The Use of Melodic and Rhythmic Mnemonics to Improve Memory and Recall in Elementary Students in the Content Areas

This was a great reading. The link in the title is the actual PDF and for some reason when you click on the link to where I got the reading from it says that you need to do a new search but the website that this article was found is on eric. and the title of the article is the title of my blog entry. the author is Orla C. Hayes.

It is like 40 pages...and I doubt anybody will actually want to read the whole thing, and I definitely skimmed several parts but overall, the topic is great, and actually fun.

The reading is all about mnemonic devices used with children in elementary schools, grades K-5; and how beneficial these memory strategies really are. Studies show that students learn and retain much more information when taught through these mnemonic and musical devices. One example given in the very beginning was that a teacher taught her 1st grade students a little song to remember something for math. 7 years later (the kids were in 8th grade), she saw some of her students using the technique she taught them to remember some math skills.
I can think of plenty of mnemonic devices I have taught myself or have been taught by someone else that I literally still use today. I believe it is very beneficial.

The problem being addressed is that these devices are not used nearly enough as they should be for children in grades K-5. The paper is a study of these elementary school children to determine the effect of these musical mnemonics for memorization and being able to recall facts.
This study focuses on the "retrieval of facts" in the regular elementary school core classes such as Language Arts, English, Math, Social Studies, and Science.

This study is trying to prove that these mnemonic devices are successful through providing thorough tangible,proof and then leading into the discussion and question of, if this study proves that this is beneficial then what is preventing teachers from using this device more frequently in class?

This paper includes background information and history, medical research to back up their data, discussions, case studies, a teachers survey and comparisons.


-Alexandra