How did I forget this one?\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n
Tonight I need to add to my list of practices which are basic to effective teaching:<\/p>\n\n\n
In your lessons, whenever possible, find opportunities to involve senses beyond hearing.<\/p>\n\n\n
The more senses which are engaged, the greater the students’ engagement will be. And, thus, the stickier the lesson.<\/p>\n\n\n
Include visuals at the very least. We all loved “show and tell” in kindergarten and, if you think about it, the fun part – the interesting part – was the “showing”.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n
(In fact, if you forgot to bring your object, you wisely asked for your turn to be postponed. You knew instinctively that just talking about it wasn’t going to cut it.)<\/p>\n\n\n
They may be rarer, but there are also opportunities from the pulpit to employ touch or smell or taste.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n
This morning I was preaching on Luke 1:1-17, which relates the story of Zechariah performing his priestly duty of burning incense in the temple when he is visited by Gabriel and told to expect the birth of a boy to be named John.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n
A little bit of research revealed that getting a turn at burning the incense – the smoke of which represented the prayers of the people rising to God – was a once-in-a-lifetime honor.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n
So I picked up some strawberry scented incense at Walmart and lit four sticks at the top of my sermon as I was giving the background of Luke’s story.<\/p>\n\n\n
The smoke curled upwards as I read the passage and soon the smell permeated the sanctuary.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n
It would be impossible to gauge how much that small gesture brought the story to life for everyone in the pews this morning.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n
But whatever it added, I know it was worth the $1.22 and the extra few minutes it took to make it happen.\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
How did I forget this one?\u00a0 Tonight I need to add to my list of practices which are basic to effective teaching: In your lessons, whenever possible, find opportunities to involve senses beyond hearing. The more senses which are engaged, the greater the students’ engagement will be. And, thus, the stickier the lesson. Include visuals […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[17,14,16],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2321","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-five-senses","category-good-teaching","category-object-lessons"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2321","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2321"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2321\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2322,"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2321\/revisions\/2322"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2321"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2321"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2321"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}