Concordance Work, Part 3

Once you have your lists figured out and your study strategy developed, you need to know how to practice over your concordance material. It’s important to find practice methods that will allow your quizzers to understand how to recall this knowledge in the game. Here are a few ideas:

Drill Questions

This one’s fairly obvious, but I didn’t want to leave it off. The thing to keep in mind is to ask for the same item two or three different ways. If your quizzers know the 5 verses which mention widgets, they also need to know the references, and they need to be able to quote them all in 30 seconds.

Use Your Marker Board

Have students write the answers on the board. Make games out of it. This gives them visual reinforcement and changes things up by getting them out from behind the buzzers for awhile.

Stopwatch Drill

I’m one of those old-fashioned coaches that carries a stopwatch with me to every practice. On concordance material, it’s important for the quizzers to be able to recall the items quickly. Don’t just base it on 30 seconds. Make them try for 15 or 20 seconds to recall their answers. Watch out for long delays before they start the answers. That usually means they don’t have it down well enough yet.

Concordance work requires a good deal of practice to perfect. Keep working at it, and stay after your quizzers on their studying. They can’t afford to get behind if you want to win at Regionals.