TRAIN YOUR BRAIN
Have you ever wondered why a teenager boy can easily recall the names of all the players in his favourite basketball team as well as the game scores, while he struggles to remember a few irregular verb forms? According to neuropedagogues, the answer is in the level of excitement or usefulness. People always memorise things if they evoke emotions, relate to their life or personal experience.
The general principle is: when learning is harder, it lasts longer. So, why not make the difficulty brain-friendly? The tricks to make you remember are called 'mnemonics'.
How should you train your pupil's brain and make them remember what you explain?
1. Acronyms.
The first way is to make acronyms out of words. These are abbreviations in the form of a word. It mainly helps for remembering vocabulary.
It works in the following way:
You have a set of vocabulary units you want your pupils to remember. They can be words or expressions. You write the 1st and the last letter of the word or the 1st letters of the words in the expression.
Monday - My
skateboard - sd
We can also change multy-word unites into acronyms.
do the washing - DTW
do the shopping - DTS
You can ask your students to guess what these acronyms stand for or they can make their own acronyms.
*Moreover, you can help your students learn a poem with the help of acronyms.
A well-known poem about a sailor can look like that after replacing the words with acronyms:
ASWTSSS
AATHCSSS
WSSS.
or
A sr wt to sa, sa, sa
To se wt he cd se, se, se
Ad al tt he cd se, se, se
Ws sa, sa, sa.
Can you guess what poem it is?
I'm sure, you can.
A sailor went to sea, sea, sea
To see what he could see, see, see
And all that he could see, see, see
Was sea, sea, sea.
*You could also ask your students write their answers in acronyms, for eg. what they did on holidays/at the weekend. Let them exchange their answers with others and guess what they stand for.
*Acronyms can also be used for remembering grammatical structures of tenses.
Pr. Cont.-IAD-I am doing
YAD - You are doing...
Pr.Perf. - IHD - I have done...
*or for remembering the order of adjectives before a noun:
OPSAShCOMP
*or for remembering the countries of the UK and their position on the map clockwise starting with Wales:
WISE - Wales, Ireland, Scotland, England.
2. Acrostic.
It's a sentence made up of words that begin with the initial letters of the item.
*This method is good for remembering spelling.
BECAUSE - Big Elephants Can't Always Understand Small Elephants.
Ask your pupils to make up their own silly sentences to remember the spelling.
*My Very Energetic Mother Served us Nine Pizzas - for remembering the order of planets outwards from the sun (Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, Neptune, Pluto.
*I Value Xylophones Like Cows Dig Milk - for remembering Roman numerals.
3. Associate the language with gesture.
Decide on the physical gesture to go with a sentence or word. It can be simple miming, clapping, slapping, clicking...any movement.
4. Rhyme the words with the words from your pupils' mother tongue.
I teach Polish children, that's why we look for words in their mother tongue that can rhyme or sound similar with the English ones. For eg. RUBBER - ŻABA, cloudy - Claudia
5. Associations.
How can you help your students remember a list of time indicators? Associate it with parts of the body. Saying the word touch one part of your body.
Head- yesterday,
left arm - the day before
right arm - last week and so on.
With younger learners why not try to pretend that you hide the words in your clothes. Rub out one of the words from the board and pretend placing it somewhere in your clothing, in your back pocket or your left ear commenting each of your actions. 'I'm taking 'feed' and putting it in my shoe'. Ask the students to recall where each word is.
Or you could ask your students to draw people or objects they associate the words with. After they have finished, ask them to name the words with which their drawings are associated. It's important that your students don't write the words under the drawings. They have to bear them in their minds.
6. Linking the words to the picture.
This could work with more abstract words, that you can't mime. How can you do it? Prepare a picture before a lesson, let it be a picture of a countryside. Ask your students to link the word 'concentrate' with the picture or make a sentence. -The cow is concentrating hard on drinking from the river.
The sentences can be silly to remember them better.
7. Smelly jars.
You bring for the lesson some baby food jars. Put a small amount of scent on a cotton ball inside the jars. It can be a scent of vanilla, peppermint, vinegar, garlic, lemon, orange, fish sauce, rosemary. Don't forget something stinky. Number the jars.
Let your students take off the lead and check the smells. Ask them to write what each smell reminds them of and write a paragraph about their associations.
8. Handmade flashcards.
The images will be a lot more powerful if they are created by the learner. Encourage your students to make flashcards for the new words with a drawing, word in English and their mother tongue.
It could also be a good idea to have a 'word bag' in the class, where you will put a word/words from the lesson that you want to remember.
9. Stories.
It's much easier to remember events in a story than a list of unrelated facts. Weaving new words into a plot makes them more memorable.
