Can you recite “Humpty Dumpty”? Were you ever forced to memorize it? The fact that it rhymes helped you remember the “story” many years after you first heard it. In fact, you can probably still recite most of it even if you haven’t heard it in decades.
You probably already know that rhyming important facts and concepts from the Bible can make them easier for your Bible students to remember. What you may not know is that our brains have a cognitive bias towards rhyme. When your Bible students hear a statement that rhymes, they are more likely to believe it is true. It’s known as the rhyme as reason effect.
Sounds great, but since the Bible doesn’t contain natural rhymes, what can you do? When there is important information from the Bible you want your students to remember and remember as truth, see if you can find a way to make it rhyme. This works with Bible facts as well as it does concepts.
My husband and I experimented with this a few years ago. We were teaching a unit on the prophets in the Bible and wanted to find an interesting and simple way to summarize the familiar and unfamiliar prophets to the children. We created this rhyming poem modeled after a Dr. Seuss type format. It covered the prophets and a summary of the prophecies of each.
The trick to writing rhymes more easily is to match syllables in the two lines you want to rhyme and then have the last word in each line rhyme with the other. We thought it would be difficult, but with two of us working on it, we were able to complete it rather quickly.
For the truth aspect to work well, think of several of the most important truths from the Bible you want your students to remember and believe as Truth. Find ways to rhyme them. You may want to have several separate short rhymes to make them easier for students to remember. Repeat them periodically to help move them into the long term memories of your students.
You may also want to try this with a few verses from Proverbs, as they are already in a format that would be easy to adapt to rhyme. Or turn your rhymes into songs and sing them regularly with your class. Some young people will prefer singing while others may prefer restyling your rhymes as raps or cheer type rhymes. As long as the execution is respectful, use ways in which your students will be most captivated by the rhymes and repeat them regularly with enthusiasm. In some cases, you may even want your Bible students to create the rhymes.
As with anything, rhymes should be just one of many tools in your teaching tool belt. Used too often, it will lose its effectiveness. Used correctly, however, it can reinforce important truths and help students remember them years later.