Phys Ed & Social Skills Archives - 7sistershomeschool.com

5 Fun Ways to Log Phys Ed Hours for Non-Athletic Homeschoolers

There’s hope! Here are 5 fun ways to log Phys Ed hours for non-athletic homeschoolers.

5 Fun Ways to Log Phys Ed Hours for Non-Athletic Homeschoolers

Got a non-athletic, doesn’t-care-about-sports teen? That’s okay, not all teens are supposed to be athletes! The problem for some homeschooling families is that it can be difficult to earn the required Physical Education credit(s) for the homeschool transcript when your teen isn’t the fitness-type kid.

Logging Phys Ed doesn’t have to be a nightmare. When you aim for your teens’ Phys Ed credits by logging hours, you can simply accumulate over the 4 years until the goal is met. Try some out-of-the-box activities.

Here are some creative ways some teens we know have been able to creatively handle logging Phys Ed hours.

Hiking

Hiking is a great family field trip. Keep a log of hours on the trail. This log can go toward your homeschool high schooler’s Phys Ed hours AND in your youngers’ records to give evidence of physical activity. While you are at it:

Learn some practical life skills while hiking (never step over a log before checking what’s on the other side…I remember once there was a rattle snake on the other side, that ended THAT hike).
Log some Biology hours by learning some basic birding, tree and/or plant identification (just use an app on your phone to make it simple).
Practice quiet walking skills (Americans tend to walk like elephants). Once learned, it is a useful social skill.

Yard work

Some teens actually LIKE yard work. If so, log the hours they spend:

Gardening
Mowing (push mowers, weedwacking)
Raking leaves
Shoveling snow

Even if they are earning Career Exploration credits by running a side-business doing yard work for the neighbors, they can still log those same hours for Phys Ed.

Heavy Housework

Does your family do a heavy spring or summer cleaning? The kind of lifting and scrubbing that work up a sweat and wear a person out? Log those hours! Doesn’t sound like fun? Maybe not, but it heavy cleaning sounds a LITTLE more fun when there’s something in it for the teens (as in: do these chores and you don’t need to go for a 30-minute jog…).

Juggling

Never thought juggling could count as fitness? Watch homeschool graduate, Justin Weber:

Here’s another video from Justin:

One last surprising but fun way to log Phys Ed hours is…

Ballroom Dance

You might be shocked to find out that many teens who hate sports, enjoy ballroom dance if they have the opportunity to learn in a friendly, fun environment. For years, our local homeschool group would arrange ballroom dance lessons with a local studio (run by a homeschool dad, in fact). The teens had a blast, then they would celebrate with a cotillion, and at the end of the year, a prom.

Here’s a post with a video made by some of the 7Sisters’ sons when they were taking ballroom dance lessons back in their high school days.

Logging Phys Ed in creative ways can make it fun for the whole family while giving your teens good memories and life skills. Need more help? Contact us for homeschool coaching and listen to this episode of Homeschool Highschool Podcast.

Phys Ed Hours for Non-Athletic Homeschoolers HSHSP Ep 57: Phys Ed for Homeschool High Schoolers

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And check out this post with Phys Ed ideas.

3 Reasons Phys Ed Improves Homeschooling and 5 Ways to Make it Happen

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Your non-athletic teens will thank you!

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5 Fun Ways to Log Phys Ed Hours for Non-Athletic Homeschoolers

Homeschool Highschool Podcast Episode 57: Phys Ed for Homeschool Highschoolers

This week on The Homeschool Highschool Podcast Episode 57: Phys Ed for Homeschool Highschoolers!

Homeschool Highschool Podcast Episode 57: Phys Ed for Homeschool Highschoolers

Time for phys ed for your homeschool highschoolers? They need at least one credit for graduation (some states require 2 credits).

Some teens LOVE physical activity. They are into working out, playing group sports, dance or martial arts.

Some teens HATE physical activity or have physical issues that make playing sports difficult.

How can these different kinds of teens earn meaningful credit in physical education?

Let’s start with the easy ones: Let them be busy with what they love!

How to record their homeschool credits?

