Melva Gifford

I was very impressed with the skills of a particular teacher at church today. Besides touching upon a wonderful theme, faith and repentance, she employed multiple skills that made her lesson exceptional. I can tell that she’s had multiple years as a teacher in the public school system. As this blog is geared to help myself and others learn how to become better teachers and communicators as I would share my observations with you.

The following are some of her techniques. I hope these comments can be useful to Sunday school teachers, youth ministries, family counselors, and parents.

I didn’t have a copy of the manual in front of me so I don’t know if the Scriptures she was quoting was in the manual itself, but one technique I found she did very effectively, was to go ahead and read parts of  a scripture and she would leave out a word that the audience could fill in verbally. By doing this, she successfully involve the audience not only mentally but also having the participants in the presentation.

She use a variety of sources and examples to illustrate her points. She illustrated the openness of Christ, love for us with the example of the Christest statue which has his hounds outstretched. The statute illustrates Christ’s desire help us and his love

She also had a handout that had three useful components. One was some memorable quotes. To she has some sections of the form blank to be filled in by class members and third, she had a diagram of where we were responsible to fill in the answers.

She use memorable quotes. One I liked in particular was: procrastination is the threat of eternal life.

She shared a personal experience. She talked about her home life were her brother’s son came to visit. His had forgotten homework and the dad reprimanded the boy for forgetting. They would now have to travel back to where the boys live to get his homework. This trip would be very inconvenient as well ask time-consuming. When the father came back into the room with his keys, the young boy was very contrite and apologized to his father. The father offered forgiveness to his son and mentioned that a lot times people forget things. This was a very good example of repentance and forgiveness.

Another good example: this instructor followed up with comments from class members by either providing supporting comments are seeking additional comments from other members of the class..

She also gave a specific references in the Scriptures that illustrated the concepts that she want to share.

She used visionary or emotional object lessons to illustrate a point. To share the concept of us want to thirst after the Spirit of God. She made a comparison about when the fast, how are extremely hungry we are at the end. Some of us may feel very desperate to be fed and just like we hunger for food, so there are certain people who seek or hunger for the spirit of God.

She also had an assignment for the class to consider certain concepts throughout the week.

Finally, she wrapped up a wonderful lesson by presenting her personal testimony of Christ. I don’t know if she would want me to mention her name on Facebook or in a blog, but those that go to church with me and who attended the same lesson will know who I am talking about.

It was the wide variety of techniques and she employed during the lesson that I found really illustrated the quality of teachers, persons.

Do you have a teacher who had techniques that you admired? Please feel free to share them in the comment section of this blog. Thank you.

Here are some more notes from a lecture I attended discussing the concept of money.

–          If you don’t love money. You don’t get it

–          things you love come to you

–          it takes love to create something

–          keep yourself clear to worship God

–          like a money creates money to go Jacob 2:17

–          build a vision board. Use it to inspire yourself

–          note how close the atonement and money are together

–          book: the infinite atonement by Todd callester

–          adjust your behavior for goals

–          the emotion of no events God’s answers

Have suggestions to add to the list? Please feel free to add to the comment section of the blog.

Bad: corse

Good: course

I keep missing the U.

A coUrse often involves a lot of twists and turns to test agility and skill. A U represents a turn in the path or road. We’ll see if that helps me to remember to put in a U.

Do you have other ideas, please feel free to share them in the comment section of this blog.

These notes were taken from a Toastmasters training, but they can be applicable to multiple situations.

–          Organize your meetings three weeks in advance of who will do what.

–          Have member set goals for themselves.

–          Maybe have a spreadsheet that documents actions and monitor members’ progress.

–          Be mindful of the comfort level of new members. Ask what is the pace you want to do in the club.

–          Try to commit members to the goals.

–          Stay current on members leadership.

–          Track progress of members.

–          Have members agreeing their manuals.

–          Have reminders of future activities.

–          Give advance notice of future contests.

–          Promote member success and monitor their advancement in the club

–          need to get intros of the speech in advance of the meeting. Evaluators need to contact speakers midweek

I hope the following ideas can be of use to youth ministries, family councils, family devotionals and home evenings.

I gained an entirely new perception on the Old Testament story of Abraham and sacrificing his son Isaac. A lot of times when I heard the story, I thought about the faith of Abraham, trusting God when he was commanded to sacrifice his son. But, this last Sunday at church, I gained an entirely new perspective from a comment made by someone. She mentioned that Abraham sacrificing Isaac also gave Abraham the perspective of how the God the father must have felt when he sacrificed his son Jesus Christ, on the cross to atone for the sins of mankind.

