Mnemonics

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[edit] Introduction

According to the Oxford English Dictionary (2002), the word "mnemonic" (pronounced ne-MON-ik) was first used as part of the English language in 1662. The word has Greek roots -- mnemonikos means (approximately) "mindful." In Greek, the word in is in turn connected to Mnemosyne, the Greek god of memory, sleep, and dreams.
"Mnemonic" is used as both an adjective and a noun. Either way, it describes a mental method or structure that is used to aid memory. The term covers a wide variety of memory aids, but is now often used as a synonym for acronyms, such as the use of the word HOMES to remember the names of America's Great Lakes (Huron, Ontario, Michigan, Erie, Superior). Acronyms are effective but are only one of many types of mnemonics. Some of these are quite complex, requiring the user to memorize and practice an elaborate system. When practiced, the most sophisticated systems enable the memorization of very large amounts of information, including names and lengthy sequences of unrelated numbers.
For centuries, skilled mnemonists have made a living giving public demonstrations of their skills. Some experts have gone to great lengths to share their techniques with the general public, and though their achievements are amazing, their performances have given mnemonics something of a negative reputation as mere party tricks. Whether or not this has discouraged research on the cognitive basis of mnemonics is hard to say, but there is substantial research-based evidence for the effectiveness of mnemonics in academic and professional situations.

[edit] Types of mnemonics -- an overview

Listed below in order of increasing complexity are a number of categories of mnemonics. Some of these categories (especially the "keyword" and "peg" systems) have been given "official" status by researchers (see, for example, Mastropieri and Scruggs [1998] and Scruggs and Mastropieri [1992]). The names used here for other categories (and the exact boundaries between them) are somewhat arbitrary choices. Many, many examples of each of these types of mnemonics are available on the web -- see the section titled "web sites for more information" for some links.
1) Rhymes. Rhyming is a simple but potentially powerful mnemonic device. For English speakers, the rhyme "I before E except after C" is an almost universally know tool to assist in recalling the proper spelling of words that contain i and e together. A traditional mariner's rhyme for weather forecasting tells us "Red sky at morning, sailor take warning; red sky at night, sailor's delight."
2) Letter strategies -- acronyms. Among the most familiar of mnemonics, pronounceable acronyms such as FACE (for the notes of the treble clef), and HOMES (for the Great Lakes of the U.S.) are easily remembered. Successful use of a mnemonic like HOMES obviously requires that the user separately rehearse the names for which each letter stands.
3) Letter strategies -- acrostics. Sequences or groups of names whose first letters do not make pronounceable acronyms are often strung together into more-or-less nonsensical acrostics (an acrostic is a poem in which the first or last letters of each segment taken together make a word, sentence, or, in the case of mnemonics, represent a group of names). Among the most common examples of this sort of mnemonic are those used for the nine planets and the main levels of taxonomic classification:
My (Mercury) Very (Venus) Educated (Earth) Mother (Mars) Just (Jupiter) Sent (Saturn) Us (Uranus) Nine (Neptune) Pizzas (Pluto)
and
King (Kingdom) Philip's (Phylum) Class (Class) Ordered a (Order) Family of (Family) Gentle (Genus) Spaniels (Species)
One could argue based on common sense that an acrostic whose component words closely resemble the words to be learned is superior to one whose words bear less resemblance (e.g., the acrostic above with "King," "Class," and "Family" might be considered superior to another common version, "Katy Please Come Over For Ginger Snaps").
4) Keyword methods. Often used for vocabulary learning and for the recall of specific, relatively isolated facts (e.g., state capitals, people's names), keyword mnemonics are a versatile type that involve making some kind of association between one or more unfamiliar words, names, or facts and one or more words that the user already knows and/or can remember more easily than the new information. These associations are often visual, but may also involve rhymes or other aspects of similarity between the words. Mastropieri and Scruggs (1998) go in detail through the way in which they might teach children the vocabulary word "barrister." Briefly:
A) Explain the definition of the new word (e.g., "A barrister is a kind of lawyer").
B) Work with students to create a keyword (e.g., "bear") for the new word. In general, a good keyword sounds as much as possible like the new word and is easily pictured.
C) Create a picture (either mentally or on an overhead projector, for example) or the keyword and the new word's definition interacting somehow (e.g., a bear acting as a lawyer in a courtroom; a picture of a bear and a lawyer side by side would not be good, since the objects are not interacting).
D) Walk the students through the whole series of connections several times (this could be represented as barrister=lawyer, bear stands in for barrister, bear acting like a lawyer reminds us that bear=barrister and barrister=lawyer).
E) have the students practice this with other words.
There are some obvious limitations to keyword mnemonics. Some words just don't lend themselves as neatly to keyword imagery (such words must often be split into two or three pieces that begin successive words of a key phrase), and keyword methods don't necessarily help with spelling or even pronounciation -- just with meaning.
5) Peg systems. Peg systems are useful for storing and recalling new information that is numbered or ordered in some way. In these systems, one or more pieces of information get associated with (or "pegged" to) some set of more familiar sequential information. Mastropieri and Scruggs (1998) give the example of a simple but effective number-rhyme peg system: "One is bun, two is shoe, three is tree, four is door, five is hive, six is sticks, seven is heaven, eight is gate, nine is vine, ten is hen." This system is most often used on its own to store single facts (e.g., the fact that spiders and their close relatives have eight legs can be coded as a spider sitting on a gate), but can be combined with keyword techniques to encode chronological series of names.
Parts of the body (in order from head to toe or vice versa) are also commonly used as pegs, as are rooms in a house or some other series of places with which the learner is familiar. Place-based systems are among the oldest mnemonic techniques, and they have the advantage of including both a logical sequence (the living room might be the second room one enters as one walks through a house) and potentially many sub-sequences (e.g., the shelves, cabinets, etc. in a particular room) onto which the mnemonist can peg related information.
6) Advanced systems. Famed mnemonists have created very complicated mnemonics that, with practice, allow them to store vast amounts of information quickly with almost perfect recall. It's probably fair to say that most of these mnemonics are elaborate versions of those discussed above, often with multiple techniques combined.

