Drew Boswell

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Review and Repetition; The ZIP PLOP Method by Daryl Dale

Daryl Dale is a children’s pastor in CT and was very influential to me at Children’s Pastor’s Conference that I attended in 2002. He placed the following article in his curriculum for the years while he published his own curriculum. Since it is out of print, and defiantly worth reading by all educators, I have reprinted it below.

“The human brain remembers what it understands and what is repeated. Bible stories and concepts are selected on the basis of the child’s ability to understand the primary truth in the story. It is through teaching the child learns the real meaning and application of the Bible story. It is through repetition learning is stored in the child’s long term memory and retained. It is almost impossible for a child to remember our Bible lessons without repetition and review.

Those who study how learning takes place in the brain describe our minds having two parts: a short term memory and a long term memory. The short term memory remembers new facts and concepts for about ten seconds and then forgets them unless they are repeated. When you hear a phone number, person’s name or directions to a store that information will be lost unless you write it down or repeat it in your mind several times. Each time we repeat the information in our mind we will remember it a little longer. With repetition and use new knowledge is moved into our long term memory and remembered for months or even years.

The ZIP PLOP method of teaching is all too common in church classrooms. Imagine the child’s brain as being a tunnel that stretches from ear to ear. This tunnel is three inches square and nine inches long. Pretend each Bible lesson is a three-inch-block. Every week we teach a new lesson and push a new three inch block into the child’s head.

However, after three blocks are in the child’s brain, what happens when the fourth lesson is put in? It plops out. If week after week the teacher continues to push new lessons into the child’s brain without review, the material almost literally goes in one ear and out the other. However, each time a Bible concept is reviewed it is prevented from escaping the mind and stored more securely in the long term memory of the child.

Sometimes the review and repetition may seem cumbersome and unnecessary. However, with review the learning of the children will be multiplied many times. Remember this little poem:

If it is important enough to teach,

It is important enough to review.

It is important enough to learn,

It is important enough to remember.”

A suggestion is the get the sentence strips at educational stores and write your review items on them, (part of the item on one side, and the conclusion on the back). By adding a few every week during a particular topic of study, you will greatly improve your students recall of specific items of study, memory verses, names, places, etc. It only takes a few minutes to do, and you can make it fun.

Determining Curriculum (part two; interview with Spiritual Formation Ministries)

Daryl Dale with Spiritual Formation Ministries is a small, one-man publisher of his own children’s ministry curriculum.[1] He originally began publishing his own material out of a frustration that the materials he reviewed seemed to focus on fun, games, and slick glossy print, but were constructed in such a way that they did not adequately teach children the Bible. He also felt that they lacked an evaluative component to determine if the children were actually learning anything in the classroom.

Dale then began the process to determine what should be taught and in so doing he put together a board of people. After a time of prayer and thought they developed various spiritual disciplines.

They further developed the curriculum over a two-year period, adding Scripture Memory and Bible Knowledge. After some time, he realized the need to add another section dealing with character issues (i.e., Fruit of the Spirit, courtesy, respect, obedience, faithfulness, etc.). The finished product is a curriculum divided into three sections (spiritual knowledge, doctrine, and character). The various age groups would cycle through these three groups of teaching on a two-year basis. Spiritual Formation Ministries curriculum also suggests that teachers use flash cards to review what has already been taught in a given four-week section.

Dale admitted that the difficulty with his curriculum and approach to teaching was that for many children attendance was sporadic and required the cooperation of the parents. Dale also tests his kids in the classroom, and it has been his experience that children enjoy this portion of the curriculum. Sometimes rewards are given for high test scores; sometimes they are not. However, rewards are not given as incentive for learning.

When asked about how he determines success in children’s ministry, he replied, “One should look at the teaching staff and evaluate their passion. If they are into it, if they are committed to it, and really care then every thing goes well. But when they are just filling a role there is little success.” Dale also shared that one of his big frustrations as a Minister of Education in his church is that teachers did not spend enough time to make the lesson work. He would even make the visuals for them; and since they had no investment and were not familiar with them, they would go unused.

Dale’s definition for a curriculum most closely matches another definition given for curriculum by Brummelen, “Curriculum is an organized set of documented, formal educational plans intended to attain preconceived goals. . . .Curriculum is a blueprint from which we build and then assess how well we have followed the plan. This view holds that curriculum planners must first decide goals or objectives. They use these to develop a series of precise prescriptions for teaching and learning.”[2]

This definition closely matches Dale’s philosophy of Christian education because he has written parts of the lesson into every section that shows the teacher how to use various examination techniques (games, flashcards, etc.) to evaluate their teaching. For the purpose of our discussion Dale’s curriculum was chosen because it includes statistical data relating to the topics he has chosen to include in his curriculum.

