Important Suggestions, Lesson Ideas and Helps for Teaching with Cal & Marty:

The cornerstone of literacy is repetition, whether you're studying verses or how to hit a golf ball. Cal & Marty is designed to help students WANT to improve their score. But to really learn these verses, you will need to present them again at a later time, using this software and other learning approaches, such as creating an art project or skit about the verse. The best way to increase long-term memory is to repeat content over the long term!

Let your Students Create the Verses !
I've used scripture memory software for years in my lab so hear me on this one: One of the best ways to learn a verse with Cal & Marty is to have the student doing the typing of the words into the editor. Typing and proofreading the verse set is a form of memory work! Kids like to type. The keyboard is a toy to them. 

When having the kids edit in verses do this: Have one student be the READER straight from the Bible. Have one student be the TYPIST. Have another student be the PROOFREADER.

Now you know why Cal & Marty is NOT full of pre-made verses. It is better if the students do the editing. That's why we've made the editor so easy to use. They'll even enjoy making up their own comments and quizzes. (Plus, I didn't want to have to type a hundred verse sets in 5 different translations!)

There is a nifty way to have STUDENTS do the typing of the verse, but still use YOUR comments and quiz content when they go to unscramble their verse.
What you'll be doing is creating a "placeholder" verse in the editor with your comments and quiz. Then the kids will come along and edit in the complete verse.

Here's how to do it: Open the Verse Editor and start a new verse set. Then select ADD a verse and type in the scripture reference. Then you need to type something in the verse field, such as the first word or a number just to fill the space and fool the editor so it has something to save (it can't save the verse if there's nothing there). No need to type in the entire verse. Your text can simply be a placeholder. Then click SAVE VERSE. Now click ADD COMMENT and ADD QUIZ and put in your entire comment/quiz content. Save and exit. Now your kids can open the Verse Editor, "edit" the set your started by adding the complete verse text, save, and go play the game. Their content pops up and after they have unscrambled their verses YOUR content pops up. Try it. It's fun.

Before the Scripture Memory Game:

Talk about the verse. Discuss the meaning of words in it, and the application of the verse to their life -the "so what."

Then have them edit the verse into the Verse Editor and play the game.

After using the software, consider other projects to salt-in the memories.

Drawing project idea: Make a large banner of the verse.

Game/Drama project: Play pictionary with the words in the verse. See how many different ways teams can come up with to act out the words in the verse.

If you're studying the Lord's Prayer, Beatitudes, Salt/Light/Seek First, Pearl/Leaven parables, use Galilee Flyer, our software game that teaches the memory and content of these important verses in a fun "flying game" format.

How young can Cal & Marty go? Short verses that are talked about can be identified even by early readers. They will look for what the words LOOK like.

One last thought on "rewarding students" for doing well. There is nothing wrong with rewards. We all reward our children for different things. I like to be rewarded for hard work just like you do too. The question is WHAT do we reward them with? And do we make them feel UNappreciated if unrewarded? You will notice that Cal & Marty doesn't have a time limit. The clock counts UP. Reward students for improving their own score, not by beating others kids' scores. If you make the process of memorization fun, the memories by their very nature are more likely to get remembered!

How to Create Matching Quizzes Using Cal & Marty's program

---Want to have your students match Bible heroes to the books they appear in? Cal & Marty can do it! Read our simple "how to create a matching game with Cal" instructions at www.sundaysoftware.com/luther-calvin/calmatch.htm

Another interesting way to use Cal & Marty...
Walking Through a Story "as told by memory phrases/verses" in Cal & Marty
Here's a lesson concept for teaching the John 3/Nicodemus story that can also be applied to many other memorable Bible stories where there are several key verses and famous phrases. Split up your story into four or five compact sentences based on the scripture. Have grades 3 to teen create/type these key sentences as separate entries into Cal & Marty. Use the 'add comment' feature and 'Add Quiz Questions' feature to key in on the unique concepts in each verse/phrase. (This is a memory technique using Cal & Marty I call "walking through the story.") Remember, you can START a key verse with just one word, then add your own comment/quiz so that you have prepared the verse set for the students to finish. (this saves time if needed)

Here would be the key verses I'd choose for John 3 (Shortened "Neil" version based on NRSV).

• There was a Pharisee named Nicodemus, a leader of the Jews.
• He came to Jesus by night and said, "Rabbi, we know that you are a teacher who has come from God."
• Jesus answered him, "no one can see the kingdom of God without being born from above."
• Nicodemus said, "How can anyone be born after having grown old? Can a person enter their mother's womb a second time and be born?
• Jesus answered, "I tell you, no one can enter the kingdom of God without being born of water and Spirit."
• "For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life."

