Mnemonic Instruction Strategies, Essay Example

Mnemonic instruction is an educational strategy that is commonly used with students that have disabilities or problems with memory recall.  These strategies are designed to improve the memory of key information by pairing facts and information with previously retained information, such as other memories or previously learned information.  By providing students with recall tools to better encode information so that it can be retrieved within the memory, mnemonic instruction can be used within the general education curriculum, and even in specific classrooms like physical education.  There are three main types of mnemonic instruction that can be of use within a physical educational environment, such as keyword strategy, pegword strategy, and letter strategies.

Each mnemonic instruction strategy maintains a specific function in order to help the individual student utilize memory recall much more efficiently.  The first type of mnemonic instruction is called keyword strategy.  In keyword strategy, mnemonic instruction is based on “linking new information to keywords that are already encoded to memory” (K8AccessCenter.org).  In the classroom setting, the teacher is able to teach a new concept by linking it with a keyword that shares a similar sound or phrase that is being taught.  This can also be represented by a picture, photograph, or drawing of the keyword in order for the student to help link the new concept to an easily recognizable keyword. According to contemporary mnemonic instruction research, this keyword strategy is most efficient when the information that is attempting to be learned is brand new to the students (Engel, 1999, par. 5). In other situations, the pegword strategy may become more useful to help students learn concepts in a classroom setting.

The pegword strategy is an interesting technique in a classroom because it uses rhyming words to help represent numbers or order within the concept.  “The rhyming words or ‘peg words’ provide visual images that can be associated with facts or events and can help students associate the events with the number that rhymes with the pegword” (K8AccessCenter.org).  In many cases this technique is used to help students learn a process or number of concepts in a specific order.  For example, “one” can be represented by the student with the pegword “sun”.  This concept can continue for each number until either a word is unable to be properly rhymed or the number of concepts is fulfilled with a pegword.  In most cases, “teachers … use these pegwords to help students remember historical facts” (K8AccessCenter.org).

Besides rhyming and keyword recognition, letter strategies can also be useful techniques to help young children learn concepts in a classroom environment.  Letter strategies involve the use of acronyms or acrostics that help students remember a list of concepts within a group as they are paired together with a word or phrase.  “Acronyms are words whose individual letters can represent elements in lists of information” (K8AccessCenter.org).  For example, the word HOMES can be used to represent the names of the Great Lakes in the United States, with each letter standing for one of the lakes.  H is for Huron; O is for Ontario; M is for Michigan, and so on. On the other hand, acrostics are “sentences whose first letters represent to-be-remembered information, such as ‘My very educated mother just served us nine pizzas,’ to remember the nine planets in order [e.g., Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars]” (K8AccessCenter.org).  This strategy can be very useful in a physical education class when remembering body parts, biological processes or health terms.

When considering children between the grades of 7-12, it is important to tailor each strategy for the educational level that the student is in.  At times, teachers come dangerously close to using mnemonic strategies in ways that make students feel incapable of learning or unintelligent.  It is important that physical education teachers avoid this consequence by providing each student with reasoning behind the mnemonic strategy.  In many cases, older children are learning more advanced health or physical education terminology and concepts.  Therefore, lists should be used through mnemonic letter strategies to help provide words or phrases that are easy to remember and can help with memory recall.  Nevertheless, teachers can utilize all three strategies in any environment with little planning or organization because “mnemonics is a memory enhancing instructional strategy that involves teaching students to link new information that is taught to information they already know” (Levin, 1993, p. 236).  This can be an easily used strategy for any teacher and provide the student with the necessary tools to help recall information much easier.

References

Engel, W.E. (1999). Classroom capers: the case for using mnemonics. Connotations, 9.2, 111-142. Retrieved on October 14, 2009, from Web site: http://www.uni-tuebingen.de/uni/nec/engel92.htm

Hardy, C.A., & Mawer, M. (1999). Learning and teaching in physical education. Philadelphia, PA: Falmer Press. 61-69.

K8AccessCenter.org. Mnemonics. The Access Center. Retrieved on October 14, 2009, from Web site: http://www.k8accesscenter.org/training_resources/Mnemonics.asp

Levin, J. (1993). Mnemonic strategies and classroom learning: A twenty-year report card. Elementary School Journal, 94(2), 235-245.