Open-Book Bible Quizzing

At face value, this idea defeats the purpose of Bible quizzing. Maybe that’s why I had never thought of doing it until one of my students asked me to quiz her with her book open. It seemed almost scandalous—quizzing without memorizing? That’s like a Chick-fil-A sandwich without chicken! But in spite of my hesitations, the concept of open-book quizzing proved to be just the tool I needed to kick this brand new middle school team into gear.
Going into the month of April, things were moving at a snail’s pace for the AoE South quiz team. I had just been hired on as middle school Bible teacher a month before, and had immediately gotten to work on starting a quiz team in the school. I had tried everything—inspiring the students with videos of Bible quiz, teaching them various ways to memorize, doing countless quiz-related competitions in class—but the results were underwhelming. Now our in-house Bible quiz tournament was one week away, and my most ambitious student had memorized a whopping fifteen verses. It seemed that my only available recourse was to cancel the tournament. I needed another option.
Just then, Kristal, an eighth grader, asked me to quiz her over Hebrews 12 as she held the Scripture portion in her hand. In that moment, I realized the possible benefits of this method, and thought it might be just the answer I needed. One week later, Academy of Excellence South Campus held their first-ever Bible quiz tournament, and it was a smashing success.
If you’ve ever worked with brand new quizzers, you know that memorizing is only one of many skills needed to succeed in Bible quizzing. Among many other things, high-level Bible quizzing requires personal confidence, logical reasoning skills, a solid grasp of the English language, and the ability to think clearly under pressure. Open-book Bible quizzing works like a flight simulator, eliminating the most important component—in this case, memorization—in order to isolate and hone in all of the other important skills that make a good quizzer.
Let me give some examples. In open-book quizzing, the students are allowed to look up the answers in their Scripture portions even after they stand. This develops their jump timing instinct, and teaches them how to locate the correct answer while under pressure. Some of the students figured out the strategy right away and were making CI-level jumps their first day on the pads. This helped me as a coach to see which students had the most potential for success in quizzing.
One thing that can be particularly discouraging for a quizzer is when he memorizes a portion of material but still fails to score any points in practice. In many cases, this problem would be solved with a better understanding of the English language and the logical ability needed to locate the answer in a verse. By eliminating the memory factor, we can develop these other abilities first, increasing the student’s confidence and motivating him to continue memorizing.
After our tournament, gathering interest for Bible quizzing was easy. The students had tasted the excitement, intensity, teamwork, and everything else that makes Bible quizzing awesome, and now they were more willing to put in the grunt work that real Bible quizzing requires. Maintaining a consistent memory habit has still been a challenge, but the open-book Bible quiz tournament breathed life into the AoE South program.
I am not by any means suggesting that we replace regular Bible quizzing with the open-book method. I am simply recommending open-book Bible quizzing as a valuable coaching strategy, particularly for use with brand new quizzers. Not only does this method develop quizzing skill in many areas, but ultimately it aids in motivating students to memorize the Word of God, and that’s what we’re really after.
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