Generally a team sport that lasts for an entire season is close to 1/2 credit.

If you are not sure, or if you are sure he/she is spending WAY more than 68-90 hours, log their practices and games. You don’t want to short change your homeschool high schooler. Here’s a post on logging hours.

Generally a year-round sport such as martial arts or dance is around 1 credit.

Again, if you’re not sure or if your teens are spending WAY more than 120-180 hours, the log those hours for practices and tournaments.

If your teen is working on an individual fitness interest such as working out at the gym, log hours until he/she meets the credit.

If your teen hates fitness topics, then you’ll definitely need to log hours. Here are some tips:

Count anything outside that breaks a sweat (raking leaves, weeding, push mowing, shoveling snow)
Go on family walks
Get a fitness app for their phone or workout/dance game/video
Explain the benefits of self-care through phys ed. Here’s a post that explains the many benefits of moving the human body!

Join Sabrina, Vicki and Marilyn for a fun, fact-filled discussion!

Homeschool Highschool Podcast Episode 57: Phys Ed for Homeschool Highschoolers

Your Teen Will Thank You for Speech in Homeschool Highschool

Here’s why your teen will thank you for Speech in homeschool highschool.

Speech in Homeschool Highschool

I don’t know many teens who climb out of the bed on a summer morning and think, “Golly, I hope I get to do a Speech course this year!”

But then again, of all the many homeschool highschoolers that I have advised over the years to have a Speech course, not one of them who took me up on it EVER said, “I sure wish I hadn’t done that!” In fact, they usually thank me for the advice.

Speech 1: Public Speaking and Practical Life Skills from 7 Sisters Homeschool

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Here’s why they thank me: Speech (Public Speaking) is IMPORTANT life preparation!

Here are some examples:

Assertiveness Skills Preparation: All teens will someday need to stand up for themselves, or make a special request, or ask for help from someone important or intimidating, like:

Bosses
College Professors
Customer Service Representatives at stores

When my daughter was in high school, she was taking her Speech class (she took Speech each year). She was also taking some Photography courses at the local community college. One day the head of the Visual Arts program called her to her office and said, “Come on, I need you to go with me to talk to the Board right now. They’re thinking about cutting our program.” My daughter had a 5-minute walk to prepare a speech for the college’s Board. She pulled on her extemporaneous speech skills and helped save the program!

Life Preparation: There’s really no escape. Somewhere in their adult life your teen will need to do something like:

Speak on a missions trip
Teach AWANA or Sunday School
Coach Little League
Give a report at a meeting at work (as a mental health counselor, I help LOTS of adults learn how to get over this particular fear- it can cripple a person’s career)

College Class Preparation: Public speaking is part of college, your teen has to face and accept this. In almost every course your teen will experience things like:

Class presentations
Group work

There will also be occasional big projects like:

Poster presentations at conferences
Speaking to departmental committees
Club or campus organization activities that require your teen’s voice

As a counselor, I spend a fair amount of time with college freshmen helping them over the fear of public speaking. (This is not just homeschoolers, but students from regular school settings who had managed to avoid public speaking until college.)

7Sisters’ Speech I curriculum is the curriculum that the local homeschool community has enjoyed for years. It is step-by-step, usable individually (here is a post by Kerry Ott who used Speech I with her daughter) or for groups (contact us for group rates), and FUN!

Save your homeschool highschooler some pain and suffering. Give them a Speech course while still at home!

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Speech in Homeschool Highschool

Build Character with Your Homeschool High School Curriculum

Don’t waste the adolescent years with mindless learning: build character with your homeschool high school curriculum.

Build Character with Your Homeschool High School Curriculum

Do you remember when you were young, reading a book that truly had an impact on your life? A book so moving that it helped shape your character?

Can you imagine being a homeschool high schooler and studying a high school textbook that actually helps shape your character (instead of simply boring you to tears)?

These are some of the reasons that 7 Sisters Homeschool moms started developing curriculum years ago. We wanted our teens to read literature that helped inspire them to become the people God created them to be. We wanted our high schoolers to have access to Christian worldview texts that had NO busywork; instead, texts that helped them develop good, godly, thinking lifestyles.

