Sunday-School Success: A Book of Practical Methods for Sunday-School Teachers and OfficersWells, Amos R. (Amos Russel)
Religion
Sunday-School Success: A Book of Practical Methods for Sunday-School Teachers and Officers
Wells, Amos R. (Amos Russel)
Sunday schools
No clearness of knowledge may be expected unless the teacher knows
clearly at the start just what it is that he expects the scholars to
know; and the building grows with double certainty if the little
workmen themselves are given glimpses of the architect's plans,--at
least of a "front elevation." "For these three months," the teacher
may say, "we are to study Christ's life as Mark records it. My plan is
for you to vote each Sunday on the most important facts we have
studied,--either in the lesson text or in the 'intervening events.'
Sometimes it will be one fact; it will never be more than three. All
together there are thirty facts we shall learn, and they will make an
outline history of Christ's entire life."
How such a scheme, clearly and often stated, will clarify and
systematize the quarter's work! Three or four times during the three
months the teacher will propound brisk questions covering the points
of all the previous lessons of the quarter, following this by a
written test. Let him prepare for each lesson a card, on which he
prints questions answerable by the facts to be learned. Fastening
twelve hooks on a board, he hangs these cards on the hooks week by
week, and uses them in these reviews and in the final review of the
quarter. If the class is one of little tots, a symbol for each lesson,
cut out of pasteboard or consisting of some object, may be hung up in
place of the card,--such a symbol as a needle stuck in a piece of
cloth, answering to the story of Dorcas.
Some such preparation will make thoroughly successful a written
examination on review day. The questions should be simple and clear,
and such as can be answered fully in a very few words. They should
take up only the points on which emphasis has been laid throughout the
quarter. If the teacher presents the plan in a jolly way, the class
will enter into it heartily, as good fun.
For a change, now and then invite the scholars to bring in, on review
day, lists of what each considers the ten principal events of the
quarter. A comparison is to be made, and the events that receive the
most votes will constitute a model list. This exercise in itself will
make a pretty good review.
An excellent review may be based upon the six natural divisions of all
lessons,--times, persons, places, events, sayings, teachings. The
"sayings" are the short sentences best worth memorizing. A review
"quiz" may take up these six points one after the other, carrying each
over the entire range of lessons, sometimes chronologically, but more
often at haphazard.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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