There is an ancient Chinese proverb that states, “Tell me and I will forget, Show me and I may remember, Involve me and I will understand.” Too often our lessons with youth focus on “Show and Tell” and not necessarily in that order. Unfortunately, far too many youth lessons focus on just “Tell.” Get youth physically involved or you risk them disengaging after awhile due to the lack of movement. Youth need opportunities to release a little of that pent up energy. They need to be involved to get the most understanding from the lesson. Just make sure you keep them focused rather than distract them. What they do needs to explicitly link to what you want to tell the youth.
Object Lessons
The next time you do an “Object Lesson” get the youth to interact with the object in some way. Play a game with it. Get youth to pass it around. Get youth to model it. Get youth to wear it. And then link what the youth do with the object into your object lesson in some way inviting them INTO the lesson.
Stories
Youth love stories. Actually, everyone loves stories. And one of the greatest teaching techniques is to “Tell” a story so that people will remember the point. But the next time you tell a story to youth, get the youth personally involved in some way. Assign some of the youth parts to act as you tell the story. Assign some of the youth to make specific sound effects when certain cues are given in your story. Assign certain actions or facial expressions for youth to do when specific key words or other cues are given in the story. Decorate the youth room so that a similar environment is created as in the story you want to tell. Instead of saying “Imagine if we were all standing in a circle……”, get them into a circle. Ask youth to create a modern version of a familiar story and to act it out as the tell it. Next time you use a story, don’t just get them on the edge of their seats, get them out of their seats, inviting them INTO the story!
The next time you teach youth, if you are doing a lot of show and tell, think about ways you can involve your youth so the information will resonate and stick. Get them out of their seats!
MORE IDEAS? See “Creative Object Lessons”
200 page e-book that explains everything you need to know when planning your very own object lessons. It contains 90 fully developed object lesson ideas and another 200 object lesson starter ideas based on Biblical idioms and Names / Descriptions of God.
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