What Works For Me: Large Print Verses

Each week, for the 4th graders, I have been printing off one large print copy of the current memory verse in the biggest font size I can get away with and still keep all of the words on one page. If their crumpled, beaten status at the end of every week is any indication, they are well used. 

1) If I hold it up, everyone can see well enough to choral read without crowding. This helps all of the kids get familiar with reading the crazy words in the verse before they are asked to do it on their own later.

2) It's big enough to mark up. I'll often have two or three kids come and put stars by any words that they don't know, so that we can use one of our tricks to make the crazy words seem less crazy. 

3) It's great for a cheat sheet. We often play some sort of a memory verse game. For things like freeze tag, where they have to tell me the verse to get unfrozen, we often give them an "assist" by holding the verse out and letting them read it. 

What Works For Me: Goofy Explanations

Isaiah 53 has a lot of hard words, especially for fourth graders. Fourth graders are pretty quick, though. They're at one of those stages of life where they are learning new terms every time they turn around. It just takes a few tricks, and a little repetition, to help things stick. 

One of the things that works for us in Sunday school this year is adding a little bit of silly to our explorations and explanations. After a few kids have given ideas for word definitions - or researched them for us - it is time for the goofy definitions to roll in. 

For example, the word "oppression" contains the word "press." So, I might reach over and press down (gently) on the kid/s nearest me and explain that oppression means that someone bigger - a grown up to a kid or a boss to an employee - or with more power is doing something unfair to someone smaller than they are, holding them down or "pressing" them down.

Then, I might let a few of them "oppress" me in return.

We pictured "afflicted" by my reaching over and repeatedly "flicking" the kid beside me (Yeah. I know that the spelling doesn't match up, but it sounds right to them, and that is what most of them need to be able to remember). Affliction is something painful - like being flicked - done to you by someone else  - like Jessica.

Ask them those two. They remember them. Actually, they remember a lot of words, but those two were/are their favorites, because I let them do them to me in return.

Every week is something a little different, depending on the kids who show up and 98% off the cuff, but, if silly can help make crazy/hard words memorable, then that works for me.

What Works For Me: Researchers

I am all about kids people memorizing Bible verses. In fact, we spend a good chunk of our small group time each week working on a verse with the 4th graders. But, as per the curriculum, we are currently working our way through Isaiah 53, which has more than a few words and phrases that the kids are not familiar with - as well as a mind bending habit of mixing metaphors and going on "rabbit trail" verses.

They each go home at the start of the month with a verse sheet like the one below, with definitions on the bottom of the page (dictionary definitions simplified and translated into 4th grader speak, because, it is very uniquely frustrating to look up a definition and find out that you are going to have to look up another definition, just to figure out what the first one meant). 

By no means, though, does that mean that they actually read the definitions on their own. So, we define the crazy words at Sunday school. One of the ways that we do that is to assign 2+ children as "researchers." Those researchers use the page to "look up" any words that the rest of the class is confused about. 

They love being the ones disseminating the information, and I love that they are practicing finding the answers for themselves. 

(Other weeks we might let the kids guess as to what the crazy words mean - they are often remarkably good at hunting down related or root words - or we jump right in with some sort of crazy teacher definition. Totally depends on the words and how familiar/foreign they are to that week's group of kids.)