The tools in this section help you to improve your memory. They help you both to remember facts accurately and to remember the structure of information. As part of Visual Learning Week, we invite you to take a look back into the Guilt-Free Homeschooling archives. The gem we have selected as a supplement to this week. Improving Memory Retention By Kelly Friedman . Photo courtesy of Flickr: Jetuma. A person's memory is what stores, or retains information that is seen. Enhancing School Success with Mnemonic Strategies. By: Margo A. Mastropieri and Thomas E. A few years ago, we revisited an inner-city middle school where. Techniques to Help Improve Your Memory. By Dr. Mercola. It was once believed that brain function peaked during early adulthood and then slowly declined, leading to lapses in memory and brain fog during your golden years. Now it's known that our modern lifestyle plays a significant role in contributing to cognitive decline, which is why exposure to toxins, chemicals, poor diet, lack of sleep, stress, and much more can actually hinder the functioning of your brain. The flipside is also true in that a healthy lifestyle can support your brain health and even encourage your brain to grow new neurons, a process known as neurogenesis. Your brain's hippocampus, i. You don't need an expensive prescription medication or any medical procedure at all to boost your brain, and your memory. You simply must try out the following tricks to improve your memory. Lifestyle- Based Ways to Improve Your Memory. Eat Right. The foods you eat – and don't eat – play a crucial role in your memory. Fresh vegetables are essential, as are healthy fats and avoiding sugar and grain carbohydrates. This week we confessed our favorite freaky food concoctions—think Doritos peanut butter sandwiches and buttered ramen—secured our online accounts by revoking. It was once believed that brain function peaked during early adulthood and then slowly declined, leading to lapses in memory and brain fog. Techniques and strategies for reading critically. An educational public service helping learners succeed since 1996: over 10.4 million visitors in 39 languages in. You can find detailed information about nine foods for brainpower here. For instance, curry, celery, broccoli, cauliflower, and walnuts contain antioxidants and other compounds that protect your brain health and may even stimulate the production of new brain cells. Increasing your animal- based omega- 3 fat intake and reducing consumption of damaged omega- 6 fats (think processed vegetable oils) in order to balance your omega- 3 to omega- 6 ratio, is also important. I prefer krill oil to fish oil, as krill oil also contains astaxanthin, which not only protects the omega- 3 fats from oxidation but also appears to be particularly beneficial for brain health. Coconut oil is another healthful fat for brain function. According to research by Dr. Mary Newport, just over two tablespoons of coconut oil (about 3. MCT), which is indicated as either a preventative measure against degenerative neurological diseases, or as a treatment for an already established case. Exercise. Exercise encourages your brain to work at optimum capacity by stimulating nerve cells to multiply, strengthening their interconnections and protecting them from damage. One in particular, called brain- derived neurotrophic factor (BDNF), triggers numerous other chemicals that promote neural health, and directly benefits cognitive functions, including learning. Stop Multitasking. Used for decades to describe the parallel processing abilities of computers, multitasking is now shorthand for the human attempt to do simultaneously as many things as possible, as quickly as possible. Ultimately, multitasking may actually slow you down, make you prone to errors as well as make you forgetful. Research shows you actually need about eight seconds to commit a piece of information to your memory, so if you're talking on your phone and carrying in groceries when you put down your car keys, you're unlikely to remember where you left them. The opposite of multitasking would be mindfulness, which helps you achieve undistracted focus. Students who took a mindfulness class improved reading comprehension test scores and working memory capacity, as well as experienced fewer distracting thoughts. If you find yourself trying to complete five tasks at once, stop yourself and focus your attention back to the task at hand. If distracting thoughts enter your head, remind yourself that these are only . You can then end your day with a 1. Get a Good Night's Sleep. Research from Harvard indicates that people are 3. Sleep is also known to enhance your memories and help you . In fact, a single night of sleeping only four to six hours can impact your ability to think clearly the next day. Plasticity occurs when neurons are stimulated by events, or information, from the environment. However, sleep and sleep loss modify the expression of several genes and gene products that may be important for synaptic plasticity. Specifically, infants who slept in between learning and testing sessions had a better ability to recognize patterns in new information, which signals an important change in memory that plays an essential role in cognitive development. There's reason to believe this holds true for adults, too, as even among adults, a mid- day nap was found to dramatically boost and restore brainpower. You can find 3. 