Dale’s curriculum can be investigated by going to http://spiritualformatioministries.webbuilderexpress.com/index.html

[1] The information for this section was obtained through a personal interview with Daryl Dale on January 5, 2006.

[2] Ibid.

The Three Components of Learning (Part Three; Evaluation)

The Three Components of Learning

Part Three

Evaluation

Proverbs 27:23 says, “Be sure you know the condition of your flocks, give careful attention to your herds” (NIV). The educational ministry of the church must have a master plan, which has clearly defined objectives. Those objectives can then be used to measure effectiveness. For the teacher each lesson should have clear objectives that are outlined for the student to learn. This is the first and most important way of evaluating teaching effectiveness. A simple way of establishing teaching effectiveness is simply to ask the students what they learned and how they plan to apply this knowledge to their lives. Another evaluation tool is to gather the leadership over a specific section of education and ask them the effectiveness of the teaching in their areas. Perhaps the greatest weakness of most Christian educational departments within the church is that they operate on a week-to-week basis with regard to the teaching. Many times the teacher will look at this comings Sunday’s lesson during the week but look no further. They lack written objectives or goals in which to evaluate if the students are learning. This becomes an even greater problem if teachers rotate as part of a teaching team. In this situation, one teacher may not even know what was taught the week before her lesson, or what the next week’s lesson will cover.

Now that the lesson has been taught, is the work of the teacher over? No. Gregory says in his “Law of review and application,” that the chief aim of the teacher at this point is “to perfect knowledge, to confirm knowledge, and to render this knowledge ready and useful.”[1] The material that has been taught, in order for it to have the most impact, must be reviewed. Review, however, is more than repetition; it is guiding the student back through the thought process that was taken earlier. Even in these times of review new thoughts may be discussed, or new questions may arise. This is especially true of a study of Scripture. Learning theory demonstrates that persons can only recall Bible facts, ideas, and concepts when they understand what is being taught and when the facts, ideas, and concepts are systematically reviewed.[2] It, therefore, is only as the teacher goes back and reviews previous lessons that Bible information is retained. When a lesson is reviewed it is like stacking information. However, in order for the teacher to know what to review, he has to know the big picture is. This explains the importance of master planning.

It has been said that “the unexamined life is not worth living.” But this can also apply to an unexamined ministry. A teacher could go years, if not his whole teaching ministry, making little impact for God’s kingdom. If he had only periodically evaluated how effective he had been, it could have been radically different. Hendricks says that “experience does not necessarily make you better; in fact it tends to make you worse, unless it’s evaluated experiences.”[3] The teacher has to evaluate periodically the methods he is using to determine if they are effective. Oftentimes one does not evaluate because one is afraid of what one might discover. The teacher may have to change what he has always done in the classroom. He may have to try new things that may be risky or make him feel uncomfortable.

The final step in the teaching process is for the student to teach others. Paul explains it this way, “And the things you have heard me say in the presence of many witnesses entrust to reliable men who will also be qualified to teach others” (2 Tim 2:2 NIV). Eldridge explains that having the student become the teacher accomplishes three things. First, the teaching is reinforced in the life of the original student. He says, “Expressing an idea in a way that others can understand increases the teacher’s comprehension.”[4] Second, when the original student teaches material to a third person, it helps to make concrete the original student’s beliefs. When the teacher has to defend his teaching and knows that he may be questioned as to how he knows what he is teaching is true, he is encouraged to dig deeper himself. Third, having a student become a teacher, the original teacher’s ministry is multiplied (2 Tim 4:12). Jesus did this when He sent the disciples off to share the gospel (Matt 6:7–13). Luke 6:40 says, “. . . everyone who is fully trained will be like his teacher” (NIV). The teacher has to constantly be aware that his students (if he is effective) will be like him. In order for this model to be effective, the teacher must be like Christ. While no one is worthy to be a teacher of Scripture, one must make sure that he is doing all that he can to live up to this awesome responsibility and calling. Jesus sets the example, and is the watermark for the Christian educator to follow. Teachers should “press on” to become transformational teachers.

[1] Gregory, The Seven Laws of Teaching, 116.

[2] Dale, Changing Lives or Spinning Wheels, 29.

[3] Hendricks, Teaching to Change Lives, 33.

[4] Eldridge, The Teaching Ministry of the Church, 83.

"Your greatest life messages and your most effective ministry will come out of your deepest hurts." Rick Warren

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