Even Grades 1 and 2 in the second half of school year can do KEY WORD SHORTER PHRASE memory work -assembling by sight with some help. Words are power! Quiz questions can be read aloud by them. Here's how I'd shorten the verses even more for younger children:

-Nicodemus visited Jesus
-Jesus, you are a teacher from God.
-Jesus said, you must be born from above.
-God loved the world and gave his only Son.
Younger students can work on verbally repeating John 3:16 following the software.

A Few Technical Notes About the Program:

Visit our Cal-Tech webpage at www.sundaysoftware.com/luther-calvin for special troubleshooting.

Quick Game Tips:

When the program first starts up, you can hit your spacebar to bypass the music and speeches (but why?).

When you slide the scrambled words into place, you must get them exactly in the right place or they won't "snap in." Watch carefully how the words slip/snap into place when you get them near enough and release your mouse button. The Timer will continue to count UP until all the words are in their correct positions. Sometimes one words will appear to be properly aligned, but it needs a little more nudging. And then, sometimes you just have it in the wrong place!  Cal says: try to put them in order from left to right, that way 'spacing' isn't so much a problem.

If you Ask Cal or Ask Marty a word will be snapped in for you, but TIME will be ADDED to your clock. Your final score is based on total time. More time = lower score. Read the full instructions for the game in the HELP file.

If your Cal and Marty Talking Heads look all bizarre, double click the rendering.exe file located in c:\ calandmarty on your hard drive. It will adjust the program to work with your videochip. If that doesn't help, you may not have enough videoram to run Cal & Marty (though it only needs 6mb of videoram which isn't much at all).

Quick Editor Tips:

When you first open the Verse Editor you must select either to edit or create.

When you first open the edit or create screen, you must FIRST select ADD A VERSE to be able to type in the text fields.

You can do "true/false" answers by putting TRUE in the (a) answer field, FALSE in the (b) answer field, and an asterisk * in the (c) answer field.

As you've probably discovered, Cal and Marty's heads follow the mouse pointer. During some of the HISTORY presentations, we recommend putting the point in the middle of the screen. Their eye and mouth movements have been keyed to look best when looking straight at your students.

You've probably also discovered that you can CLICK AND ROTATE THEIR HEADS. It's fun, and they don't mind one bit. Right-click on their heads for a menu. "Pan" for example, allows the user to Click and DRAG their heads off their bodies. If their head slides out of view completely, just right click and select 'reset.'

How to Delete a Player's Name from the list: Open the file "PlayerNames.nam" located in the main directory of the program (c:\programs\calandmarty). It is a text file which can be opened and edited with Windows Notepad.

Caution: Do not attempt to edit/create verse set text files through any other program other than the Editor that comes with the program. Certain characters and spacing conventions are used by the editor to make the verses correctly appear in the game.

How to Copy Verse Sets from one computer to another...

If you have purchased multiple copies of the program, or a site license (available only from Sunday Software), you will undoubtedly find yourself in a position to use the following information.

1) Open c:\programs\calandmarty and look for the Verse Set you created. It will have the name you gave it.
2) Copy that file to your A: drive where you have put a blank diskette.
3) Take the verse diskette over to another computer and copy it into the c:\programs\calandmarty folder on that computer.

Example: Let's say I made a Psalm 23 verse set and named it "Psalm23." Its file name will appear as "Psalm23.txt". The Cal and Marty game will always list whatever ".txt" files it sees in its own folder. Warning: do not attempt to create your own text files outside the Verse Editor. The Verse Editor has a special way of laying out the text in the text file so the program knows what to do with the file info.

Extra Verse Sets to install in Cal & Marty's Scripture Memory Game:

Click on the following files and download them to your computer. When the download dialog box opens I suggest saving them right to a diskette (probably your 'A' drive). Then you can transport them to any of the computers where you have installed Cal & Marty. This zip file contains just two TEXT files. Double click the CAL-VERSES.zip icon and tell Winzip to unzip these two files into C:\Program Files\CalandMarty . Do not open the text files themselves in anything but Cal & Marty's Verse Editor --the spacing in the text file itself is required for Verse Editor to correctly parse it.

For these verse sets to appear in your Verse Menu in the game, they must be copied to the correct folder.
That folder is C:\Program Files\CalandMarty

These are fully editable. You can add your own comments and quizzes to them, though several already have such included. All are in the NRSV translation. The Misc Verses include Deut 6's "Hear O Israel" and Matthew 6's "Love Your Enemies..."

If they don't appear in the game to choose from, then you have somehow copied them to the wrong directory or misspelled the file path -C:\Program Files\Cal and Marty (note the spaces).

This document was printed from www.sundaysoftware.com/luther-calvin/tips.htm
Copyright 2004, Neil MacQueen and Sunday Software.