[edit] What do we know about how mnemonics work?

Relatively little is known about how mnemonics work. In his classic work on the subject, Paivio (1971, pp. 156-158) lists a number of classical assumptions (most postulated by Roman rhetoricians) about the psychological foundations for mnemonics:
1) Perception and thought are continuous. Things that we experience as "real" (e.g., objects, places, other people) have attributes (size, color, etc.) that are assumed to "carry over" to our memory of those things. We can, for example, walk through a house and then draw a map of the house either mentally or on paper. Just as you can store an object in one room of a physical house and remember its location (and the fact that you have it at all) by remembering aspects of the room and/or its position relative to other rooms or other objects in the room, so-called "location" systems of mnemonics assume you can store a piece of information in a mental representation of the room and remember its location (and the fact that you have it at all) by remembering aspects of the room and/or its position relative to other rooms or other objects in the room.
2) Memory is like a wax tablet. Each of the mental rooms mentioned above can have images or facts stored in it much as one would write letters on a wax tablet. By implication, the images or facts stay there until they are deliberately erased or overwritten.
3) Sight is "the strongest of all the senses." The most durable impressions placed on our minds are those placed by the sense of sight. As a result, information perceived through other senses is best retained if it is converted somehow into visual images.
4) Words can be converted into symbols and vice versa. Using various sophisticated systems, even a long speech can be coverted into a series of images. These can be stored using a location mnemonic (or some other system) and then be converted into words without loss.
Taken together, Paivio (1971, pp. 159-161) says that these assumptions about memory and the senses suggest several reasons why mnemonics may work:
1) Mnemonics organize information. Regardless of the specifics of the system used, mnemonics force the user into chunking and/or ordering information somehow (so that it can be stored in a particular room of a mental house, hung on a mental peg associated with a number or a part of the body, placed on a numbered square in a matrix, etc.).
2) Mnemonics make use of the power of association. Information that has been organized as described above may or may not have its own internally logical system of organization, but the user of mnemonics can also rely on the associations that we tend to make, for example, between places and the people we've met there, things we've done there, and thoughts we've had there.
3) Mnemonics require rehearsal. Inserting information into a complex mnemonic system (e.g., a location system consisting of a many-roomed house with numerous distinct locations in each room) requires that the user do a certain amount of rote learning, processing and reprocessing the information to make it fit into the system and "refresh" the images used.
4) Mnemonics provide retrieval cues. The order of a set of rooms can be matched to the order of set of facts, for example. Middleton (1887) suggested that rhetorical terms such as "in the first place" have their basis in location mnemonics from antiquity.
5) Mnemonics prevent "interference" between pieces of information. By storing pieces in or on distinct rooms/pegs/numbers, mnemonics prevent confusion between similar words and concepts.
6) Mnemonics make use of novelty, or "distinctiveness." Though mnemonic systems do not inherently require users to create bizarre or unusual mental images, we tend to recall that which is extraordinary more easily than that which is ordinary, and most writers on the subject of mnemonics have placed heavy emphasis on the need for images that are "active, exceptionally beautiful or ugly, disfigured or comical." This principle is closely related to the idea of preventing interference.
To Paivio's list, Mayer (2002, p. 143) added the idea of "dual coding." Regardless of the degree to which a mnemonic user connects or fails to connect verbal information to a system of imagery, the use of two distinct "codings" of the same material makes it more likely that the information will be recalled somehow.

