Mnemonic Devices for Instruction
Mnemonic strategies are commonly used across content areas to help students remember important information or concepts. When we talk about mnemonics, people often think of mnemonic acronyms that enable people to remember items through the use of a catchy word or phrase, but there are many other types of mnemonics.
This resource was originally developed with resources from the College STAR grant. That grant has ended and the College STAR modules will now permanently reside at the East Carolina University Office for Faculty Excellence.
Module Introduction
Mnemonic strategies are commonly used across content areas to help students remember important information or concepts. When we talk about mnemonics, people often think of mnemonic acronyms that enable people to remember items through the use of a catchy word or phrase in which the acronym letters begin each of the terms in a list. For example, many people remember the colors in the rainbow using the acronym "ROY G BIV," which represents the colors in the order they appear in a rainbow-red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo, and violet. But there are many other types of mnemonics. They can be classified in two broad categories: organizational mnemonics, which help students organize previously acquired information; and encoding mnemonics, which allow students to transform new information in a meaningful way. In this module we will look at the different types of mnemonic devices as well as strategies for implementing them in the classroom.
Support for this Module
Original development of this module was made possible by the College STAR (Supporting Transition Access and Retention) initiative. College STAR was a grant-funded project focused on partnering postsecondary educational professionals and students to learn ways for helping postsecondary campuses become more welcoming of students with learning and attention differences. Much of this work was made possible by generous funding from the Oak Foundation.
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Posted date:
November 11, 2022