How many times have I heard the story of Abraham and Isaac, and this is the first time after decades that I have a whole entirely new twist on the story? We always hear the story about Abraham’s obedience and about Isaac submitting to his father’s knife, but now I have gained an entirely new perspective on an old story.. So my invitation is that one of the virtues of visiting the Scriptures over and over and over again is that even though we may read the same thing for decades. We can suddenly get an entirely new perspective on Scriptures. We might even gain insight on a point of doctrine.

My invitation is that we each continually seek out new perspectives on the old stories of the Scriptures and on gospel principles. I’m just glad that I was at Sunday school to have the opportunity to have my mind broadened.

The object lesson for this is having the kids put together a puzzle. Have them compare the piece by itself as a stand-alone object and have them try to identify what it is without the other pieces. Then combine that piece of all the others of the puzzle to see how all the individual units combine to make a bigger picture.

If you have an example where you have gained new insight on point of Scripture, please feel free to share it in the comment section this blog.

I listened to part of a lecture at ltue that talked about Wikipedia and what is required to get articles published here. Here is what I got of part of the lecture.

–          At life universe and everything, I did a couple of notes on posting articles on Wikipedia.

–          Wikipedia requires two non-biased articles to support your article.

–          Contribute to Wikipedia do not have ownership of the articles.

–          If someone disagrees with an article posted Wikipedia, they can only indicate that may show bias and at that point of the article needs be altered.

–          Do not have an excessive list of links that are on the same topic you have for your article.

–          Create an account Wikipedia do not include an IP address else. People can look you up and abuse your account.

–          A Wikipedia account includes an email whereby people can communicate with you.

–          We want to write an article. Make sure that the previous similar topic has not already been posted.

–          Gather supporting articles and print them as PDS for archive purposes.

–          The webpage: webcyte freezes the front pages and websites to create an archive of all websites. So very useful link for reference.

When thinking of the recipe. It should not just be about pies. So take out the word pies in recipes. Instead of recipies, try recipes.

That may help me remember this word more accurately.

If you have suggestions on how to remember the spelling of this word, please feel free to share it in the comment section this blog.

I’m not very efficient, yet, in Google Docs. I watched some training videos to see how others use it back to the notes. I hope they can be of use.

If have a google or Gmail account, you have access to google doc.

There will be a documents tab at the top of the email account

Create a document:

File options; click on create doc <red button>

– Document: word

– Presentation: power point

– Spreadsheet: excel sheet

– Forms: surveys, questioner

– Drawings: diagrams

– Collections: folders to store doc. in

Create documents

– create button

– click on document and you can edit the document and tool bars for fonts etc.

– Google docs has an automatic save. To activate the auto save give your document a name.

– close out file and it will show up on top of document list.

Create spreadsheet

– create button

– create spreadsheet.

– works like excel and has similar functions

Uploading documents:

– click on button next to create <upload button>

– can upload folder or individual files.

– Go to files and upload file and upload.

– First check box, I want to convert my docs into google docs format.

– Second check says want to convert pdf. Suggest say no.

How to download a doc:

– right click file and down load and it prompts you to what file you want to download it as.

– click download and ask where you want to put it.

Sharing documents:

– To share right click and share and share. Asks who has current share rights?

– Get box who has permission and you can add a new person’s email address.

– can choose to edit, comment or view options.

– And check to notify them. , person gets an email that says xx has shar3d a document for you.

– If go into google docs this document will appear at the top of my list and it will show up as a Share in my docs.

– share who doesn’t have google docs. Right click on file do a share. Hit email as attachment.

– Choose a format and enter email address.

Managing the google screen:

– All files are sorted by last modified.

– If someone did an update the file will be moved up on the view list

– Items in bold means that doc has been updated since you looked at documents last. It also moves to the top of your list.

– At the all items view

– when you want to move files from the main screen to the all items folder right click on the file and click don’t show in home. You can find it again from the search box.

Creating a collection:

– To create a folder. Go to create button and click on collection. You can create a new folder.

– You can than drag and drop the file into the appropriate folders.

– To not have collections new folders to show up on home, right click don’t show in home.

Can share searches

– select file you want to share and click share

– insert emails address and

– invite collimators:

– Invited persons get link they can click on they can edit and save docs on-line.

– can save files up to 1 GB in size.

– Three sharing options: public on the web; anyone with the link; private

– You can see who has access to your documents by clicking on At A Glance.