Using Mnemonics in the Classroom

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USING MNEMONICS IN THE CLASSROOM 1

Using Mnemonics In The Classroom

When we think of how busy our lives have become, we all try to look for short cuts that we can use to help make our lives a little bit easier. When I think of trying to remember everything that I need to keep in my memory bank, I also try to think of short cuts or ways that I can keep those things straight in my head. When I teach elementary school aged children I try to teach specific skills in ways that they can understand and then ways that they will remember these skills for future use. When we teach and use mnemonics in the classroom, are we teaching ways that can help our children take those short cuts that are necessary to remember skills or facts that they will need to make their everyday lives easier?

Effective teachers guide students to link new information to other information that they already know and are familiar with. Teachers many times use examples from everyday life to bring in familiar experiences. Educators must take an active role to help our students help remember the material they are taught. Extensive research has been conducted to demonstrate that learning new material is difficult for many students, whether they have been diagnosed with a disability or not. Many researchers feel that mnemonics is one of the most effective ways to help students remember facts that they need to know and use in the classroom as well as throughout their adult lives.

The main purpose of this paper is to demonstrate whether or not that mnemonics is a valuable tool to use in the classroom for...

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... young children with a simpler task to examine whether they can produce useful notations and if they are capable of using them.”((Eskitt & Lee 2006) The questioned why many of the younger children did not produced notations, could be found in a study that found children before the age of Grade 4 are not very accurate at predicting their performance for memory task (Flavell, Friedrichs, & Hoyt, 1970; Yussen & Levy, 1975).

The quality of the notations produced by the children was significantly related to their memory performance. It was the students in Grades 5 and 7 who wrote down full notations about the location of the cards and their partners who scored higher by taking fewer turns to win the game. It was determined that the more adequate the notation the more beneficial it is to the students performance.

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