Elder Ulisses Soares (Apr. 19): "How Can I Understand?"

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This was the perfect talk to kick off conference.  The focus on teaching and learning the gospel really set the stage for what was to come. 

The Activity:

  1. Make sure that everyone has access to the talk.
  2. Ask everyone to partner up.
  3. Give each partnership a piece of paper and something to write with.
  4. Ask the class members to fold their paper in half length-wise and to label one side "Learning" and the other side "Teaching"
  5. Ask the class members to look over the talk and identify principles of gospel teaching and learning that Elder Soares shares.  As they find a principle, they should distill it into a single word and record it under the appropriate heading.  For example, par. 18 "Brothers and sisters . . . way we live" could be recorded as "Action" or "Behavior."
  6. Give the class a few minutes to find some principles.  You do not need to provide enough to for everyone to completely mine the talk.  It is okay if class members do not find every possible answer here.
  7. Come back together as a class and go around the room asking companionships to share one thing they found.  Note, some groups may read the same sentence but represent it with different words.  That is okay and could be a fruitful discussion.
  8. Record what is shared on the board and discuss as appropriate.
Using the Activity:

In most of these activities I want to get the class members involved in discussing and thinking about the doctrines and principles in the talks as much as possible.  There are a few obstacles to this (some of which I have talked about before).  One of those obstacles is that at times, I want to talk about one part of the talk but for someone in the class there is a different part of the talk that is more meaningful and we may not get to that part of the talk, if we simply rely on what I have planned.  This activity is valuable because it is an example of how we can allow the class members an opportunity to set the agenda, if you will.  By asking for what they noticed in the talk, we are putting their interests and needs front and center.  Doing this will help class members be more engaged and, more importantly, will make our class more useful to them.  

This activity is also adaptable depending on your needs.  This activity could form the framework for most of your class time by providing you discussion points or it could be a simple 5 or 10 minute activity.  For example, instead of coming back together as a whole class, you could ask all of the class members to find a different partner and share with this new person the most important point they found in the talk.  

I hope this activity will work for you either as is or with modification.  Or even simply to spur a different idea.  As always, please let me know how things are going.

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