I am a math teacher and have used the PEMDAS mnemonic frequently. However, I have noticed some issues that arise when using mnemonics. In this particular situation, the students are remembering the letters for the order of operations. In an earlier submission a teacher stated that the students were having trouble determining where to put radicals into this step-by-step process. The other problem I see with it is when a student gets to the addition-subtraction or multiplication-division portions. In these parts of the process the multiplication & division parts of the problem are to be working in order from left to right, regardless of the placement within the problem. It has to be made abundantly clear to the students that the order of the letters does not tell you every detail. There are other details that must be understood and not just repeated.

M Foshee

[edit] Research support for the use of mnemonics

Skeptics of mnemonics have often argued that mnemonic devices are silly, that they overlay sensible, useful organization with useless, unrelated information. Many have wondered whether mnemonics in and of themselves aid memory, or whether their alleged benefit is due to the fact that users must spend effort and time organizing and rehearsing information (effort that they could expend without resorting to mnemonics). Any research that convincingly supports the use of mnemonics must include learners in control groups who spend an equivalent amount of time and energy in non-mnemonic forms of study.
Considerable research of this sort has in fact been conducted, and there is solid evidence that mnemonics work, at least for certain users in particular settings with well-defined information-storage needs. Mayer (2003) provides an overview of research on mnemonic use in vocabularly acquisition (both in learners' first language and in foreign-language learning). Mastropieri and Scruggs (1998) provide an excellent review of the benefits of mnemonic use for students with disabilities and those at risk for academic failure. While they are advocates of mnemonic systems, Mastropieri and Scruggs highlight the fact that mnemonics are only one tactic for improving memory. Teachers and students need to focus on increasing attentiveness, for example, as well as enhancing meaningfulness of information, use of external memory (calendars, notes, etc.) when appropriate, and increasing the time available for practice.
Most popular treatments of mnemonics (e.g., Higbee, 1988) emphasize that visual mnemonics must be personalized by each user for maximal effectiveness. Working in school situations, however, Scruggs and Mastropieri (1992) found students may require large amounts of time to construct their own mnemonic strategies, and that instruction can proceed more quickly if students use teacher-supplied straties. They suggest that "During a given unit of instruction, teachers should consider whether learning a strategy or learning the content is the priority" (p. 206).

[edit] Personal testimonies on use of mnemonics

Please insert your own experiences here! The more detailed you can be in describing how a particular mnemonic technique has been useful for you and/or your students, the more likely another reader will be to use your technique. You might separate your entry from those of other people with horizontal lines...

