Years ago I taught my very young child how to memorize something for school. I said:
Repetition is key. Write it down over and over again until you feel comfortable.
After some resistance and push back, she tried it out. Little girls, it seemed, were attracted to doodling with colorful markers.
She started doing this in preparation for spelling tests back in the early grades.
Later, when she switched to French Immersion (aka Extended French as of grade 4) this method continued to work well for her with the new, foreign vocabulary.
Conjugation became an exercise in color selection.
To make things less boring, she would use different colors for each term, phrase, or conjugated tense.
My baby is now in 6th grade. And lo, she is still copying.
She asked me to read her the name of the countries (in French) at which point she had to write the French name of the capital city.
Five or six of her list of 30 she couldn’t remember. When I was done reading, she took her white board and started copying each one down several times.
As a somewhat anxious child who has very high academic expectations of herself, seeing her apply a tried and true method all on her own makes me both proud and relieved.
Middle school has enough anxiety inducing activities these days, right? Adding more stress to her day when studying, especially memory work, isn’t really very healthy, for her or for her family unit.
It’s not perfect, our little study habits. She gets fed up and frustrated, mostly at the volume of work rather than the type of work. But seeing how she returns to her initial study method makes me hopeful she will continue to reach for these tools to help herself cope.
Not everyone learns best by copying or writing. What works or has worked for you or your child(ren)?
I wrote a lot about homework over the last few years. Here are a few posts that incorporate anxiety and problem solving:
Almost back to school: parenting kids with anxiety
Homework anxiety after school absence
Homework stress and the sensory box
Homework and the elusive bristol board
It sounds like your daughter has found a method of memorizing that works for her. Her creativity weaves into that chosen method.
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We’re keeping the marker and pencil crayon people in business. 🙂
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I have many freshman students who ask me if they can take a picture of the board or the overhead when I put up notes. Frequently, I am flustered at this new method and never sure whether to fix my hair or just nod my head and step aside.
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Nod and step aside sounds like something I would do. 😉
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Writing things down manually is so much better than taking a photo of a board. You are doing and learning at the same time.
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It’s great that she has this learning method that she knows works, there’s so much about school that’s hard for our kids.
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I forgot to add hearing it (when they say it) encourages auditory learning.
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I’m a learning specialist and there is scientific evidence that using different colors to learn information is a good method for memorization. It’s the reason I have students do Rainbow Spelling to practice their words. 😊 to increase the learning, the students say each letter as they write it (all in one color) and then the word out loud. Repeat with next color. Writing it, seeing it, saying it, and the use of colors combine to stimulate different kinds of learning. Good job!
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I remember back in the day when I took a human anatomy course we had to color each organ etc as we memorized it. It was fun and educational and stuck to my brain (back in the late 80s)…as far as my daughter is concerned, she’s Little Miss Craftypants so this is right up her ally! Thank you for the feedback, I appreciate knowing this little tidbit. 🙂
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