After last weeks' newsletter, several teachers wrote asking for some possible ideas to help with "lesson crunch" (having too more lessons than remaining teaching days).

Here are a few suggestions:

• If you have not invited students to teach yet this year, this may be a good opportunity to do so. You can invite 2 or 3 students per day. Assign them 2 or 3 lessons. It's a great way to combine lessons and is a good (if not always immediately welcomed) experience for your students.

• In order to cover a very large scripture block (containing chapters from several lessons) assign individual chapters or scripture blocks to students at the beginning of the lesson. Ask students to read through their scripture block and then summarize it for the other students. Doing so will give you a good springboard for discussion, and students are usually very good at finding the key gospel principles within their assigned scripture blocks.

• On Friday, assign a reading block to students and let them know that you will be playing a game with it on Monday. Over the weekend prepare a game (such as Jeopardy, concentration, or a matching game) based on questions from the assigned reading block.

• Review three lessons. Select the most important gospel principle to teach from each lesson. Prepare your lesson around those three themes.

• Invite a guest speaker to class. Give them two lessons and ask them to summarize them in a presentation to the class. 

...and there are many other ways, as well!

(Please send me any other ideas that you have used to make up lost lesson time -- so that I can share them in a future newsletter.) 

Best wishes,

Ken

www.KenAlford.com