The Mnemonic device that I use with my art students is to learn the elements and principles of design. Looks Very Simple for College Students Too because Line, Value, Shape, Form, Contrast, Space, and Texture. BUMPER for the principles of design becomes Balance Unity,Movement,Pattern/Proportion, Emphasis, and Rythym. C.McCulley

I like to use the CB HOPKINS CaFe Closed Monday Morning Mgr Cutting Z's to teach the essential elements needed to grow plants. Carbon, Boron, Hydrogen, Oxygen, Phosphorus, Potassium, Iodine, Nitrogen, Sulfur, Calcium, Iron, Chlorine, Molybdenum, Manganese, Magnesium, Copper, and Zinc. ~Linda Woods

When I was in Chemistry in high school, we learned King Hector Drank 1 Delicious Chocolate Milk while Micros Nanny Piccoloed Femto Atto to do metric conversions. Kilo, Hecto, etc. ~Linda Woods

Oxidation/Reduction Reactons

LEO says GER Lose Electrons Oxidation, Gain Electrons Reduction or OIL RIG Oxidation Is Loss Reduction Is Gain. Those are my two favorite mnemonics for chemistry. As a future chemistry teacher, I plan to use them when I get to teach RedOx reactions someday.

Colors of the rainbow... ROY G. BIV (red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo, violet)
Personal Testimony: As a teacher of Spanish as a second language, I have found that using mnemonic devices is a wonderful and fun way to help students put information into their long-term memory. I have discovered that the sillier, the better to help the students remember. Not only does it help them remember the information, the silliness of it makes them laugh and enjoy class a little more. I have also found that using music as a mnemonic device is very effective. If I can make up a little tune and rhyme that incorporates vocabulary words or grammar rules, the students will remember it for a long time. Elizabeth Giger
I have used these in Science for a while. One of the bests is for remembering the classification order of Kingdom, Phylum, Class, Order, Family, Genus, Speices. I use (K)ings (P)refer (C)cola (O)ver,(F)lavored (G)rape (S)oda. Of course there is the one for remembering the planets (Mercury, Venus,Earth, Mars, Jupiter,Saturn,Unranus, Neptune, Pluto): (M)y (V)ery (E)ducated (M)other (J)ust (S)erved (U)s (N)ine (P)izzas.
My sixth grade math teacher taught us a mnemonic device to remember the order of operations that I still refer to if I need it. Parentheses, Exponents, Multipy/Divide, Add/Subtract. I use (P)lease (E)xcuse (M)y (D)ear (A)unt (S)ally. This is still helpful when doing math problems. MJB
Mnemonics are big in math classes. I use the two mnemonics mentioned above. I also use a song for the quadratic formula, sung to the tune of Pop Goes the Weasal. [1]
In calculus, we used a mnemonic SOH-CAH-TOA to remember that (S)ine is (O)pposite over (H)ypotenuse-(C)osine is (A)djacent over (H)ypotenuse-(T)angent is (O)pposite over (A)djacent. MW [1]
Mnemonics and rhymes are big in math classes. I use the two mnemonics mentioned above, and of course FOIL for first outside inside last of multiplying binomials. I also use a song for the quadratic formula, sung to the tune of Pop Goes the Weasal. I use rhymes for slope such as: 'finding slope is so much fun, all you do is rise over run'. I still use a mnemonic I was taught in physics to remember the color spectrum: RoyGBiv for Red Orange Yellow Green Blue Indigo Violet. E. Morrison
Others I still use for my own benefit;)
"I before e except after c."
30 days hath September, April, June, and November. All the rest have 31 (Except for February which has 28, RATS!) And then there's leap year... How to remember the number of days in each month. Carole Johnson
First-letter mnemonics made up by individual people may or may not make sense to others. I created the following mnemonic to remember geologic time periods during my freshman year of college: Paul (Precambrian) Camus (Cambrian) Ordered (Ordovician) Silver (Silurian) Dishes (Devonian) of Carbon (Carboniferous) Pearls (Permian), Tried (Triassic) Jupiter (Jurassic) and Created (Cretaceous) Turtle's (Tertiary) Quarry (Quaternary)
I told it to a friend who was having trouble learning the same information and it just didn't work for him (in fact, he looked at me like I'd lost my mind). He was, however, inspired to make up his own completely different mnemonic -- one that did work.

