Remembering Assignments During the Busy School Year

Remembering information for school can be improves by adapting a few simple strategies, which can be real game changers for your child’s school life.

– Concentration is incredibly important for retaining memory. You need to keep things simple. When studying and trying to remember things for school, focus on only that. Don’t think about that friend’s party on the weekend.

– While you’re studying, get away from things that make demands on your time. This means your friends, your pets, and your TV. Have a specific place to study and avoid distractions. Choose an area with good ventilation and light.

– Studies have shown that the time of day you study is important. Even if you think of your a morning person or a night person, studies show you retain more in the afternoon.

– Writing things down helps keep it in your memory. Write down the main points from each section you read. Write subject vocabulary words and foreign language words/phrases multiple times to more easily and quickly recall.

– Use mnemonic devices.  Make acronyms for things you’re trying to remember. Take the first letter of each word and turn it into an acronym that makes sense to you. To remember the Great Lakes (Huron, Ontario, Michigan, Erie, Superior), do H.O.M.E.S.. Make a rhyme or nonsense phrase using a word for each letter. To remember the word mnemonic, you might remember “Mona Never Eats Much Of Nancy’s Ice Cream”. For the mathematical order of operations (Parenthesis, Exponents, Multiply, Divide, Add, Subtract), use “Please Excuse My Dear Aunt Sally”, or “I before e except after c/ or when sounding like a/ in neighbor and weigh” helps remember where e and i go when they’re together.

– Associate something you already know with something you’re trying to remember. Remembering the direction of longitude and latitude is easier to do when you realize that lines on a globe that run North and South are long and that coincides with LONGitude. Another connection Mnemonic points out that there is an N in LONGitude and an N in North. Latitude lines must run east to west, then because there is no N for North in latitude.

– Focus on details. To remember a novel, focus on imagining the characters and the scenery in great detail and make sure you have a visual aid that recalls each character. It helps greatly to remember some specific characteristic of each character.