Memorization Insights…

Create a safe environment.

The leader prays ahead of time to become spiritually attuned to the process and material.

When you begin, always open in prayer—pray God’s word will take root in the students’ hearts.

Have a Trusted Mentor leading.

The leader needs to be full of the Holy Spirit and the Fruit of the Spirit—especially kindness, gentleness and love.

Keep it light and fun.  Relate to the students.

Make sure the student is engaged.

Create good eye contact, grasp their attention, and make it exciting.

If you notice the student’s attention wandering, bring them back to you.  Force them out of their reverie and into concentrating on the task at hand; you can always change body posture, have them stand up, take a break, dance to a fun song, anything to get them to re-engage.  My last resort is to ask the students to look at me and explain what the word respect means.  To make it more fun, I put the verse to its beat and let everyone say it out loud, you can split the room and allow part of the room to be the beat, as the other students do the words.

The student is expected to participate, we ask them to share their understanding of the definition of certain words in the scripture; this is a great way to get people to open up and talk.

Bible verses are explained on an age appropriate level, it should be one the students find easy to understand and relate to through their life experiences.  The teacher suggests certain real life circumstances/instances where the bible verse would apply in the students lives and perhaps their own lives as well, then ask for feedback.

Bible verse memorization is structured.

But within that structure is a great deal of flexibility, there’s plenty of room for creative expression.

Kids and adults yearn to share their creative ideas; they need a safe/inviting/accepting place to share this type of energy.  If you are a believer, the Holy Spirit lives in you already and directs you; His creative energy inter-laced with yours is looking for an outlet, a form of expression.  We’ve found that each scripture has a unique intonation, a specific beat, a form of physical expression inherent to it.  You have to tailor your style of presentation to the specific group in front of you.  I am not going to use the same techniques with grade school children that I would use with high school kids, and that varies from what I would use with adults.  This isn’t daunting; it’s just a matter of being respectful of the overall development of the student.

School Aged Students:

We encourage the parents to reinforce the scriptures we are learning each night at bedtime.  Parents should be involved as much as possible, make every effort to work on this daily as it will yield exponentially higher levels of results.  If you make this a part of your natural daily routine, right before bed, you will be highly blessed.

Work from the first system, go slow, don’t set too high or too low of an expectation, each child is going to learn at their own pace.  Consider that a preschooler’s mind is sponge-like; you may be pleasantly surprised to find that their abilities are greater than yours.  When my son was 2 years old I would read a portion of the bible and he could easily recite 2 complete sentences of scripture back to me verbatim sometimes more.  His 2 year old mind was more capable than my adult mind, imagine that.  If you want your kids to learn God’s word, start early!

Kids love songs, creating a beat, intonation and dances.  Be as creative as you like, keeping in the back of your mind that this is God’s word and we need to be respectful to God and each other in the process.

How does a structured session play out?  The facilitator is leading, not dictating every aspect of the session.  Review what you have learned by starting at the beginning, the A-Verse; allow enough time to go over the new verses you are introducing.  Remember, great leaders are flexible enough to follow a tangent or stop to help explain what something means, this actually is the ideal scenario.  Questions and probing from the student are good things, this is the environment that you want to create, engage their minds.  Rigidity and a one sided monologue from the leader is simply not effective teaching.

The best environment for learning is interactive; the student and teacher are sharing ideas.

In bible verse memorization it makes little sense to memorize words or passages that we do not understand.  Part of the facilitator’s job is to explain what the verse means.  We do this using, real life, practical examples that relate directly to the listeners paradigm.

If there are words in the verse that are at all challenging, we ask the students to define them, if they are close to the correct definition we encourage them to go further and show a bunch of grace when they are off base.  We give them fun hints and little details to pull the correct answer from them, if possible.  I prefer to engage the students by asking open ended questions.

Leaders:

Be consistently positive and upbeat, maintaining an enthusiastic attitude is another key of successful leading.

Focused attention only lasts so long; you will see it wane by closely watching their body language and the focus of the students.  So take frequent FUN breaks.—music, artwork, movement and dance, and occasionally, food.  Don’t be afraid to take control after a break and lovingly re-engage.

In the working environment, keep distractions to a minimum.  Loud noises disorient.  If you can not remove the distraction change the students’ location as to remove them from the distraction.  Students making arts and crafts are tuned into their handiwork and as a result are unfocused.  Don’t be afraid to remove the arts and crafts project or move the student, for optimal results.  Recognize, especially talkative students may need to move away from their chatty friends, again these decisions need to be Spirit led, you don’t want to be too over bearing as the leader.  Pick your battles carefully, if the problem is ongoing and disrupting your spirit then find a way to gracefully but firmly solve the problem.

Some General Rules:

1. If working with children, no crafts out during bible memory time.
2. No Media (phone, ipod, ipad etc.) devices are completely put away, don’t let the children use the excuse they are looking up the scripture on their device; having the device nearby is just too much of a potential distraction.
3. Ask for and expect the students attention—some people’s minds wander, that’s ok, draw them back to you lovingly
4. Eye Contact—shows they are following leadership, if you don’t have it, you do not have their attention
5. Respect—is “the trump card” in the very worst scenario, the leader needs to explain the behavioral expectations to the students.  This type of creative learning can foster rambunctious energy, give the students enough leeway to keep it loose, but it’s the leaders job to make sure the students don’t get too far out of hand.  Emerson Eggeriches’ book on Love and Respect is a fantastic foundation for marriage and also relational behavior.  Explain that men/boys need respect and women/girls need love. Add the bible verses to support this concept (Ephesians 5:33).
6. Place a copy of the memory verses in the parents hand and suggest they go over them with their child, have them do this right before they go to bed.  We have found that the parent is even more blessed than the student when they review and meditate on these verses.  God’s word does not return void, it accomplishes its intended purpose.
7. Rewards motivate students; work towards a goal and celebrate the accomplishment when you attain your goal.  When my children completely learn and can flawlessly recite all 26 alphabet bible verses in a particular system they are allowed to choose a significant reward, something they particularly desire; this does not have to necessarily be expensive, but it needs to fulfill a desire of the student and represent the accomplishment.
8. Some students are driven by competition – you can use this to your advantage as a leader enticing them to push each other in their pursuit of wisdom and knowledge.  Keep a fair balance in regard to unhealthy competition and make sure you are promoting grace filled learning.  Regurgitation of bible verses without understanding the underlying concept is hollow; the student should be able to loosely define the theme of each scripture that they have learned.  The hope here is that God’s word (logos) will migrate from their mind to their heart (rhema) and become enlightened and engrained.  So that God’s word will always guide them on their life-journey.