Using movement to engage teens

Like many congregations, mine uses a traditional educational hour or Sunday school format. This means that our junior high and high school students meet separately for 45-minutes each on Sunday mornings.

I love the opportunity this time provides for interaction with students.

What I don't love is how asleep teens are at 10 am on a Sunday – exhausted after a full school week, an equally scheduled Saturday, and an evening out with friends or family. As a result, I often see a room of teens whose eyes are only partially open or whose eyes often appear glazed over.

One simple strategy for combatting this is to get teens moving.

Certainly, you can do this through games. The problem, though, is that we often use games as our openers, something that keeps teens awake for the first 10 minutes we're together but not necessarily after that, once the teaching or discussion begins.

So, find ways to incorporate movement into your actual teaching time as well. One simple way to do this is to utilize an activity that I call Walk Across the Room.

During Walk Across the Room, have all students stand and move to one side of the room. Then read a subjective statement related to your teaching topic that asks kids to walk across the room if they agree with the statement. As you lead this activity, force teens to make a decision. There is no middle-ground for people.

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