A good memory in our time is one of the most important factors in building a career and achieving success in any area of life. Not everyone is gifted with a good memory from birth, however, you should do everything possible to improve your memorization skills, and it is worth starting in childhood.
There are even special techniques for improving memory, so let's take a closer look at what mnemonics is.
What it is?
Mnemonics, also known as mnemonics, is a special set of methods and techniques that allows you to turn any information necessary for memorization into clear images that are permanently stored in memory due to a certain associative series.
The same school lessons for children are usually not of great interest, since too often they are limited to the presentation of dry facts; if you turn learning into a fun story with visual demonstrations or even a game, the result can exceed all imaginable expectations.
The general development of memory, provided with the help of mnemonics, allows you to achieve various benefits. If you are given important information in the form of names, names or phone numbers, and there is nothing to write them down on, thanks to mnemonics, you will most likely be able to remember them at least until you get to a reliable medium.
For students, this is a "gold mine" at all, because memorizing poetry or preparing for exams can now be much faster, and the need for cheat sheets is greatly reduced.
A person who speaks to the audience without peeping at a piece of paper always arouses more respect and attention than someone who simply reads from sight, therefore this is also a very valuable technique for speakers and teachers.
Pros and cons for kids
The principles of mastering mnemonics for beginners can be found for any age, however, it is generally accepted that it is best to start learning at a preschool age - then, based on the skills acquired, the child will be able to learn much more intensively school and university knowledge that will be useful in later life.
A striking example of mnemonics is the famous proverb about the hunter and the pheasant, which allows you to teach kids the sequence of the colors of the rainbow. Moreover, it is in childhood that such a technique gives maximum opportunities for the versatile development of the child:
- any necessary information is remembered without unnecessary effort and is stored for a long time;
- along the way, exercises train memory, allowing you to better remember even what is not in the most memorable form;
- due to the large number of metaphors and associative thinking, the child's vocabulary expands, pronunciation improves, horizons of horizons expand;
- logic, imagination, creative skills and intelligence are being improved, over time, making it possible to turn any given knowledge into a mnemonic form;
- most of the techniques allow you to practice even at home, and are also suitable for children with disabilities.
Like any other teaching method, the mnemonics for a particular child may be built incorrectly, due to which the result will not reach the expected level.
Common mistakes when building a program are as follows:
- if learning began at a very early age, it should be remembered that the baby's vocabulary and horizons are still small, because some associations are simply inaccessible to him, and too complex matters will simply slow down development;
- mnemonics is a tool for memorizing rather complex things; you should not use it to fix any simple information in memory, since an excessive pile of associations only confuses;
- mnemonics is only one of the methods of memorizing information, it cannot be applied absolutely in any situation, therefore it is not worth completely abandoning the teaching of mechanical memorization, since it will also be useful in life.
Education by age group
According to most experts studying child development, you can start the first lessons in mnemonics with babies at the age of about three years... At this stage, the child is just learning to speak, since his vocabulary still does not go beyond the daily concepts.
Now it is important to simply expand his vocabulary, and for this it is necessary that the studied concepts for him be as less abstract as possible.
So, having learned the word "autumn", a three-year-old child may not understand its meaning and completely forget it in a year, but a simple picture (they are called mnemonic squares) with the image of a yellow leaf or a tree with a yellowed crown will already become a clear association for him that will improve memorization and will not allow you to make mistakes when determining the current season.
By the age of 4-5 the child's brain is developed enough to move on to mnemonic tracks - the same pictures, which are divided into three or four consecutive images and describe the concept from different angles. So, a mnemonic path can consistently show a yellowed tree, a yellow leaf and a wedge of birds flying away. Even if all this is shown schematically, such clues allow the baby to get from the depths of his memory what he already knows, but forgot a little.
The blurred concept of autumn becomes more meaningful, the child is already ready to give a typically childish definition of this time of the year, which may seem naive and not entirely accurate, however, it still indicates a clear understanding of what is happening.
About from the age of 6 can be given to kids for learning mnemonic tables... These are the same mnemonic tracks, only there are even more pictures here, they can go in two rows and often convey not only one concept, but also a whole plot, albeit small. The task of teachers at this stage of development is to teach storytelling, when the child retells the plot of a favorite children's book or learns a verse. Here, the amount of memorized information is already quite significant, so the child will have to connect the associative arrayto properly present the plot. At the same time, the manner of speech and the correctness of presentation are trained.
To improve associative thinking, a rebus can be given in the form of a mnemonic table, and subsequently the task can be significantly complicated by inviting the child to come up with his own story using such a table.
In the future, such pictograms can even serve as a guide to life safety or behavior in different places. An example of the development of mnemonics and its use in adulthood are the same road signs, as well as instructions on some products, presented in the form of simple pictures.
Actually, mnemonic squares, mnemonic tracks and mnemonic tables are the main methods of teaching children - it is only important to arrange them in the correct order.
Application specificity
In order for mnemonics to produce worthy results, some simple rules should be followed. In general, they are logical, and you can think of them yourself, but just in case, we will systematize them in order to avoid obvious mistakes when teaching at home.
- Exercises are presented in sequence from simple to complex. The intellectual and logical abilities of a preschooler are rather modest, so one should not expect that he will begin to grasp knowledge on the fly, jumping over several levels. You should always start with mnemonic squares, even if the child has clearly surpassed them in age - just to understand that he is already higher in terms of development. Do not forget that some of the concepts presented by mnemo-squares can be quite difficult even for adults, so rushing is inappropriate.
- Mnemonics greatly helps to speed up memorization, but its capabilities also have a certain limit. It is difficult for a preschooler to remember a lot of information at once, therefore, it is generally accepted that the maximum daily rate is two tables with no more than nine pictures in each. Even if the baby himself shows interest in increasing the volume, this is not worth doing - the information will simply be swallowed, but it will not linger in memory.
Please note that even the indicated volume is too much for some children, so check the actual results against your own expectations and, if necessary, reduce the volume in favor of efficiency.
- The meaning of mnemonics is to make initially not the most interesting information fascinating. In the case of preschoolers, this effect is achieved with the help of bright colors - then the child himself reaches for knowledge, tries to grasp the meaning and "accidentally" remembers it. For best results, avoid black and white or pale images.
- Children do not understand well the meaning of the word "must", therefore learning should be fun for them. In the process of memorization, the interest of the memorizing person plays a huge role, and kids tend to fence themselves off at a subconscious level from everything that is frightening or unpleasant. For this reason, associations of mnemonics should focus on positive or at least neutral qualities without obvious disadvantages of the concepts being studied.
- For the above reason, a preschool child you can not force to study here and now, if he does not show interest in this - it will only get worse. Watch the reaction of the kids: the lesson should continue as long as they are interested. At this age, they themselves determine its maximum duration, and if the baby has clearly lost interest or his attentiveness has decreased, this is a clear signal to stop, even if you have planned more.
- Preschoolers do not know how to focus on a certain topic for a long time, but their interest is easy to maintain by constantly giving something new. For this reason, if you plan to give two of the same mnemonic tables in a day, make sure that they are on fundamentally different topics. If you decide to delve too deeply into one of the topics, you will lose children's interest and will be forced to stop the lesson, as described above.
In the next video, you will find several mnemonic techniques for teaching children.