--Robin Mittenthal

I am not really a big fan of the 'phrase' mnemonic devices because it seems a waste to try to memorize something to help you memorize something else. Students have shared the order of operations phrase with me and another teacher told me the SOH CAH TOA for triangles. I do use associations to remember things which, I assume, would be a form of mnemonics. Chris Snodgrass
As an elementary teacher, I try to use easy mnemonic devices to help young children remember some of the more difficult academic concepts. "Please Excuse My Dear Aunt Sally" has been an extremely useful mnemonic device in teaching the concept of "Order of Operations" in my second grade class. When I first introduced the mnemonic, I did so in the form of a story. Basically, the story consisted of a little boy who had come to school with his homework folder unsigned. As part of the boy's homework, he was to have gotten an adult signature on his math test which consisted of math problems using a combination of addition, subject, multiplication, division, and the use of parentheses and exponents; however, his Aunt Sally had been too busy cleaning the house and making dinner that she had forgotten to sign his folder. Instead of her signature, the boy had signed his own math homework with the phrase, "Please excuse my dear Aunt Sally. She forgot to sign my homework." Using this story at the above mnemonic device, I taught my students how to complete math problems using the "Order of Operations." They loved the story and the mnemonic device. In fact, when asked to compete math problems that required the use of this mnemonic, many students began reciting and/or writing this mnemonic to help them solve the problem independently. *On a side note, I remember learning this mnemonic device when I was in school!

I used the method of loci to teach principles that support learning to learn (flexible learning if you like(the kids do)). As the method of loci is so powerful and convincing, it is a good starting point for teaching students the benefit of using a wide range of strategies, such as imagery in reading/classroom attention, reading examples and cases etc. The organization principle of mnemonics is useful when explaining the benefit of arranging or clustering notes. As it teaches the loci principle, it is also a good primer for the keyword mnemonic method (location is useful and often missed out here). As it uses loci, it can be done using a game board. The game aspect makes it very engaging. As dual coding theory is also relevant, it also helps to explain how words and images work together in learning.

When I was in fourth grade my teacher taught us the mnemonic for arithmetic- "a" "r"at "i"n "t"he "h"ouse "m"ight "e"at "t"he "i"ce "c"ream. In fact I just used that mnemonic when doing that last sentence. When I started teaching I taught third grade for a few years. During a spelling lesson I was trying to give some of the students some help with remembering how to spell words and retold my fourth grade experience. One little girl asked (with all sincerity) just what arithmetic meant. S. Morrisette



Whenever I am teaching about redox reactions I always use the LEO goes GER mnemonic. I feel a bit silly telling it to college students, but I still use it to remember which way the reactions go. Loss of electrons = oxidation (LEO) and Gain of electrons = reduction (GER).

I took piano lessons for 8-9 years. My sight reading was horrible and my piano instructor was even worse. In any case, one of the things that made my lessons a little more bearable each week were these helpful mnemonics for reading music.
Treble Clef
F A C E (spaces)
Every Good Boy Does Fine (lines)
Bass Clef
Good Boys Do Fine Always (lines)
All Cows Eat Grass (spaces)
-JD

As a music teacher, I use mnemonics very helpful when working with younger students. I placed this testimony here because of the previous music testimony. My children have informed me that the bass and treble clef line mnemonics are to similar. As a result we use Empty Garbage Before Dad Flips for the treble clef and Good Boys Do Fine Always for the bass clef lines. -Chris Royer-

I have found this to be a very effective strategy for memorization. In Order of Operations, I had my students write their own mnemonic devices, for PEMDAS (aka Parentheses, Exponents, Multiplication/Division, Addition/Subtraction, and Please Excuse My Dear Aunt Sally). Students came up with some VERY creative ideas, and personalizing the mnemonic device seems to have eliminated any problems with the students remembering it. Pat Reed


I think the best testimony is that I still use mnemonics that I was taught during my school years 45+ years ago. I still refer to things like HOMES and scuba. I teach mnemonics in my language arts classes. It is still something students pick up quickly and tend to remember. N. Meeker

Some mnemonics start out as such, but end up as verbs. For example, to multiply a binomial, you might use the FOIL method (First, Outer, Inner, Last). After awhile, you don't think of the word as a way to remember a process. You just end up FOIL-ing it. My first memory of a mnemonic was a way to memorize how to spell GEOGRAPHY: George Edwards Old Grandfather Rode A Pig Home Yesterday. Isn't just easier to memorize the spelling? M. Uhls