Mostly we wanted what many people want: to build character with your homeschool high school curriculum.

Here are some ways we did that:

Narnia: Many of the 7 Sisters Homeschool high schoolers did in-depth study of the Chronicles of Narnia. There’s no one like C.S. Lewis to smuggle character development, deep theological concepts, and wisdom-building philosophical concepts into great stories. AND as Lewis said: A children’s story that can only be enjoyed by children is not a good children’s story in the slightest.

Biographies of Inspiring People: No one should graduate homeschool high school without reading God’s Smuggler (the true story of Brother Andrew, who smuggled Bibles behind the Iron Curtain) (my youngest son says this was his favorite book in high school) or Joni (the story of Joni Eareckson Tada, who has changed life for many people with disabilities).

Autobiographies of Redemption: One of the best is Born Again by Chuck Colson, who served jail time for his part in Watergate, came to know Christ, and spent the rest of his life helping “set captives free”.

True Stories of Genuinely Good People: Corrie ten Boom’s story of overcoming evil with good in The Hiding Place, Mother Theresa’s life of genuine love in Something Beautiful for God.

We wanted our teens to have character development in their homeschool high school credits. We also wanted a Christian worldview, texts with NO busywork, and the ability to work at different levels but use the same book (some of our kids are “average”, some are advanced, some are honors). Here are some of the courses our teens have used:

History and Philosophy of the Western World: While the title sounds pretentious, the content is light-hearted. Our teens earned their World History credit while learning some important philosophic concepts, basic church history, and ways to think about history and its impact on the world today. (And it was co-authored by a 7 Sister son: Dr. Micah Tillman.)

Human Development: Our homeschool high schoolers learned to notice, respect, and steward the ways God created people to grow and change from womb to old age. They also earned their health (or Social Science) credit.

Psychology: Our teens learned to understand that they are wonderfully made (and so are their friends) in a Psychology credit that covered all the necessary topics but didn’t “AP” the subject to death. We wanted our kids to “like Psych”.

Financial Literacy: The Bible has lots to say about character and money. NO one should graduate without being prepared to be good stewards of the money God gives them. Our teens genuinely liked this course.

With only 4 years through high school to find life-shaping educational experiences, if you’re like us you want to build character with your homeschool high school curriculum.

We invite you to download the texts that have guided our teens. Your teens will be blessed!

Build Character with Your Homeschool High School Curriculum

How to Use DVD Lectures with Discussion for Powerful High School Learning

Here’s how to use DVD lectures with discussion for powerful high school learning.

How to Use DVD Lectures with Discussion for Powerful High School Learning

Homeschooling in high school requires tackling some subjects that can be intimidating. It’s nice to have some digital resources. Here’s how we used DVDs from Great Courses.

This year our co-op class is using some DVD lecture curriculum resources that are really providing a powerful educational experience.

Here’s what we’ve found works really well:

* Use meaty material.

We’re studying Fitness Physiology and Nutrition, and the DVD’s we’re using from thegreatcourses.com contain college-level lecture material. We decided that if we were going to pay for expert teaching, we would like for it to be at a level that’s somewhat above what we would typically find for high school students.

* Only use the pieces of the material that are a good fit.

We aren’t trying to watch every single lecture. There are some lessons on exercise or nutrition during pregnancy, or practical exercise physiology for specific muscle groups that seem like they are more than we have time for. It’s our curriculum — it’s okay for us to pick and choose the lessons from which our students will most benefit.

* Take your time.

We use the PAUSE button constantly. Stopping to talk about the lecture material, to replay something we missed that was cool but confusing, to share anecdotal information that helps the students grab hold of the material is what makes the learning so great using a DVD format. Sometimes a 30-minute lecture takes us an hour or more. If that means we don’t get through every lesson in the package this year, so what? The kids are taking the time to really grasp what we present.

* Go easy on follow-up homework.

