How to Teach Basic Facts Memory
To become familiar with a subject, students must sometimes memorize basic facts. However, many students find memorization unpleasant, so teachers must work especially hard to help students memorize basic facts. Educator Marilee Sprenger has developed seven specific steps to help students memorize basic facts: reach, reflect, recode, reinforce, rehearse, review and retrieve.
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Instructions
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Reach students by getting their attention with a summary of the information and explaining why it is relevant. Display a picture of the facts to be presented, such as a picture of the United States if you are teaching students the names of each state. Display real-life examples of what students will memorize: a kindergarten teacher might show her children coins before she teaches them about money.
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Reflect information by asking students to repeat the basic facts they are memorizing back to each other and to you, the teacher. Ask students to repeat a word of a foreign language they are learning, or to state the year the United States gained its independence. Ask them to write the basic facts they hope to memorize.
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Recode facts in the memory of students by asking them to discuss them in their own words. Ask them questions that will make them integrate the basic facts they hope to memorize into their internal thought processes. Teach students the state capitals, for instance, by asking them to think of someone they know who lives in another state and asking them to name that state's capital.
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Reinforce facts by teaching facts repeatedly, so that students have heard the information multiple times and in multiple forms. Reinvent your approach to teaching the facts: a Spanish teacher might move from teaching students how a word sounds to showing them how it is written. Create a mnemonic device, where each letter stands for the first letter of a basic fact to help students to remember many associated facts, such as the periodic table of elements.
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Rehearse the facts by repeating them with students. Sing songs that incorporate the facts, or simply have students memorize the facts by repeating them in unison. A Spanish teacher, for instance, might point to items around the room and ask students to say the name of each item. Rehearse the facts by asking students to use flashcards.
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Review memorized facts with students after the initial memorization session -- without this step, students will not remember the information. Help students practice remembering the information under testing conditions if they must later use the information in a test. Ask questions to evaluate the accuracy of their memory.
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Retrieve basic facts from students' memories by helping students to develop specific recall strategies and by ascertaining when a particular fact might apply to a situation. Ask a student when, for example, he might use a vocabulary word, or which chemical compounds might react to a particular chemical environment. Help students to move beyond basic memorization of the facts,so that they can retrieve facts and use them in real-life situations.
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