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Dyslexia - Can it be
helped by learning memory strategies?Teachers
often tell me that their dyslexic students have memory
problems. In my research
I have found that teaching children a variety of
memory strategies is useful
because they will be able to try them out
individually or in combination and
note for themselves the effect.
I train teachers in Special Education
and as part of the training include in the Methods Course - The History of Memory
Strategies.
What
I have found is that people don't know about the origins of the strategies, are
not aware that many exist, and don't know how to teach them effectively. There
are seven basic memory strategies that I have found useful for students with special
needs including dyslexia. The strategies are as follows:
1.
The Metacognitive Strategy - When learning a list of words for example,
asking yourself and then noting down how you remembered the words.
2.
The First Letter Strategy - Using the first letter of each word to
try to
make a real or nonsense word.
Example of making a real word
- The names of the Great Lakes in the United States are: Huron,
Ontario, Michigan, Erie, Superior
The first letter
of each of the lakes makes the word HOMES
Example of making
a nonsense word - The names of each of the colors of the rainbow follow:
red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo,
violet
The first letter of each of the colors makes the nonsense
word ROYGBIV
3. The Story Strategy
- Write a real or nonsense story that incorporates all the words you want to remember.
Example of a nonsense story - The following is a nonsense
story to remember this list of words (emu, dog, eel, tiger, cat, toad, owl, rat,
snake).
Australian Farmer
The Australian farmer had seen an emu, owl, rat, toad and snake outside. He
had a dog, cat and eel in his house. However, he had to visit a zoo
to see a tiger.
Example of a real story - The
following is a short poem that includes all the months in a year:
Thirty
days hath September
April, June and November,
All the rest have thirty-one
Excepting February alone
4. The Grouping Strategy - Grouping words
together that belong to the same category.
Example of using the grouping
strategy -
Make a list of all things that belong to the same family e.g.
animals
dog, tiger, cat, horse, lion, zebra, wolf
Make a list
from a larger list of all things in one group e.g.
shoulder
underground
palm
elephant
runway
motorway
arm
railway
kangaroo
eye
tiger
snake
| palm |
railway | snake |
| eye | underground | elephant |
| arm | motorway | tiger |
| shoulder | | |
5.
The Imagery Strategy - Making a list of all things in a list by picturing
them together or separately.
Example of using the imagery strategy -
Make a list of all things in one group, which are the same color by
picturing
several animals all brown in the same picture e.g.
a brown horse, a brown
wolf, a brown cat, a brown lion, a brown snake, a
brown dog, a brown cat
Or make a nonsense picture to help you remember e.g. a brown dog with a brown
snake twisted around its neck looking like a scarf.
6. The Location Strategy - This is the ability
to remember locations and assign faces to each.
Example of using the
location strategy
Think of your school and conduct a mental walk from
the principal's office
to your classroom. Pay particular attention to the
rooms you are passing
noting the details, noticing any imperfections, like
desks not lined up:
anything that makes your mental images more vivid.
Make sure you can move easily from one room to another.
Along your route
create a list of the most outstanding feature of each room.
These will be the images you remember as you go from one room to another until
you reach your final destination, the principal's office. 7.
The Pegword Strategy - First learn a rhymed pegword list and then learn
to associate each of these words with the members of the list to be learned.
Example of using the pegword strategy
This is a strategy to remember
sequences of ten unrelated items in the
appropriate order. You
first have to remember ten key words, which follow:
one = bun two
= shoe three = tree four = door five = hive six = sticks
seven = heaven eight = gate nine = wine ten = hen
After learning these you have to memorize ten unrelated items:
battleship,
pig, chair, sheep, castle, rug, grass, beach, milkmaid,
binoculars
Take the first pegword (bun rhyming with one) and form an image of a bun
interacting in some way with a battleship; you might imagine a battleship sailing
into an enormous floating bun. Children
all have to take tests and remember facts throughout their school years. Learning
how to apply effective memory strategies can ease this burden.
These strategies will become
the tools and techniques used to
understand and learn new material or skills.
It should also be emphasized to pupils and their teachers that these strategies
have to be practiced and applied to the subject area being taught, in some cases
repeatedly in order to achieve success.
Dr. Lorraine Cleeton
May 2002
Lorraine Cleeton is Assistant Professor in Special Education at St Bonaventure's.
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