Listening to a lecture AND discussing it is a learning-packed experience. We are trying to be careful to avoid anything that feels like busy-work associated with these subjects. If there’s a follow-up that would really reinforce what they’ve learned, we do it! We spent hours working through a personal fitness evaluation for each co-op member after our first two lectures at the beginning of the year. We’ve had students researching and evaluating the nutritional content of various foods they eat, and analyzing their prepare and recover strategies for workouts. But we haven’t assigned a lot of worksheets or “write about what you heard” papers.

* Make an event out of the lecture time.

Telling your kid, “Ok, go watch one of your lectures,” is not very exciting. He or she is likely to zone out if it’s not a day that the material is beckoning! By using DVD lectures in a co-op, the kids look forward to their social time together as well as the subject matter. We have lunch together. We laugh. We hold each other accountable with updates on how our personal goals for greater health and fitness are progressing.

Check out our Homeschool Highschool Podcast episode on Digital Learning Options for more good ideas.

Digital Options for Homeschool High School Homeschool Highschool Podcast

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How to Use DVD Lectures with Discussion for Powerful High School Learning

3 Reasons Phys Ed Improves Homeschooling and 5 Ways to Make it Happen

Here are 3 reasons Phys Ed improves homeschooling and 5 ways to make it happen.

3 Reasons Phys Ed Improves Homeschooling and 5 Ways to Make it Happen

Physical Education sometimes seems like a throw-away class for homeschoolers (or other schoolers).

But WAIT! It is not. Here are 3 reasons you need a rigorous phys ed program in your homeschool:

1) Young people who have had good, aerobic-type exercise tend to think more clearly.

Exercise increases blood-flow to the brain. That better-moving blood carries oxygen and glucose to the brain- both of which help aid in clear thinking, reasoning, and memory. (Interestingly, fewer than 1/4 of American children get 30 minutes of exercise per day and about that many do not have phys ed at school- check this interesting article from The Franklin Institute.)

2) Increased oxygen from exercise helps lower anxiety levels and improve depression.

In my work as a therapist, I often tell the parents that their anxious or

depressed child will have a reduction in symptoms if he/she gets daily exercise. When they believe me and try it, they usually find that it is true. Here are two good articles from the Mayo Clinic , Babble About and your Federal Government.

3) Children who exercise regularly tend to sleep better. When they sleep better, they tend to perform better academically.

Exercise burns off stress hormones that keep children (and adults) from getting good sleep. Sleep is important to good functioning of the frontal lobe (where learning and decision-making happen). Three nights without enough sleep will lead to deterioration of those neurons and resulting lowerd thinking capacity. ALSO- every 3 hours of sitting (doing anything: studying, tv, games) means 3 minutes longer to get to sleep.

So, get your kids out there an make some movement happen! REMEMBER: Log hours until you have met the requirement for graduation for your state or supervising organization (in our area, homeschool high schoolers need 2 credits, which for us is 270 hours).

Here are 5 ways to get your kid moving:

1) Go for daily walks together.

2) Get a fitness game for your teens’ game console.

3) Join a sports league.

Kym’s twins play hockey

4) Take lessons (karate, dance, swim).

5) Take up orienteering or hiking as a family.

6) Bonus: Raking leaves and shoveling snow are GOOD fitness activities!

7) Extra Bonus: Looking for an online fitness guide? Homeschool graduate and popular trainer, Luke Hayes’ Trio Fitness is a good resource.

8) EXTRA EXTRA Bonus: Enjoy this episode of The Homeschool Highschool Podcast about Phys Ed.

What are some ways your kids get their exercise?

3 Reasons Phys Ed Improves Homeschooling and 5 Ways to Make it Happen

Freedom From the Homeschool Bubble

Join us for a post from our intern, Kyle: Freedom From the Homeschool Bubble.

Freedom From the Homeschool Bubble

Kyle is about to complete graduate school at Liberty University. He homeschooled all the way through high school. The study guides and curriculum that he used in high school are the very things we carry in our ebookstore. Enrich your homeschoolers’ lives with Literature Guides, Writing Guides, Psychology, Human Development, Career Exploration and more.

