Students Lead Class Prayer: 5 Tips to Get Started

Help Students Lead Class Prayer

At the beginning of the year, I spend a few days preparing students to lead class prayer. I teach high school religion during the day, and we open each class period with prayer. This is a great opportunity to help the students build faith skills! They get a chance to show their faith in front of their peers, as well as practicing public speaking, reading aloud, and choosing a formal prayer.

Skills to Lead Prayer

• Know the Sign of the Cross
• Read aloud
• Speak to a group
• Show respect
• Find bible passages
• Create an ACTS prayer
• Choose appropriate prayer topics
• Show reverence
• Stay calm
• Ignore distractions

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Clear Structure for Student to Lead Prayer

Since I work with beginners, I provide a clear structure for leading prayer. At the beginning of the year, we learn the format and practice with partners so students know the order and expectations for prayer. We spend a few days learning about the ACTS Prayer using this resource. Then, students write their own ACTS prayer and tuck it into their bibles so they can use that as a resource when it’s their turn to pray.

Prayer Format

• Pray the Sign of the Cross
• Read a Bible Passage
• Say an ACTS Prayer
• Pause for silent prayer or ask for petitions
• Choose a formal prayer to be spoken aloud by the whole class
• Recite a Litany of Saints
• Close with the Sign of the Cross

Include Student Choice in Class Prayer

I add student choice in my classroom as often as possible, and prayer is a great opportunity for it! We prayer a formal Catholic prayer every day, and the student prayer leader gets to choose the prayer. I created a PowerPoint with popular Catholic prayers hyperlinked within the prayer format. When I had a Smart Board, the student would tap the prayers of his/her choice. Now that I’m back to the stone age with a TV and an HDMI cord, the student tells me his/her choice and I click quickly to the prayer.

The words are on the screen so students aren’t limited to memorized prayers. As we pray throughout the year, more prayers are memorized because everyone can say the words instead of zoning out for unfamiliar prayers. This also helps to make sure that students are learning the real words to the prayers instead of mumbling through the phrases.

My favorite small detail of this PowerPoint is that I can easily change the colors for the Liturgical Season. The students get used to the green slides, then suddenly, Advent hits, and everything turns purple.

Ask for Volunteers to Lead Class Prayer

It’s important for all students to lead the class prayer. So, I keep track of student prayer leaders with a simple pocket chart in the front of the classroom. All the student names are in the chart and as each student volunteers to lead prayer, his or her name gets flipped around. Before anyone can lead again, all students must lead prayer at least once. I use this system to make sure that all students learn to lead the group, but students can have some choice about when they lead.

Some students volunteer so they can read specific readings. I have had students who love to read the Psalm, or who carefully time their turn so they get to read the Gospel. The daily bible passages are the Sunday readings, so each week there is a clear structure.

• Monday: 1st Reading
• Tuesday: Psalm
• Wednesday: 2nd Reading
• Thursday: Gospel
• Friday: Choice (the volunteer can choose any passage from the bible…as long as it’s not too bloody or attention-seeking. You have to be careful with the Old Testament….I’m looking at you, Leviticus!)

This clear format also helps the nervous students choose the length of their readings or practice ahead of time if they are anxious about reading aloud. I’ve had a few students refuse to lead prayer, so I’ve asked them to demonstrate that they have the skills one-on-one. In each case, the next time his or her turn came up, s/he was ready to pray in front of the class.

Litany of Saints in Student Prayer

We close prayer with a Litany of Saints. With my high school classes, we include 3 saints.

First, the class patron saint, ours is the school’s saint, but if your school isn’t named after a saint, it would be fun to have student vote on a class saint at the beginning of the year.

The second saint is a Saint of the Week–a specific person that we learned about that week. Usually, we watch a quick Youtube video and keep the saint’s name on the board for the week. If I have a saint skit, I add that, but there aren’t enough to cover the school year. It’s not a great structure, but it’s good enough for now. If anyone has great ideas about teaching a weekly saint, let me know.

The third saint is chosen by the student–again, adding student choice! As the year progresses, a lot of student grow in love for a particular saint and consistently ask the same saint for help (or whisper his/her name when other students are pausing to think of a saint for prayer). When this happens, I can’t decide if I should address the lack of reverence or praise the love for the saints.

With my younger students at Religious Education, I give all the students a chance to add saints to our Litany. This leads to LONG and sometimes ridiculous litanies as some students try to outdo each other with their knowledge of strange saint names. Again, I wonder about the reverence, but I love that students begin to have favorite saints at a young age, and that they always remember to ask my favorite, Saint Therese, to pray for us. The ridiculous can blend with the reverence and increase a love for prayer.