The following is from the manual on our new Bible Song Sunday School.
We learned above that without at least two types of simultaneous
stimuli, an individual molecular gate won’t open. Without the gate
opening, an individual nerve cell won’t fire. Without multiple
nerve cells firing a massive sensory bombardment of information,
the brain won’t recognize patterns and register what you are trying to teach or
recall. If you take this brain science seriously, it will force you to rethink how you
teach everything. How you preach. How you create your space. How you do
pastoral care in small groups and presentations in large groups. Music and sign
language will become more and more central to the learning experience?
Why?
Because they work. Because they teach the way the brain learns. Because they
create patterns that cross all portions of the brain and reach beyond the brain to
neurons in your extremities. Because they will turn everyone involved into activist
participants in their own education.
“Neurons are greatly influenced by the company they keep,” says Dr. Thomas
Czerner. Adding music, movement and art will engage the learner and bring an
end the mindless doodling that generates from a pattern-starved mind.
The word “education” comes from the Latin (educatio) meaning to lead out or draw
out. If you want to teach something your learner will be able to draw out for the
rest of their lives, why wouldn’t you have them literally draw it out on paper now?
If you are serious about putting a pattern into their brains that they will be able to
retrieve years later, why wouldn’t you teach with more than the spoken word?
Why wouldn’t you employ eyes, ears, mouths, muscles, emotions, and the one
sense that is often forgotten in the classroom - the sense of humor? If you want to
optimize memory, you will use every asset in your brain-based arsenal, and put
those patterns in place at the optimal moments in a child’s life.
“Now thank we all our God, with hearts and hands and voices” isn’t just a good song.
It is good brain science.
That’s what BSS is all about.
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