If you’re part of the homeschool world, you probably have some familiarity with “the bubble.” You want your children to receive the best education possible, so you tailor your teaching to fit each child’s individual needs. Consciously or unconsciously, you make decisions that affect not only their education but their social, emotional, and spiritual life.

I know because this is what my mom did for me.

Kyle and family

I had the privilege of growing up with some of the most awesome friends and teachers because my homeschool community was the perfect environment for me. In other words, I had an excellent bubble.

The only downside to being inside an excellent bubble is that, in the end, it’s still only a bubble. At some point you discover that the rest of the world isn’t quite so perfect. There are people with different values and different beliefs. There are some people who may not be interested in your individual needs at all. (Shocking isn’t it?)

The bubble is safe, but outside the bubble it can get scary. Growing up is all about moving outside the bubble. Usually that means graduating from high school, going to college, getting a job, getting married, getting a house, and having kids. But you can do all of those things and still live in a bubble. You could do what I did and move from the homeschool bubble to a college that is essentially a larger version of the same bubble. Your bubble can be whatever you make it. Your youth group, your Bible study, or your mom’s group could be a bubble.

Like I said, the bubble is where you feel safe, and safety is a good thing. God can teach you a lot in friendly, comfortable settings, but that knowledge isn’t much use until you take it outside the bubble. You can’t grasp the full value of your knowledge until you’re willing to get your feet wet.

Speaking of getting your feet wet, that’s exactly what Peter had to do before he learned to trust Jesus. It was one thing to listen to Jesus’ teaching on the safety of the mountain, but it was another to step out of his boat onto a lake in the middle of a storm. Even when he found he could walk on top of the water without drowning, he became afraid when he saw how violent the wind and the waves were. Think how he must have felt when Jesus saved him and brought him back to the boat. In that moment Jesus had unmistakably proven everything Peter believed about him.

Have you experienced that “Aha!” moment where you start to doubt what you know about God only to see him prove himself in a remarkable way? I have had a few experiences like that this year. Not only have they helped me to grow in my faith, they have also allowed me to show God’s love to people I never would have interacted with in my own personal bubble.

Although there are times when a comfortable bubble gives us the security we need, that bubble can keep us from growing and acting on our faith. If we let it, the bubble becomes a prison. It’s only when we allow God to burst the bubble that we can experience true freedom.

Prayer is an important part of our faith. Take a look at our interactive prayer journals for some encouragement and ideas.

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Freedom From the Homeschool Bubble

5 Tips I Used to Homeschool my ADHD Elementary Kids

Here are 5 tips I used to homeschool my ADHD elementary kids.

5 Tips I Used to Homeschool my ADD Elementary Kids

Two of my 5 kids were diagnosable ADHD when they were young. That was a great reason to homeschool them. We could gear curriculum, format, and schedules around their rhythms (or lack thereof). It was mostly fun…

Here are 5 tips we used in homeschooling our ADHD kids:

1) Short lessons

The definition of “short” varied by child (and by day). We worked until frustration built, then took a break to move and play. It stretched the homeschool day out longer but was perfect for my kids.

Your elementary homeschoolers can enjoy 7Sisters interactive literature study guides. Short lessons and fun! Download our FREE guide for Max Lucado’s You Are Special.

Literature Activity Guide for You Are Special 7SistersHomeschool.com

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2) Lots of color

We often wrote spelling words and short papers with markers, crayons, and colored pencils.

3) “What should I be doing now?”

I would set a timer for one of my kids. Whenever it would beep, she would say, “What should I be doing now?” If she was on task, she got a sticker. Ten stickers earned a trip to the Dollar Store.

4) Movement as instruction

In their earliest days, we did addition and subtraction with hopscotch, would memorize Awana verses with homemade songs, and sometimes even do stretches during reading time.

5) Quiet time

For everyone’s sake (especially mine), each day included a 30 minute quiet time after lunch. Each person would retire to his/her room and read, draw, build with Legos, or something similar. For 30 minutes, no one was talking to me. *yay*

My kids are grown now and doing just fine. Creative investment in the elementary years helped my homeschoolers to learn well.

