Scripture Mastery

    Each new year I make the plan to memorize all the scripture mastery verses myself, and then assist all my students to do the same. As the year progresses reality sets in that some students have a much easier time memorizing than others. The goal peters out by January, but this year I want to try again.

Ron White, a two time memory champion, has some tips for memorization.

"Memorizing skills are an art, acquired with training, practice, focus and the desire to improve your ability to remember and recall the information you want to keep. Usually the art of memorization is referred to as mnemonics – methods of remembering information that normally would be difficult to recall. Basically, the principle of mnemonics is to use as many different parts of your brain as possible to set up a code to process the information. 

The style the person learns through has an affect on the sort of mnemonics that can be considered. Visual learners (approximately 65% of the population) are more receptive to mnemonics, but auditory learners are able to adjust to their learning styles by substituting auditory cues in place of visual.  Kinesthetic learners can use their imagination to perform plays or actions, as well as use memory tools to base their memory techniques. Keep in mind that most people utilize more than just one learning style all the time.

Our brains interpret complex stimuli (such as colors, structures, language, emotions) through the senses (sight, smell, taste, touch and hearing). We create a picture in our minds of the world around us through this stimuli and our memories store all of this very efficiently. Much of what we remember is presented in such a way our brain has to “decode” it, making remembering it more difficult. An example would be a handwritten letter.

Points that make things easier to remember, no matter what learning style you use:

§         Make the images you create in your mind pleasant and positive ones.

§         Inject humor as often as possible. We remember more with humor.

§         Take notes and write things down you want to remember

§         Make the images vivid and colorful

§         Understand the material before you try to remember it. If you don’t understand it you won’t remember it.

§         Teach it to someone else. If you can do that you understand it, and it will solidify it in your mind

§         Try creating a simple formula that will make it easier to remember

§         Relate what you want to remember to your own experiences

§         Break things down into smaller segments instead of trying to remember everything at once"

   
     Shannon Foster, The Red Headed Hostess, gave some good advice which sounds like a plan for this year for me.

* Teach­ers:  Let me share how I final­ly fig­ured out how to do scrip­ture mas­tery after YEARS of trial and error!  First quar­ter I worked on them know­ing the key phras­es of ALL 25 (so I focused on games and activ­i­ties that taught them this skill).  Sec­ond quar­ter I worked on over­all doc­trines and prin­ci­ples found in the scrip­ture mas­tery scrip­tures so they became more and more famil­iar with them.  Third quar­ter I had them pass off each scrip­ture with the first let­ters.  And fourth quar­ter I had them pass off each scrip­ture mem­o­rized with no helps.  I found that my stu­dents did MUCH bet­ter with this tac­tic rather than just start­ing with mem­o­riza­tion at the begin­ning of the year.  What I found when I did that is that most of my stu­dents knew the first five to ten scrip­tures and then they burned out.  With my new plan very few of my stu­dents burned out first, sec­ond or third quar­ter, so at least they knew the key phras­es, the prin­ci­ples and doc­trines, and a pret­ty good idea of the words in the scrip­tures.  Also by the time you get to the mem­o­riza­tion quar­ters, your stu­dents are mem­o­riz­ing scrip­tures they have already have had a lot of expo­sure to and it is much eas­i­er for them and they are more excit­ed to put in the work mem­o­riza­tion takes."
   As for myself, I am going to use the app on my I-Phone and get started today.