Videos Show Easy Ways for Teachers to Involve Students
- Watch teaching videos on LDS.org to learn how to better involve the youth in your class.
- The teaching methods modeled in the videos are from actual classrooms.
- The teaching principles shown can be applied in any teaching situation at church or at home.
“By doing those kinds of activities, you allow the group to engage in the classroom. And once that happens, then your teaching is more effective.”—Teacher of youth class
Teaching youth can be a rewarding and spiritually edifying experience, but lessons tend to go better when class members participate fully.
If you’re looking for ways to involve the youth more during your lessons, watch the series of brief training videos on LDS.org that show effective teaching methods at work in actual classes. Although the videos are directed at teachers using the Come, Follow Me curriculum for youth, the principles can be applied in any teaching situation at church or at home.
Each video is less than three minutes long and models a specific, actionable teaching method, such as using familiar objects to teach gospel truths, searching for answers in the scriptures, and personalizing gospel doctrines.
In one video, the teacher brings in a large, heavy rock as a visual aid to help teach his students about the burdens of being in debt. The youth in the class are obviously involved and interested. “It’s kind of like a parable,” one student comments in the video. “It helps us with something we do understand, understand something that we might not.”
“By doing those kinds of activities,” the teacher summarizes, “you allow the group to engage in the classroom. And once that happens, then your teaching is more effective. You have the attention of the class. They are engaged with each other. They want to learn together. They want to teach each other,” he says.
In another video, the teacher asks the young women in her class to pick out several key words that summarize the teachings of the scripture verse they are reading. Identifying the key words helps the young women get more meaning from the scriptures and have a discussion about gospel truths.
Another idea is to ask class members to turn their chairs around in pairs and teach each other a simple principle. Or pass around a bowl with scriptures written on slips of paper and then ask each young man or young woman to select a paper and teach the scripture to the rest of the class.
While the specific examples in these videos can certainly be effective in your own class, they’re mainly intended to show how many different ways there are to involve the youth and assist them in teaching and learning together.
This method of teaching and learning is found in the scriptures: “Let not all be spokesmen at once; but let one speak at a time and let all listen unto his sayings, that when all have spoken that all may be edified of all, and that every man may have an equal privilege” (D&C 88:122).