Knowledge | Bible Quest

Memorize for Knowledge

God gave your children the incredible ability to memorize, so why not leverage that strength to give them Scriptural knowledge? Psalm 119:11 says, "Thy word have I hid in my heart that I might not sin against Thee." There is growth as a follower of Jesus that comes as a direct result of knowing the Bible. After all, we can much better discuss and apply God's Word if we know what it says!

Any student can benefit from memorization, though children through the preteen years will experience the easiest memory process.

There are three driving elements to any successful memory work: frequency, duration, and intensity.

Frequency

Frequency has to do with repetition of memory content in the short term. Begin by presenting the material out loud to your students. Then, repeat it with them using some of the memory tools under Intensity, below. Repeat the material until students can say it together without too much stumbling over words, then say it together one last time. While a single day of memory practice won't result in lifelong retention, the work helps to set up the short-term mental infrastructure that keeps the information in place in a student's mind.

If you wish to memorize longer selections of Scripture or other Biblical content, break up the material into portions and do it over several sessions. It never hurts to have short portions, regardless of student age. Once each portion of the content becomes easy to repeat, begin work on a new portion. Recite the entire selection that you have completed so far at the beginning of each day's session with your students, then work on the new portion for the day, then recite the new, longer selection you've practiced at the close of the day's session. Daily memory sessions should ideally be every day or as often as possible.

Duration
Duration has to do with repetition of memory practice over longer periods of time. Once a student has employed frequency and can recite the entire memory selection without stumbling too often, begin to focus on duration.

Recite your fresh memory work once per day at first until perfect recitation is easy. Then, recite a little less often, perhaps every other day, and do that for a few weeks. Slowly transition to recitation once a week and then to once a month. Eventually, memory work can be brought up even less frequently for long term retention.

To manage a plan for duration, consider putting memory work on index cards and keeping them in a file box with folders representing "today," "every other day," "weekly," "monthly," and "retention," moving cards as needed to less frequent recitation schedules.

Intensity

Intensity has to do with easing the process of memory in some way, either by positive emotional impact or by ordering or presenting the content in some way that aides recall.

Positive Emotional Impact

When memorization is fun, it's not only easier to motivate students to do it; it's also more effective! Most of the enjoyment in the act of memorization works best once the material has been presented and practiced a little so that students can recite it fairly easily. When that happens, try changing up how you recite the material with alternative voices, such as "mouse voice" (say the verse in a squeaky voice), "dinosaur voice" (use a roaring, gravely voice), "loud voice" (cover your ears!), or "whisper voice" (moms tend to love this one). Try marching or hopping as you recite - using only one leg is a challenge! Most games can be repurposed for review recitation - imagine playing freeze tag, but to unfreeze a player, another player must touch them and recite all of John 3:16! Suddenly, review of memory material is active and fun! Bible Quest includes many review games in the curriculum, but here are a few additional ones that you may find helpful. Feel free to make memory time enjoyable, even humorous and silly, provided that the content remains correct.

Memory content can also be organized or presented in such a way that it is easier to memorize.

Organization Strategies

Rhyme - One of the strongest organizational memory aides is rhyme; when text has well-formed rhyme it becomes much easier to learn and much easier to recall, simultaneously shortening and strengthening the memory process.
Rhythm - When the memory content itself has internal poetic rhythm, that helps to make memory easier. There are numerous resources online to help explain poetic rhythm, but even when the text to be memorized doesn't have rhythm built in, it can be imputed a rhythmic quality through music.
Music - Setting memory content to music makes memory a breeze, and ensures much smoother recall for students. It is possible to set any memory verse or other content to music of your own composition, but it's often helpful to set the content to music that students already know, such as old nursery songs or even well-known classical pieces. For more about using music in the classroom, and in particular for teaching Scripture verbatim, check out this article and this article. The Bible Quest program includes eighty recorded Scripture songs, forty for the Old Testament and forty for the New Testament.

Presentation Strategies

Kinesthetics - Creating actions for students to use while they recite memory content is a fantastic way to ease the memorization process and foster better recall. It's helpful if actions for a specific word or concept is consistent from one memory item to another, but that is not strictly necessary. Bible Quest includes suggested actions for all eighty of the recorded songs in the program on downloadable, printable pages.
Loci - Sometimes called "memory palace," loci is the idea that students of memory can intentionally create mental buildings or locations in their mind and associate the things that they'd like to memorize with each of the rooms or distinctive locales within that mental map. Then, when they go through their "memory palace" again at a later date, they can recall the associations and recite the content. There are a lot of resources online on how to emply loci for memory, but parents and caring mentors can also do a simple trick to employ loci without any of that complexity: simply present a portion of your memory work in one location (such as your living room or a particular corner of a classroom), then move to another location and present the next portion there, and so on. Then when it's time to recite the memory work, move from location to location, reciting the appropriate portion of the memory work. The mental association the student has with each location will help them with recall.
Pictorial Association - Pictures can also be used as simple mental associations to help students recall what they've memorized. Present memory content with a particular picture in view, then show that picture again while reciting. Bible Quest includes review game cards for each week of content that includes a picture of Biblical people or events to help with this sort of recall.

The Equip Phase in Bible Quest

Bible Quest employs memorization in the Equip Phase of the program. Each week, Bible Quest provides memorizable content. The program gives parents and teachers a variety of memory tools and methods, as well as review games to help reinforce what the students are committing to memory. When using Bible Quest, expect to invest 20-30 minutes one day a week on the Equip Phase, and then 10-15 minutes of review per day thereafter in the school week. Two articles about the phase include:

Use this fun song-based memory video to learn Ephesians 6:10-17!

Try these verse actions with a funny voice to learn Matthew 5:13-16.

For more about Biblical memorization, feel free to explore these resources:

For a discussion about memorization between Nathan King and Yvette Hampton of Schoolhouse Rocked, see The Power of Memorization, Part 1, Part 2, and Part 3.