I have learned in my three decades of teaching multigrade classrooms, that my students’ brains work the best from 9:00 am-10:00 am. I use half of this hour for memory minutes. This time works really well for a multigrade classroom. I review my students’ memory verses, flash cards, U.S. presidents in a made-up song, the books of the Bible, word study reviews, and little overviews of the Pathways books. This is a fun time of day for me because not only are kids more alert, but I also have more energy, too. They’re not asleep and they’re not hyper either.
If I’m not using my own memory minutes songs that I’ve made up, I’ll turn to YouTube for catching memory minutes ideas too. Many of our students learn the best from hearing and seeing something educational and catchy on the screen that’s broken up into five minutes. I taught my students how to tour the world and the country by using YouTube. I pause at the areas that they need to memorize, and then they give me the answers that I’m waiting for.
If you don’t want to do this every morning, you could just do this on Monday mornings to review the previous week’s items that students should have memorized with their long term memory. In this situation you could call it, Monday Morning Memory Madness Minutes. For me, I look forward to doing this every day because it’s something I really enjoy as a multigrade teacher that needs to see classroom unity in a fun way.
By: Dame Madonna Toews
Dame is Head Teacher at Ketchum Adventist Academy in Ketchum, OK.