Social Skills for Children is a great resource for equipping your elementary kids with tools they need to navigate life…whether they have ADHD or not!

Social Skills for Children 7SistersHomeschool.com

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5 Tips I Used to Homeschool my ADD Elementary Kids

What Makes a Drama Camp Amazing?

Sabrina shares: What Makes a Drama Camp Amazing?

For the last 12 years, I have offered a Drama Camp for homeschoolers every summer.

Final Curtain Call: that moment when my eyes always leak

A Drama Camp is a theater intensive. That means it’s a chance to put most of the rest of life on hold for a few days and focus on the production exclusively, rather than the traditional format that stretches rehearsals out over 8 – 10 weeks in chunks of a few hours at a time.

When I began offering Drama Camps to homeschooled students in 2000, I was making things up as I went along, learning as we muddled through. Our early productions (I like to write original plays for the kids to do, but you can certainly direct a camp without also being a playwright) were put together in ONE week, not two, and produced a 45 minute show.

We grew and stretched, and eventually were working for ONE week and producing a full-length two-hour show! That’s when I realized that there was too much good stuff going on to cram it all into one week, and I expanded our format to two weeks so that the kids would have time to explore the deeper layers of acting and stage production. I told you that to tell you this: Drama Camps offer an arena in which students can find out just how much they are truly capable of accomplishing when they work hard and work together.

But why the drama?? Human beings have a need for stories. We observe our own life-story being written all around us every day. We learn about other people as they share their stories with us. Jesus used story-telling to communicate truth about God and life when He was ministering on the earth. Drama production is a beautiful way to tell stories, and Drama Camps offer unique benefits to those involved in the story-telling process on stage.

Here’s why Drama Camp has been jokingly called “The Weeks When Life Has Meaning” :

We anticipate. Students who have been involved in the past begin looking forward to Camp months in advance, and talk to the newbies they know who are thinking about giving it a try. They set the bar high long before I have even finished my own plans for Camp! They anticipate a week of personal growth, hard work, and tremendous accomplishment.

We pray. We pray together before every day of camp, and we spend significant chunks of time praying for and with one another as we draw close to performance, but the prayer begins long before the sign-up sheet is full of names. I pray for God to bring the right group of kids together for the plan He has for our Camp. He knows what we all need better than we do! I pray over the script-writing and editing process, asking God to tell the stories that will change our lives according to His plan. Prayer is da bomb!

We focus. When students sign up for Camp, I warn them that the rest of life needs to be pretty much set aside for the two weeks of Drama Camp. They will be at the theater Monday through Friday from 9:00 – 3:00, but at night they will be learning lines, researching for the production, pulling together props and costumes, working with their fellow cast members, etc. Laying aside other things that we typically enjoy for the sake of a special endeavor is a great way to get your mind and heart open to hear from the Lord. Similar to the experience of going away on retreat, that change in life-pattern opens us up spiritually.

We are unified. The students are constantly challenged and reminded that they must be operating in unity for Camp to be a success. They pray for one another. They work alongside kids they may not like very much, and they learn to love them whether they like them or not. They pick up the slack for each other when one is tired, or struggling, or frustrated. Each Camper is vitally important to the production, and we teach that through words and example. Everyone completes the camp knowing on a deeper level that God made them unique and wonderful, and He has a place for them in the body of Christ that no one else can occupy.

If you are interested in Drama (or have a homeschooler who is), I will be publishing a couple of white papers and putting them in the EBookstore as free downloads in the next week or two. Click here to download “Why Drama is Important in Your Homeschool,” and check back soon to take advantage of even more freebies.

If the idea of directing an intensive two-week Drama Camp intrigues you, a manual and instructional DVD set will be released in March in the EBookstore.

Drama has proven to be such a good vehicle for social and spiritual development in the students I’ve directed in Drama Camps!

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Have you ever downloaded from our EBookstore before? It’s so easy!!

Give it a try by taking advantage of the FREE downloads available, and find out how convenient the .pdf format and instant delivery are. Click here to conquer your fears of technology, and download an epublication from 7 Sisters today!

