Learning Strategy One

February 2, 2016

Michelle White #23

Mnemonics
Special points of
interest:
Overall mnemonics
seems to be a successful strategy across the
board for all students,
and especially helps
students with mild
learning disabilities.
Critics of a Chinese
ELLs vs Spanish ELLs
note that such strategies do not appear to
improve or make
scores worse for Chinese Speaking ELL
students but helped for
Spanish ELL students.
This strategy would
work well in an inclusion class. Students
who may get lost
sequentially on paper,
can be helped with
picture association and
first-word recall.

What is mnemonics?
Mnemonics is a process in
which teaches and students
use specific strategies in
order to help students retrieve information at a later
date. This can mean coming
up with a song in order to
remember the alphabet or
coming up with a funny sentence in order to remember
all the countries in Central
America. The most common
mnemonics have been used
in schools all across the
world. For many of us, in
physics class this meant
remembering ROY G BIV
when it came to studying the
color spectrum. In Kindergarten this meant learning the
alphabet song. In math class,
this means that we were
taught the phrase King
Henry Died By Drinking Chocolate Milk in order to remember the metric system or
how about Please Excuse
My Dear Aunt Sally in Math
class when it came to remember how to do the order
of operations. In the case of
KHDBDCM and PEMDAS, the
actual sentences have nothing to do with the words

Kids at often taught ROY G BIV as a mnemonic tool for remembering the
color spectrum. RED, ORANGE, YELLOW, GREEN, BLUE, VIOLET
meanings, but they help us to
recall the information at a
later date, Mnemonics is not
solely restricted to words and
phrases. It can also be visual
queues used to help a student remember information.
Sometimes this might be a
picture that has been hanging on the wall all semester
that the student has looked
at when studying biology.
Looking at that space, even

without the picture there, can

help the student recall information that they might have
previously thought to be lost.
Critiques note that these
strategies are great for learning facts, but not in depth
information. It has also been
noted that such strategies
are not as successful with
certain types of ELL learners
such as those whos native
tongue is Chinese.

Success with Intervention Teachers

According to researchers at
Bowling Green State University, first-letter mnemonic
strategies have been successful for students in intervention classes especially
when helping them solve
problems that require a sequential order. By making
sure each letter in the mne-

monic strategy stands for an

essential step, mnemonic
strategies help students
remember the order in which
something must occur
(Vostal etl, 3). According to
Mastroperi and Scruggs, they
advocate for a key word
mnemonic strategy in which
the students associate a

KEYword with an illustration

in order to help them remember complex topics. According to the article, mnemonic
strategies along with graphic
organizers and big ideas are
they key to success when
pertaining to students with
learning disabilities
(Kaldenberg, 2).

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MNEMONICS

Implementation
STEP ONE:

STEP TWO:

Identify the information that

needs to be learned. This will
help you identify what TYPE of
mnemonic strategy to implement. If it is a mathematic formula or a series of events in
history class, a first-word approach may be best. If it is a
biology concept, a word-picture
association may be a better fit.
Unless its with systems in the
body, that might also be good
with first-word mnemonics for
things like the bones in the
body. A music mnemonic might
word better also.

Depending on the strategy, come up

with the mnemonic phrase or idea as
a class. When my students needed to
learn the countries in South America,
they came up with the mnemonic
phrase of Big Giants Eat Hyenas, Not
Cats or Pigs. I had no idea that this
strategy was called mnemonics when
they used it. In fact, I didnt know that
it was called this until doing this
handout.
STEP THREE:
Make sure to stress the origin of the
strategy or where the phrase starts.
Do you read it from left to right?

Clockwise or counterclockwise? North to South?

Without this information, the
strategy becomes completely
ineffective. It is also fun to
use outrageous phrases when
coming up with a solution.
STEP FOUR:
Use desired phrase consistently throughout the school
year. Have the students consistently remind you when you
write the strategy on the
board through using the
phrase.

Picture Mnemonics
Our hands are often used as
picture mnemonics. We use
them to remember out times
tables when it comes to 9. We
use them when it comes to
remember the different types
of planets in our solar system.
We use them to remember
A common way to remember which months have 31
which months have 31 days
days and which ones have 30 or less is to use the
and which ones dont.
Never Eat Soggy Worms is another first-word mnemonic strategy
that students use in order to remember directions on a compass.
It is important for the teacher to note where North starts, otherwise the strategy is ineffective.

knuckles of our hands. Theres also a common poetic mnemonic of 30 days has September, April,
June, and November. Except for February with 28,
all the rest have 31.

Kaldernberg, E., Therrien, W., Watt, S., Gorsh, J., & Taylor, J. (2011). Three Keys to Success in Science for Students with
Learning Disabilities. Science Scope, 35(3), 36-39.
Lukie, M. P. (2015). Fostering Student Metacognition and Personal Epistemology in the Physics Classroom Through the Pedagogical use of Mnemonic Strategies. Alberta Science Education Journal, 44(1), 25-31.
Vostal, B. b., Messenheimer, T. t., Hampton, D. h., & Keyes, S. s. (2014). Using a Mnemonic Strategy to Match Elements of
Response to Intervention Lessons with Performance Assessment Requirements. Journal Of Curriculum & Instruction, 8(1),
48-66. doi:10.3776/joci.2014.v8n1p48-66

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