Greet your students as they enter. While everyone is getting settled, ask your students to think back to their younger days and share a common thing that they misunderstood. Share your own examples or one of the following to get them started thinking. For example: learning that a tow truck has nothing to do with toes, or that God’s name isn’t Art (i.e. our Father who “ART” in heaven…), or that it’s called a GRILLED cheese sandwich, not a GIRL cheese sandwich, etc.
After you’ve shared for a while, introduce a game of easy misunderstandings. This is similar to the game Mad Gab. Write one of the following sets of unrelated words on the whiteboard (or display it on a screenshared document) and ask your students to read them aloud and try to figure out what common phrase this random collection of words sounds like.
Once someone has figured it out, erase those words and continue with the next set. Do as many as you have time for. Hint: if the students are having difficulty, encourage some of them to look at the words and read them aloud and others to shut their eyes and pay attention only to what they’re hearing.
- Abe Odd Jull Luck Oak (Answer: A bottle of Coke)
- Ace Tray Taste Who Dent (Answer: A Straight A Student)
- Canoe Key Pass Egret (Answer: Can You Keep A Secret)
- Cohen Peas (Answer: Go in Peace)
- It Chief Heat (Answer: Itchy Feet)
- Dew Ache Who Gulls Urge (Answer: Do a Google Search)
- Hide Hen Tickled Wins (Answer: Identical Twins)
- Jog Clay Die Scream (Answer: Chocolate Ice Cream)
- What made that game difficult? (Once you see the words, it can be hard to un-see them and just hear what they sound like.)
- What strategies did you use that made it easier? (Just listening while someone else reads can make it easier to decipher; thinking about the sounds, not the words; running the words together; etc.)
Isn’t it funny how clear the phrases seemed once you figured it out? How did we not see that earlier? It seems so obvious once one person figures out the phrase. Life and faith can be like that, too. Sometimes, we don’t recognize something that’s right before our eyes. Today we’re going to learn about some people who didn’t recognize who Jesus was even when He was right before their eyes. Let’s see what happened.
