How I prepare lessons - finding the inspiration

Before I begin any discussion about how I prep for and teach lessons, I'd like to proffer a significant caveat - I am not an expert at teaching LDS primary classes, nor am I particularly good at it. 

Fortunately it seems that I'm not alone in this. President Henry B. Eyring acknowledges in this talk in 2002 that many people who receive callings may feel overwhelmed, when he says "You will feel at some time, perhaps at many times, that you cannot do all you feel you must". This rings true certainly with my first year or so, when I felt that I was completely unsuited for this calling and that there must have been some mistake. He offers some solace in adding that "All He asks is that you give your best effort and your whole heart."

All I can offer is my experience of teaching LDS Primary classes (mainly 8-11 year olds) for the past 3 years, in which I've put in my best efforts and my whole heart to grappling with how to teach a subject matter that I'm still learning about myself, in addition to my experiences as a father. I'm very open to ideas from other people, so please feel free to get in touch if you have any suggestions or tips that you'd like to share. I can be reached through the comments below (which will be moderated) or on Twitter.

This is the first of a series of articles on how I prepare for my lessons, and it discusses the initial steps of understanding the core content and finding a scientific link.

My attentive in-person audience. Now I just need to figure out what to teach them.

Finding a Science Theme

First, I start by finding the appropriate chapter in the Come Follow Me (CFM) primary manual. (Here's the link to the 2021 version.) These are indexed by date, so you can find the chapter for the week for which you're teaching.

Each CFM chapter starts with an opening suggestion, along the lines of:

During your preparation this week, pay attention to the impressions you receive from the Spirit. What do you feel the children need to learn from <INSERT REFERENCE>?

I find this to be very helpful advice, and I'll begin by reading the appropriate scriptural references on the LDS.org site. I prefer it this way because the site comes with some terrific annotation tools, where you can highlight sections in different colours, add your own notes, and quickly look up linked references.  

I'll read through the references and capture any initial thoughts on how I could teach the lesson in a separate Google Doc. These include any initial links with scientific topics, and possible activity/game ideas. 

Next, I'll read the CFM primary manual chapter, and make a note of the key themes and any activity ideas that could be useful. CFM is, in general, really well written from the perspective of making the scriptures clearer. Sometimes my lesssons will hew closely to the suggested themes, whilst other times I decide to strike my own path and focus on something different. 

At this point I'll start doing some research into the ideas that I jotted down. I love this part, as I get to research science topics that I'm not familiar with. Recently I thought about linking a scripture about the joy of song to something about the science of bird song, and this line of investigation led to a really interesting article about different types of animals that sing which I considered using, but ultimately ended up leaving out. I end up not using a lot of what I find, since the aim is to find something that helps me to teach the key lesson themes. Occasionally though, I'll have a eureka moment where I discover something that helps me to frame the lesson topic in a new light. In the case of the singing lesson, I found a fascinating Nature paper that discussed a study into the development phases of the singing voices of fledgling birds. They found that baby birds sing a basic version of their song initially, called a "subsong", to which they add personality and complexity when they mature. This personalised song ultimately helps them to attract a mate. This development path tied in really nicely with a discussion of D&C 25:12, "For my soul delighteth in the song of the heart", about how singing church songs can be a form of prayer, but one where you need to learn the songs off by heart first, in order to be able to reach out to heavenly father through them.

At that point, I know I have the core element for my lesson. The next step is to build up a lesson plan around it, and I'll discuss this in the next part.