater Call Part B: Lesson 17

Helping Learners Be Attentive

I was super nervous to teach this lesson.  Who knows why?  The spirit helped me as I taught and really inspired the class members and we had a wonderful discussion on how to help our learners stay more attentive.  I encouraged the class to give themselves a grade in their head a few times throughout the lesson on how engaged and attentive they were as I tried to model some of the ideas from the lesson.  Lesson link on lds.org HERE.

Since conference is coming up next week, we spent the first 10-15 minutes of the lesson discussing the following questions:

• Why is it sometimes hard to pay attention in conference?
• How have you been able to help your children be more attentive during conference?
• What are some ways that you can help yourself be more attentive at conference?
• The summary of the discussions was really motivation for our kids as well as motivation for us and planning ahead = success.

I then told a personal story, similar to the one in the manual about how the teacher lost certain students along the way but related it to something that had happened to me a few weeks ago.  I thought this would help engage the class (it did) and I encouraged the class to score themselves in their head on their level of attentiveness.  I also brought a prop from this to give them something to look at.  

I then asked the class the question from the manual "How can teachers help learners to remain attentive?" and then as the class answered I wrote the answers on the board and talked about the ones that the manual featured.  I tried to model the ones that I could. Here are some follow up questions you can ask with each of these answers:

• Relevancy - What are some ways that you could help your students see how the lesson material applies to them in their lives?
• Vary your voice - How can you use your voice to influence the attention of those that you teach?
• Eye Contact - Why would making eye contact with your students help them become more attentive? 
• Movement - how can movement help learners become more attentive? 
• Pace of the Lesson - Does anyone have an example of where the pace of the lesson influenced the people they were teaching - for the better or maybe not so good?
• Variety of Teaching Methods - many ways to serve potatoes. What are some teaching methods that you remember from a particular lesson? Why was it effective for you?

To wrap up the discussion I asked these questions:

•  How did Jesus help his learners to remain attentive?
• Anything else? How can you help make the lesson principles memorable, so that students retain the information after the class in their day to day lives? For me, sometimes it’s less about what they teach and more about the fact that I know the teacher loves me, cares about me and has a testimony.  That’s what I remember years later.  

Individual’s Responsibility to Participate

• In the end, we can't always get everyone to engage or participate.  What does this scripture teach us about how to help those that choose sometimes not to participate? D&C 121:41