Ask a class in November what verse they learned in March and you will usually get silence. That is not the children’s fault. A verse repeated three times and never touched again was never going to survive, and repetition on its own is the weakest tool we have.
Here are six methods that work in a crowded room with no equipment. Use two or three in a single lesson rather than all six.
1. Say it with your body
Give every important word an action and teach the actions before the words. Thy word — hands open like a book. Is a lamp — hold up a fist like a small light. Unto my feet — point down. Children who cannot yet read will have the whole verse in a fortnight, because their hands are remembering it for them.
2. Take words away
Write the verse on the board. Read it together. Rub out one word and read it again, with the class supplying the gap. Keep going until the board is empty and the class is still saying the whole verse. This takes four minutes and it works every time.
3. Break it where the sense breaks
Children are usually taught to break a verse by counting words. Break it by meaning instead. Thy word is a lamp unto my feet is one idea; and a light unto my path is another. Two ideas are far easier to hold than eleven words.
4. Sing it
A child forgets most of what they are told and keeps almost everything they sing. This is why the Sunday School song Bible Muqaddas teaches Psalm 119:105 rather than simply mentioning it. If a verse you are teaching has a song, end the lesson by singing it, not by repeating it.
5. Give it away the same week
Set the class a task: say this verse to somebody who was not here. A grandmother, a neighbour, a cousin. A verse that has been spoken aloud to another person outside the classroom is remembered far better than one that was only ever recited back to the teacher.
6. Come back to it a month later
Put four verses the class learned earlier in the term at the start of a lesson, not the end. Reviewing an old verse when the children think they have finished with it is what moves it from this week’s memory into next year’s.
One warning about prizes
Prizes for memorising work quickly and stop working the moment the prize stops. Worse, in a class where some children cannot read, a prize for reciting is a prize for the children who were already ahead. If you use them, reward the child who tried hardest rather than the child who was fastest.
If you are looking for verses worth this effort, every lesson in the free curriculum is built around one, and each is given in English and Roman Urdu so it can be learned in the language the children speak at home. You may also find teaching thirty children in one room useful.