The new white paper “Why Drama Is Important in Your Homeschool” is a FREE download. Click here to check it out!

What Makes a Drama Camp Amazing?

Group Discussions: Helping Teens Hear Each Other

Here are tips for co-op group discussions: Helping Teens Hear Each Other.

Group Discussions: Helping Teens Hear Each Other

I’m a big believer in getting students to talk about what they are learning. For a lot of students, this verbal process is a huge help in cementing the concepts they are studying in their schoolwork. For ALL students, this social skill of group discussion is a step in equipping them for life.

Here are some techniques I’ve found to be really helpful in guiding groups of students in dicussion:

* Remember that a variety of personalities are in the room, and tell the kids that before you start. Just like in a group of adults, some kids are naturally quiet and just enjoy listening more than talking, some kids love the “spotlight” that comes with sharing their ideas, some are unsure about the quality of what they have to offer in the discussion, etc. By telling them up front, “We’re going to talk about __________, and it’s important for everyone in the group to respect the personalities of everyone else here. If you know you love to talk in these situations, look around the room and notice the kids who are usually quiet. Be patient while quieter folks decide how they want to share their thoughts. I expect everyone to participate before we are finished, but for some of you this is easy and for others it’s like having your teeth drilled. That’s okay! If we all have the same goal in mind — a discussion in which EVERYONE has a chance to participate — it will be okay.”

*Lay this rule out and stick to it faithfully: THERE ARE NO WRONG ANSWERS. We are not quizzing one another to see who understands this idea the best. We are hearing from each other about the many varied ways we have, as individuals, understood the idea. We all have something to learn from each other’s peceptions.

* Resist the urge to go around the room in order. There are other ways to keep track of whether or not everyone has participated. Going around the room in order requires students to say SOMETHING when it’s their turn, whether that point in the discussion sparks them to feel that they actually HAVE something to say or not.

* Keep the tone light. Even if the subject matter is weighty, identify with the humor that can be found in almost any situation. However, be sure that the humor is NEVER directed at a student. Keep it general or aimed at yourself. If the kids see that you can chuckle at yourself, it becomes safer for them to express themselves…but if they see you tease a student (even with good intentions), they are instantly more cautious.

* When a student loves to talk just a little TOO much, curb their spotlight-time while validating their enthusiasm. Saying something like, “Hold on a second, Patti….you got SO much good stuff to share out of this assignment that I’m afraid the rest of us will start looking lame by comparison! Can you hold off and let us hear from somebody else for a bit?”

* Reflect what students say, and teach them to reflect as well. Reflective listening is saying what a student just said back to him or her before you agree or disagree with his or her opinion. For example, “So you think Sydney Carton had in mind all along to take Darnay’s place at the guillotine? That’s an interesting thought. I’m not sure I saw it that way, but now I’m going to have to think about it some more.” It validates the student’s thought process even if they reached a conclusion that no one else in the group shares. You will be amazed at how quickly your more socially mature students begin to use reflection themselves as they respond to their peers. That type of modeling then spreads the technique to the whole group.

* Give the group a framework for how the discussion will go. If they are discussing an assignment they did independently, sometimes allowing them to hold their homework is empowering. However, encourage them not to simply read the answer they wrote down. Discussion is more than reporting your answers to one another. If they don’t need to hold their homework, at least jot a simple outline of the topics you want to touch on, or verbally give them an overview of where the discussion will go. Reluctant students will be more comfortable if they know that the first two topics are ones they prefer not to address, but the third topic is one they are looking forward to discussing, and they can “get their courage up” knowing that their moment is on its way.

We need to remember that healthy participation in a group discussion is not a natural skill for most people – it is learned. (How many Sunday school classes or work meetings have you sat in that illustrate this truth?) We can be intentional and encouraging in preparing our kids for good group discussion skills no matter their personality. It will serve them the rest of their lives.

Talking to God is so much easier than talking to a group of peers! But even so, our prayer life can become stale and need some new ideas. Vicki Tillman wrote Prayer Journals I & II for this very purpose. Her ideas are founded in specific scriptures and practical.