To help your students get the message God has given you to get to them, stay on message. Have only one primary learning out come for each class time. Primary learning out come can also be called the objective for the service.
Have your students never responded “I don’t know” then asked right after service what their class was about? One of the main causes for this is not having the class focused on one truth. In adult services the minister may take “rabbit trails” off from his main message, but doing this in children’s ministry leads to confusion. It is not as easy as you might think to teach only one thought. Scientist say we can only hold one thought as our center of attention for a maximum of 7 seconds. If you’re the kind of person that says what every come to your mind, this could be issue. Class planning is so important because it will keep you on the one truth. The challenge is to say the same thing as many different ways as you can. Politicians call this staying on message. If their platform is cutting taxes, then every speech will have that as the main message. The food chain Subway sandwich has one message “eat our food and loose weight”. They don’t say it taste great, it’s a good value, or we can have you in and out in less than 3 minutes. All that may be true but the one message is Jared lost weight and you can too, by eating our food.
Each class needs only one Primary learning out come. Some curriculums call this the goal, lesson aim, or central truth. Every adult in the class needs to know what the Primary learning out come is for that class. Every activity in the class needs to support the one primary learning out come. The Holy Ghost does this all the time to us. If on a Sunday morning we hear a radio minister preach on the value of prayer, in the church service Pastor Janet exhorts us to pray, then Pastor Mark says she preached his message, he then does a sermon on the value of prayer, and we phone a missionary and they testify to the importance of pray, you would know you need to spend some time in prayer. You got the message the primary learning out come the Holy Ghost want you to get.