3 tips to help you get the shut- eye you need here. Play Brain Games. If you don't sufficiently challenge your brain with new, surprising information, it eventually begins to deteriorate. What research into brain plasticity shows us, however, is that by providing your brain with appropriate stimulus, you can counteract this degeneration. One way to challenge your brain is via 'brain games,' which you can play online via Web sites like Lumosity. Michael Merzenich, professor emeritus at the University of California, who I interviewed two years ago, has pioneered research in brain plasticity (also called neuroplasticity) for more than 3. The program is called Brain HQ, and the website has many different exercises designed to improve brain function and it also allows you to track and monitor your progress over time. While there are many similar sites on the Web, Brain HQ is one of the oldest and most widely used. When you spend longer amounts of time on a task, the benefits weaken. According to Dr. Merzenich, the primary benefits occur in the first five or six minutes of the task. The only downside to brain games is that it may become just another . If you don't enjoy brain games, you can also try learning a new skill or hobby (see below). Master a New Skill. Engaging in . In other words, the task must be important to you, or somehow meaningful or interesting — it must hold your attention. For instance, one study revealed that craft activities such as quilting and knitting were associated with decreased odds of having mild cognitive impairment. Another study, published earlier this year, found that taking part in . Ideally this should be something that requires your undivided attention and gives you great satisfaction. Try Mnemonic Devices. Mnemonic devices are memory tools to help you remember words, information or concepts. They help you to organize information into an easier- to- remember format. Try: Acronyms (such as PUG for . In older adults, research has shown that low vitamin D levels are associated with poorer brain function, and increasing levels may help keep older adults mentally fit. Appropriate sun exposure is all it takes to keep your levels where they need to be for healthy brain function. If this is not an option, a safe tanning bed is the next best alternative, followed by a vitamin D3 supplement. A one- day fast can help your body to . Further, it will help you to reduce your overall calorie consumption, which promotes brain cell growth and connectivity. As part of a healthy lifestyle, however, I prefer an intermittent fasting schedule that simply calls for limiting your eating to a narrower window of time each day. By restricting your eating to a 6- 8 hour window, you effectively fast 1. To learn more, please see this previous intermittent fasting article. There is a close connection between abnormal gut flora and abnormal brain development, and just as you have neurons in your brain, you also have neurons in your gut - - including neurons that produce neurotransmitters like serotonin, which is also found in your brain and is linked to mood. In addition to avoiding sugar, one of the best ways to support gut health is to consume beneficial bacteria. You can use a probiotic supplement for this, but I'm particularly fond of using fermented vegetables, because they can deliver extraordinarily high levels of beneficial bacteria. Most people aren't aware that in a healthy serving of sauerkraut – two to three ounces or so – you're getting the equivalent of nearly 1. It's clearly one of the most cost- effective alternatives. The Choline- Brain Connection. Choline is an essential nutrient your body makes in small amounts. However, you must consume it through your diet to get enough. In adults, choline helps keep your cell membranes functioning properly, plays a role in nerve communications, prevents the buildup of homocysteine in your blood (elevated levels are linked to heart disease) and reduces chronic inflammation. In pregnant women, choline plays an equally, if not more, important role, helping to prevent certain birth defects, such as spina bifida, and playing a role in brain development. The changes in fetal genetic expression will likely continue into adulthood, where they play a role in disease prevention. Eggs and meat are two of the best dietary sources of choline; if you're a vegan or vegetarian who does not consume any animal foods, you may be at risk of deficiency and may want to consider supplementation. Guilt- Free Homeschooling — Equipping parents for homeschooling success! As part of Visual Learning Week, we invite you to take a look back into the Guilt- Free Homeschooling archives. The gem we have selected as a supplement to this week’s focus is “Stealth Learning” Through Free Play for its ultra- sneaky approach to teaching in ways that look more like playing than learning. In fact, many stealthy lessons can take place while Mom isn’t even in the room, but is snatching a few well- chosen moments to start a load of laundry or help another child through a tough spot in his own lessons. Visual learners are the most apt to notice patterns and relationships in playthings, manipulatives, and other learning tools, in the same way they notice details in the diagrams and charts used in their other lessons. This same concept can apply to stealth learning