Blog

With “back to school” right around the corner, everyone can benefit from strategies for increasing memory and retention of learned information. All of us, especially students, forget important information at times. This occurs when we do not transfer information from our short-term memory to our long-term memory. There are a variety of strategies that students, and adults, can use to improve their retention of important information.

The strategies include:

1. Chunking- breaking up large amounts of information into small chunks that are easily remembered
2. Understanding- relate what you are learning to things you have already experienced to facilitate understanding.
3. Graphic Organizers- organize information by using Venn diagrams, webs, cause and effect diagrams, or cycle organizers
4. Visualization-see an image of what your learning in your head so it becomes more meaningful
5. Association- connect each word or event with a person, place, thing, feeling, or situation
6. Rhyming- make rhymes to help you remember key information
7. Talking- talking about information promotes learning that information
8. Storytelling- arrange learned information into a logical sequence so that each event in the story triggers the next event in your memory
9. Writing Sentences/Acronyms- write sentences or words where the first letter of each word represents information you need to learn (e.g. the planets: “My Very Excellent Mom Just Served Us Nine Pizzas”)
10. Rehearsing- practices it or it will fade by saying it, writing, it, drawing it, or singing it.  Rehearse the information in a variety of modalities.

Jessica Eberhardt M.S. CF-SLP, TSSLD