Enhancing School Success with Mnemonic Strategies

Introduction

Many students with disabilities and those at risk for educational failure exhibit problems with remembering materials covered in school. Suggestions for helping these students improve memory for school content are described in this article. In particular, mnemonic instruction is described and examples are provided of how it can be used to increase school learning and memory of students with learning disabilities.

A few years ago, we revisited an inner-city middle school where - about a year before - we had conducted an investigation on the effectiveness of mnemonic techniques in helping students with mild cognitive disabilities remember U.S. States and capitals. As we entered the classroom, Crystal, a student classified as mildly mentally handicapped, recognized one of our graduate students immediately.

"Hey! I remember you!" she exclaimed enthusiastically. "You were here last year - you taught us states and capitals! I remember, go ahead, ask me one!"

"Well, uh," replied our colleague, taken slightly by surprise, "How about . . . Florida?"

"That's too easy!" she said smiling. "Here it is: Florida, the keyword is flower - the flower is on a television set, and television is the keyword for Tallahassee!"

In this scenario, a student classified as mentally retarded effectively remembered information she has been taught 1 year previously. 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 strategy 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, 1994), 71.2% of all students now spend all or a substantial part of their school day in general education classrooms. As many as 78.9% 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-are classrooms, such as English, science, and social studies classes. Largely, ability to succeed in these classrooms determines their level or success in school.

What factors determine whether a student will succeed in secondary content-area classrooms? Pumam (1992b) surveyed 7th- and 10th-grade teachers in 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 11 of these tests over the course of a single 9-week grading period. Clearly, students' academic survival is tied very closely with performance on academic tests. In addition to the number of tests teachers give, Pumam (1992a) also examined the types of questions teachers asked on tests. He found that the overwhelming majority of test questions students were asked required factual recall.

The majority of questions on tests administered by mainstream secondary classroom teachers required the student to recall a specific fact - 25.3 per test. A sample question that asked for a specific fact was "Who discovered America?" Other possible responses, such as conclusion, sequence, opinion, discrimination, compare and contrast, purpose, correct an example, and summary, appeared about one per test. (p.131)

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.g. Cooney & Swanson, 1987). Our work in the area of 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, or mnemonic strategies in enhancing memory for school learning.

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