from a visual perspective: as your students stack and arrange letter tiles or dominoes into patterns, they will be stealthily observing mathematical proportions and other vital concepts. You can take advantage of the visual learner’s natural propensity for spotting details and patterns by giving them plenty of opportunities to experiment with manipulatives and by casually putting posters, charts, maps, diagrams, and lists of facts and/or vocabulary words around the house for your visual learner to absorb as more stealth learning. Learn how to spot the things your kids are already stealthily learning on their own. Enjoy! For further help on this topic, and to see the rest of the posts in the “Visual Learning Week” series, see this link: “Visual Learning” topic. Enhancing School Success with Mnemonic Strategies . As we entered the classroom, Crystal, a student classified as mildly mentally handicapped, recognized one of our graduate students immediately.! I remember you! I remember, go ahead, ask me one!? What's the capital of Florida? Even more impressive was the fact that she had not reviewed or rehearsed this information with any teacher since the last time we had seen her! As startling as this scenario is, it underscores something we have been witnessing for many years: the incredible power of mnemonic strategies to increase dramatically the amount of information students remember, even students with learning problems. In this article, we describe the need for effective memory strategies for school learning. Next, we provide a brief description of what mnemonic strategies are - and what they are not. Following that, we describe how you can use these powerful learning tools to enhance the school success of your own students. The need for mnemonic strategies. According to the Sixteenth Annual Report to Congress on the Implementation of the Individuals with Disabilities Act (U. S. Department of Education, 1. As many as 7. 8. 9% of students with learning disabilities spend all or most of their educational time in general education classrooms. On the secondary level, students with disabilities are included in content- area classrooms, such as English, science, and social studies classes. Largely, ability to succeed in these classrooms determines their level of success in school. What factors determine whether a student will succeed in secondary content- area classrooms? Pumam (1. 99. 2b) surveyed 7th- and 1. Kansas, Indiana, and Florida, and reported that an average of nearly half of a student's report card grades depended on test performance. Clearly, such factors as attendance, punctuality, participation, and homework completion are also important. However, teachers made it clear that test scores were the single most important factor in report card grades. Teachers gave an average of 1. Clearly, students' academic survival is tied very closely with performance on academic tests. In addition to the number of tests teachers give, Pumam (1. He found that the overwhelming majority of test questions students were asked required factual recall: The majority of questions on tests administered by main- stream secondary classroom teachers required the student to recall a specific fact - 2. A sample question that asked for a specific fact was . Thus it can be seen that memory for factual information is absolutely essential for success in school, particularly at the secondary level. Unfortunately, it is also true that students with learning disabilities and other learning problems have been consistently shown to have particular difficulties remembering academic content (e. Cooney & Swanson, 1. Our work in the area of so 7 mnemonic (memory- enhancing) strategies has been devoted to finding ways of increasing the amount of content- area information students are able to remember. This article provides information on the utility, and effectiveness, of mnemonic strategies in enhancing memory for school learning. What mnemonic strategies are. Mnemonic strategies are systematic procedures for enhancing memory. Their particular use is in developing better ways to take in (encode) information so that it will be much easier to remember (retrieve). Although there are retrieval strategies that can be employed to attempt to retrieve information that has been forgotten, research has demonstrated that the way we encode information when we first study facilitates memory better. The particular task in developing mnemonic strategies is to find a way to relate new information to information students already have locked in long- term memory. If we can make a firm enough connection, the memory will last a very long time. For example, Crystal had learned the capital of Florida so well because the mnemonic strategy had carefully linked it to things she was very familiar with. Because Florida sounds like flower (the keyword), it was easy to teach her to make an automatic connection between Florida and flower: What's the keyword for Florida? Flower, good! And, what state is flower the keyword for? Good, Florida! It was also easy to teach her to establish a firm association between Tallahassee and television because television was very familiar to Crystal and the two words, again, sound very similar: What's the keyword for Tallahassee? Television, good! And, what capital is television the keyword for? Good, Tallahassee! Mnemonic representation of Tallahassee, capital of Florida. Copyright 1. 