As Seminary teachers, we know scripture mastery is important, and we should do a little scripture mastery every day. But most teachers are overwhelmed with the thought of trying to figure out something small to do each day with Scripture Mastery.
The following is a solution that is designed to save you any stress, and it gives you what you can do each day for a few minutes. It centers on spotlighting a scripture mastery passage each week. With the few minutes you spend they will 1. Memorize the passage, 2. Learn the references from the key words, 3. Will understand why the scripture passage is important, and 4. Be able to apply it in their lives and use it in the future.
Click on the pictures above to see the 2 options for you. You can print this off as individual strips so that you hand your students a new strip each week, or you can print it as a packet that is 4 pages and they get that out of their folders each day. You can also follow that pattern but have things written on the board rather than use the handout at all. Either way will work. At the top of the handout is the brief description of what to do each day. I will explain it here in a bit more detail:
DAY 1: Recite the scripture together as a class. They can look at the handout, or some teachers order bigger posters if they have the budget for it. See http://www.carrprinting.com/page.php?id=66 . Then I ask my class, “What is so special about this scripture that they decided to make it a scripture mastery?” Then we also go over the back of the Scripture Mastery Card for that passage and discuss the Context, Doctrine or Principle, and Application. About 5 minutes.
Day 2: Recite the passage again like the day before and then learn the mnemonic cartoon. You can refer them to the handout or print out that particular mnemonic you are spotlighting that week, and have it up front. To teach mnemonics properly, see the instructions on the first page of the mnemonics which I posted just before this blog posting. Then I like to do a simple scripture chase activity with that passage and any we have learned previously. Simple say the key words and then say, “Chase!” and they have to remember the reference, and find it in their scriptures. Don’t let the class tell each other the reference, but rather, give clues based on the mnemonic.
Day 3: Recite the passage again and then have them see if they can recite it using the fill-in-the blanks on the worksheet. Also ask the class to try to figure out as many doctrines and principles they can from the passage. Ask them what kind of situations could come up where knowing that scripture could help.
Day 4: Recite the passage together again and then ask them to recite it using the first letters of each word like on the worksheet. Then come up with a role play situation where that scripture would be useful and have them act it out and share that scripture with the other person. Great practice for a mission.
Day 5: Recite the passage all together again and then give them a few minutes to pass it off to you or a classmate. I like to have an Incentive chart where they put a sticker down when they have passed off the particular scripture. Some stakes have the standard of only two hints on the harder scriptures when passing it off. They also say you can use the first letter of each word to pass off the 5 longest scripture mastery passages.
You may have noticed that the handout that has it as strips to pass out has the order from shortest to longest scripture masteries. This is to help those who say, “I just can’t memorize” build up their confidence by spotlighting and passing off the shorter ones first. The order you spotlight scripture masteries does not matter.
dc_daily_sm_worksheet_new.pdf |
dc_daily_sm_strips_new.pdf |