Write the words you wish to revise or teach your students on the board. The words should be scattered all over the board. Make sure that the students know the meaning of them. Organize a pair work where students build a story in which all the words appear. Let them swap pairs and tell their stories to the new partner. You can ask your students to use the plot of a well-known fairy tale.
Example of a story:
Little Red Riding Hood was going to her grandmother. But in the meantime, she decided to go shopping. She first looked at the clothes displayed in the shop windows and wondered whether she could afford any of them. She decided to buy something at a reduced price. She went inside the shop to try something on. She waited in a long queue for the fitting room...
For the post I used the information from:
1. Train your brain. Ideas and activities for remembering easily and revising wisely. - Macmillan Education.
2. Nick Bilbrough. Memory Activities.
Thanks for reading! Don't forget to follow me on Facebook.
To see what he could see, see, see
And all that he could see, see, see
Was sea, sea, sea.
*You could also ask your students write their answers in acronyms, for eg. what they did on holidays/at the weekend. Let them exchange their answers with others and guess what they stand for.
*Acronyms can also be used for remembering grammatical structures of tenses.
Pr. Cont.-IAD-I am doing
YAD - You are doing...
Pr.Perf. - IHD - I have done...
*or for remembering the order of adjectives before a noun:
OPSAShCOMP
*or for remembering the countries of the UK and their position on the map clockwise starting with Wales:
WISE - Wales, Ireland, Scotland, England.
2. Acrostic.
It's a sentence made up of words that begin with the initial letters of the item.
*This method is good for remembering spelling.
Ask your pupils to make up their own silly sentences to remember the spelling.
*My Very Energetic Mother Served us Nine Pizzas - for remembering the order of planets outwards from the sun (Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, Neptune, Pluto.
*I Value Xylophones Like Cows Dig Milk - for remembering Roman numerals.
3. Associate the language with gesture.
Decide on the physical gesture to go with a sentence or word. It can be simple miming, clapping, slapping, clicking...any movement.
4. Rhyme the words with the words from your pupils' mother tongue.
I teach Polish children, that's why we look for words in their mother tongue that can rhyme or sound similar with the English ones. For eg. RUBBER - ŻABA, cloudy - Claudia
5. Associations.
How can you help your students remember a list of time indicators? Associate it with parts of the body. Saying the word touch one part of your body.
Head- yesterday,
left arm - the day before
right arm - last week and so on.
With younger learners why not try to pretend that you hide the words in your clothes. Rub out one of the words from the board and pretend placing it somewhere in your clothing, in your back pocket or your left ear commenting each of your actions. 'I'm taking 'feed' and putting it in my shoe'. Ask the students to recall where each word is.
Or you could ask your students to draw people or objects they associate the words with. After they have finished, ask them to name the words with which their drawings are associated. It's important that your students don't write the words under the drawings. They have to bear them in their minds.
6. Linking the words to the picture.
This could work with more abstract words, that you can't mime. How can you do it? Prepare a picture before a lesson, let it be a picture of a countryside. Ask your students to link the word 'concentrate' with the picture or make a sentence. -The cow is concentrating hard on drinking from the river.
The sentences can be silly to remember them better.
7. Smelly jars.
You bring for the lesson some baby food jars. Put a small amount of scent on a cotton ball inside the jars. It can be a scent of vanilla, peppermint, vinegar, garlic, lemon, orange, fish sauce, rosemary. Don't forget something stinky. Number the jars.
Let your students take off the lead and check the smells. Ask them to write what each smell reminds them of and write a paragraph about their associations.
8. Handmade flashcards.
The images will be a lot more powerful if they are created by the learner. Encourage your students to make flashcards for the new words with a drawing, word in English and their mother tongue.
It could also be a good idea to have a 'word bag' in the class, where you will put a word/words from the lesson that you want to remember.
9. Stories.
It's much easier to remember events in a story than a list of unrelated facts. Weaving new words into a plot makes them more memorable.
Write the words you wish to revise or teach your students on the board. The words should be scattered all over the board. Make sure that the students know the meaning of them. Organize a pair work where students build a story in which all the words appear. Let them swap pairs and tell their stories to the new partner. You can ask your students to use the plot of a well-known fairy tale.
Example of a story:
Little Red Riding Hood was going to her grandmother. But in the meantime, she decided to go shopping. She first looked at the clothes displayed in the shop windows and wondered whether she could afford any of them. She decided to buy something at a reduced price. She went inside the shop to try something on. She waited in a long queue for the fitting room...
For the post I used the information from:
1. Train your brain. Ideas and activities for remembering easily and revising wisely. - Macmillan Education.
2. Nick Bilbrough. Memory Activities.
Thanks for reading! Don't forget to follow me on Facebook.
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