99. 3 by M. Mastropieri and T. Scruggs) Having linked the two words (Florida, Tallahassee) to concrete, familiar words that sound similar (flower, television), all that remains is to link the two familiar words together. And although memory experts Harry Lorayne and Jerry Lucas have suggested that these words must be associated . In the Florida instance, a picture had been created and displayed on an overhead projector of a flower sitting on a television set, as shown in Figure 1. Although recalling that Tallahassee is the capital of Florida may be difficult for a student with learning problems, remembering a picture of a flower on a television set was much simpler, and - if the keywords had been learned - contained the same information. For this reason, we have found mnemonic strategies constructed according to these procedures to be extraordinarily effective (Mastropieri, Scruggs, Bakken, & Brigham, 1. Mnemonic strategies do not represent a . We do not use, or recommend the use of, mnemonic strategies because they are compatible with someone's particular philosophy or because they are a part of someone's theory about what education should be. We recommend mnemonic strategies for only one reason: Over and over again, they have been proven to be extremely effective in helping people remember things (Bulgren, Schumaker, & Deshler, 1. Mastropieri & Scruggs, 1. It is also true that mnemonic strategies are not an overall teaching method or curricular approach. The focus of mnemonic strategies is so specific that they are intended to be used to enhance the recall of the components of any lesson for which memory is needed. We have found, for example, that mnemonic strategies can be used to enhance science learning when the curriculum involves a textbook/lecture format (Scruggs & Mastropieri, 1. Mastropieri, Scruggs, & Chung, 1. Even though these approaches to science learning are very different (Mastropieri & Scruggs, 1. It is also important to consider that mnemonic strategies are memory strategies, and not comprehension strategies. Students who are trained mnemonically also perform better on comprehension tests of that content (e. Mastropieri, Scruggs, & Fulk, 1. Scruggs, Mastropieri, Mc. Loone, Levin, & Morrison, 1. Nevertheless, when comprehension enhancement is called for, it is important to consider using specific comprehension strategies, such as content elaboration, prior knowledge activation, manipulation, coaching and questioning, or prediction and verification (e. Mastropieri & Scruggs, 1. Scruggs, Mastropieri, Sullivan, & Hesser, 1. Nevertheless, mnemonic strategies do not inhibit comprehension, as suggested by some (e. Kilpatrick, 1. 98. For example, it is completely possible to comprehend the nature of states and capitals while being unable to retrieve the capital of Florida. For another example, it is altogether possible to comprehend the concepts of a cell having a nucleus and consuming other organisms while being unable to retrieve the related verbal label (prokaryotic heterotroph). These are the areas where mnemonic strategies can help. Finally, it should be emphasized that mnemonic strategies do not represent an educational panacea. There are many things that students must do to succeed in school, and remembering content information is only one part of the entire picture. However, when there is academic content to be remembered, mnemonic strategies may be an important instructional component. In the next section, we discuss some general procedures for improving memory, followed by a description of how to create specific mnemonic strategies. General techniques for improving memory. Mnemonic strategies as described in this article are not the only way of improving memory in students who exhibit difficulty remembering things. It is important that you consider all possible methods for improving memory and not assume that mnemonic strategies are your only option. In other publications (Mastropieri & Scruggs, 1. Mastropieri & Scruggs, in press), we have described more general methods for improving memory. These include the following: Increase Attention. Be sure your students' memory problems are not really attention problems. Use strategies for enhancing attention, such as intensifying instruction, teaching enthusiastically, using more visual aids and activities, and reinforcing attending. Promote External Memory. Unfortunately, external memory is usually of little use (ethically, anyway) on tests. Enhance Meaningfulness. Draw parallels to the students' own lives. Bring in concrete, meaningful examples for students to explore so the content becomes more a part of their experience. Use Pictures. Use pictures on the chalkboard or on the overhead projector. Bring in photographs or other illustrations. Show concrete images on videotape, when appropriate. If pictures are simply unavailable, ask students to create images, or . Make sure all examples relate directly to the content being covered. Promote Active Manipulation. For example, rather than lecturing the class on the effect of weak acid (such as vinegar) on calcite, allow students to place calcite in a glass of vinegar and see for themselves. Promote Active Reasoning. Students remember better if they actively think through new information, rather than simply repeating it.
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