Tool #11: Use a Melody

Have you ever noticed that song lyrics are easier to remember than the lines of a poem? Music is memorable. That's why the melody for Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star was used to help children memorize the alphabet.

Also, you might remember from your childhood some cartoons using catchy music specifically created for educational purposes. Like this Planet Song, designed for little kids to learn about the planets.  

Although you are definitely not a kid anymore, you still can use that strategy to keep on learning and memorizing! 

Similar to what happened with Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star, this is a short piece from Animaniacs in which they use Jarabe tapatío -the national dance of Mexico, often referred to as the Mexican hat dance- as a way to memorize all countries in the world. (If you like it and want to learn them all after this song, please keep in mind the cartoon is from some years ago and some of the countries do not longer exist. Also, it includes territories and nations that are not considered states by the UN) 

Combining any information you need to memorize with a pre-existing song can be a challenging task. How do you pick the perfect song for that amount of information? Well, remember that the other option is creating your own melodies for that. Do you need an example? Take a look then on this clip from Hannah Montana, where she makes different songs to memorize the bones of the body. 

You can do the same thing. Take a familiar tune and change the lyrics into material that you need to know for your upcoming test. If that's too complicated, it's your time to become a composer. Just try not to hum too loudly during the test, please!!

BONUS TRACK: we were unable to decide whether to include the World Countries Song or this other one to memorize the periodic table using the popular Can Can, by French composer Jacques Offenbach. That's why we add it here, in case you want to use it some time.

Tool #9: Use Your Body

[Reading time, including videos: 30 minutes]

Research has demonstrated that we learn better when we use as much of our body as possible. Do you remember "Head, Shoulders, Knees and Toes"? Yes, it is a children's song, but it is intended to be a memorization strategy for babies and toddlers to learn part of the bodies. There is even a language teaching method created after that theory: it is called Total Physical Response (TPR) and it really works, although someone might think it looks a bit clownish. 

"But I am not learning any language now, I thought this post was about memorization strategies for my classes!", you may say. The key is that you can use this approach for memorizing any piece of information you need or even understand some challenging ideas. How? Well, don't just read your notes (eyes only): talk about the material with classmates or out loud to yourself (ears); make study notes (hands); and even act out some concepts (whole body). You might feel a little silly pretending to be John A. Macdonald standing in your bathroom and delivering an important speech about confederation to your mirror, but you won't forget the experience!

If you want to learn another way to memorize information by using your body, take a look on this Ted Talk. Can you think of some course content for what you could use this technique? 

 

Tool #8: Rhymes, Acrostics & Acronyms

We bring you here three easy and funny strategies to memorize information. It is very likely that you have practiced any of them in the past, just keep in mind that they can be much more helpful than you think. 

If you ever have a problem with some specific words or short sentences, make up a rhyme with it. For instance, in the movie Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone (you can watch the scene above), Hermione remembers the properties of the Devil’s Snare plant with a rhyme: “Devil’s Snare, Devil’s Snare, Is deadly fun, But will sulk in the sun.” 

An acrostic is a funny sentence using the first letters of the words to be memorized. The one above is a helpful one to memorize the order of the planets. In biology, students have used the acrostic “Katy Perry Comes Over For Grape Soda” to memorize Kingdom, Phylum, Class, Order, Family, Genus, Species. 

Acronyms are similar to acrostics but creating one word (instead of a full sentence) made up from the first letters of the items to be memorized. As you can see on the picture above, He IS TIRED is an acronym that helps us to memorize the symptoms of hypoglycemia. If you need to remember something easier, such as the five Great Lakes (Huron, Ontario, Michigan, Erie, Superior), you can use the word HOMES. Which is, of course, another acronym. 

By trying these strategies out, you will realize that each of them will work better with a specific type of information. You might not want to create a rhyme to memorize the periodic table (that would be a really long poem!), but you can turn the elements into acronyms. Just give them a try and post a comment on how do you think these strategies can be helpful to you. 

Tool #5: Loci Method, or the "Memory Palace"

You might have watched BBC's "Sherlock" starring Benedict Cumberbatch. If so, you might have wondered how Sherlock can memorize such a huge amount of random data. Well, there are some episodes in which he mentions that his brain is like a Mind Palace, as it happens in the video below. 

This may sound just like a funny line, but it actually comes from a memorization technique called the Loci Method, developed in Ancient Greece. That means that you can "Sherlock" your studies by using this technique. With the Loci Method you imagine a route or set of locations that is very familiar to you (for example, the route you walk to school), or the floor plan of your house or other building you know well (these are called "memory palaces"). Take the information you need to memorize, and “locate” it on this familiar path – in your mind (and even on paper, if it helps). Perhaps you put the photosynthesis diagram you have to remember in your south-facing living room window, and the atomic model on the kitchen counter. Have fun imagining where all the information is located. The crazier the image you create, the more memorable it will be. Click on the video below to better understand how the Loci Method works. 

Tool #3: "Cheat" sheet

A "cheat" sheet is a reference sheet or formulas sheet we are allowed to use during an exam to help memory. Even if you’re not allowed to use one, make a "cheat" sheet for an upcoming evaluation such as a math test. Confine yourself to both sides of an 8½” X 11” sheet of paper. On it, outline briefly the different types of problems that you will be asked to solve on the test, and the steps and formulas you need to know for each. Then, memorize the "cheat" sheet as best you can. (Actually, because making a "cheat" sheet is so involved, you'll find you memorize it easily. That is why "cheat" sheets would also fit under the Memorization Tricks category). The video below is a good example of how to create a "cheat" sheet from scratch, although yours wouldn't need to be that ambitious. 

Also, as you can see below, some people even create their "cheat" sheets on Microsoft Word or any other word processor.

Here's a related idea. Before you start a test, actually before even looking at the test, quickly write out everything you remember from your "cheat" sheet, especially formulas, and that way you will have it to refer to during the writing of your test. Just remember to inform your teacher beforehand about your plan, so they don`t think you are cheating!

Tool #1: Turn Variables into Little Pictures

In order to memorize a complex formula, try converting some of the variable symbols into little pictures. For the y variable, for example, you could draw a little cat face with its tail hanging down. The x variable could be an x superimposed on a pair of lips, to represent a kiss. The delta sign (∆) could be drawn as a house with a triangular roof. For that matter, assign a colour to different operations (e.g., pink for multiplication, blue for division, etc.) and then always use those colours when writing out a formula you have to memorize. Pictures and colours will be easier to memorize.

Do you want another example? Let's pretend then you want to learn Japanese. One of the first things you would have to do is getting used to read hiragana, a Japanese syllabary in which every character corresponds to a syllable. The image below is just one of many different possible ways to memorize the character き (ki): in this case, turning it into a picture of a key, since both words sound exactly the same.

Here is another example of how to turn the Pi number (π) into a Py-thon.

Do you feel like you are ready to create your own "designs"? OK, let's get started then: just choose any symbol you use in Math or Science (eg. root square, y, Σ) and turn it into a picture. It doesn't matter if the picture makes no sense to other people--remember that this is a memorization trick that should work for you!