My approach to studying usually focuses on a question that is on my mind. This started out from just reading a chapter or book of the Bible, and sometimes from Sunday school I would get these questions. In the old days, I had to have a topical index, which I had a Bible with one included, or a concordance to search key words. It helped that I had a decent knowledge of where things were located in the Bible as well from growing up in good Bible teaching churches. The funny thing was that researching one question would lead to other questions to look up which would turn a half hour study into 2 and 3 hour studies.
When I volunteered to teach a teen class in Sunday school, I eventually incorporated this into the class. I had all the students write any question they had about the Bible and life in general on slips of paper and we put them in a hat and pulled out one each week to be the focus of the next week's study. This allowed them to be anonymous and not embarrassed about the subject of their question. It worked out really well as you could see their eyes light up the Sunday their question came up. And yes, one of the questions was, "What is the meaning of life?"
When I volunteered to teach a teen class in Sunday school, I eventually incorporated this into the class. I had all the students write any question they had about the Bible and life in general on slips of paper and we put them in a hat and pulled out one each week to be the focus of the next week's study. This allowed them to be anonymous and not embarrassed about the subject of their question. It worked out really well as you could see their eyes light up the Sunday their question came up. And yes, one of the questions was, "What is the meaning of life?"