Many kids do poorly in school because they have a hard time remembering the many different kinds of facts required for academic success. Here are some techniques you can encourage your child to use to help him develop a better memory for all the information he has to digest during the school day:
• Suggest that he form visual images in his mind related to words he must memorize. For example, to remember the three reading words, “egg”, “shoe”, and “paper” in order, have him think about an egg being stepped on by a shoe, and cleaned up with a piece of paper!
• Suggest he make up a phrase whose first letters are also the first letters of the list he needs to memorize. For example, to remember the order of the planets in the solar system, have him think of a phrase like, “many very eager men just slipped under new places” whose first letters are the same as those of Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, naptime and Pluto!
• Suggest rhymes he can use to remember facts. A well known example is the rhyme “Thirty days hath September, April, June and November!”
For more information about other memory techniques, read the book Use Both Sides of Your Brain by Tony Buzan.
Thomas Armstrong, Ph.D. is an award-winning author and speaker with twenty-eight years of teaching experience from the primary through the doctoral level, and over one million copies of his books in print on issues related to learning and human development. He is the author of nine books including Multiple Intelligences in the Classroom, In Their Own Way, Awakening Your Childâs Natural Genius, 7 Kinds of Smart, The Myth of the A.D.D. Child, ADD/ADHD Alternatives in the Classroom, and Awakening Genius in the Classroom. His books have been translated into sixteen languages, including Spanish, Chinese, Hebrew, Danish, and Russian.