Reading through some other people's testimonies and the various mnemonics made me see how similiar my experiences are as well. Learning English is a task in itself for students from other countries, but once they understand the concept of mnemonics, they are able to learn things in a quick and fun way. I use them all the time in teaching English to my students and it helps them greatly. JP

There is one that I use regularly that I don't see mentioned elsewhere in the testimonials. I have never been great with geography and love mnemonics that help me remember places. One I have used several times (and once to win Trivial Pursuit!) is HOMES. This represents the Great Lakes, and I imagine a summer home on the lake (Huron, Ontario, Michigan, Erie, Superior. April Spisak

Not saying that mnemonics are bad, but there are times where I've seen it fail. For instance, for the Great Lakes, I've heard this "HOMES- Hudson, Ontario, Mississippi, Erie, and Salt Lake." Or when tutoring, I heard this explanation for Foil, "FOIL- First, once, and insides last." Thus, this person just did the first terms and then the inside two. That person did that for 4 days after the lesson without the teacher knowing why he did so. The teacher just simply reminded the class of FOIL and not what they meant. Make sure your students will know what the letters mean before they can use them. - John N. Janowiak

As a student, I was not taught mnemonics. As a teacher, I find them extremely helpful to students. On the other hand, I would like to raise a problem concerning PEMDAS (Order of Operations) that creates confusion for the students The issue is that students understand the P ( parenthesis) as an operation. This is not the case but is instead a location where they work first, following the Order of Operations. Later, they learn radicals. This is the point in PEMDAS where confusion begins. They forget that radicals and exponents are of the same order. They work the parenthesis first, and this results in mistakes. In conclusion, we, as teachers, have to make sure that clarifications are made at the right time, so there are no misconceptions. I have also included some great websites for math mneumonics. A. Rosu

Many moons ago I taught a class at the local community college in networking. One of the topics in the class was the seven layers for networking, Physical, Datalink, Network, Transport, Session, Presentation and Application. Not only the names are important, but their sequence (as in FACE, above) as well. I created a mnemonic for the students that I recalled to write this entry, in fact. It was interesting in that several of the mnemonic words are actually the ones needed to be recalled. Here it is: "Please Don't Network This Silly Presentation Application." M. Cornell

I have found that some students really get into Mnemonic devices to help remember lists. I have used many of the above through out my life and found that I still remember them! I usually make one up for the classifications Kingdom, Phylum, etc. The I have my students try to make up their own. They really get into it. and it some are really funny! L. Gowler

As a math teacher, I use the common Please Excuse My Dear Aunt Sally and SOHCAHTOA (which I introduce with a silly story about dropping a triangle on your toe and having to Soak A Toe-a) but I have also found it useful to use other simple ways to remember things like Y to the Sky for remembering which axis is which Y is the vertical one since it points to the sky. I have also found it useful to tell students that the ordered pairs go in ABC order (x,y) and when we move to polar coordinates the same applies (cosine, sine). Supplementary and complementary angles also go in ABC/numerical order: complementary angles add to 90 degrees, supplementary angles add to 180 degrees. I also use songs to memorize the quadratic formula but I have the students make up their own. They must use a known tune and they may work in groups. I am always amazed at how creative they can be. Also, I see them singing the song during tests, even during class the next year. Rita Grunloh, Lexington High School

[1] As a high school freshman on the bus to the Parkland math contest, I learned these two mnemonics from a senior. M. Cornell

____ I learned mnemonics in almost every subject. I remember most of them and I am now teaching them to my students. One that I have always liked is MIMAL. It is a way to remember the states that border the Mississippi river on the west. They even kind of look like a person that we named MIMAL. I think nmemonics are a great tool for learning. E. Kilroy

I have been taught different mnemonics throughout my schooling. I used them all the time! I found them to be very helpful. I used them to remember the planets, for the scales in my piano lessons, the great lakes, and so many more. What a great creative way to help with learning! - R.U.

The two mnemonics I use most often are righty tighty, lefty loosey to remember which way to turn something to tighten or loosen it and there is "a rat" in "separate". I don't know if I spell separate correctly because of this or if it is just absolutely stuck in my brain and I would be spelling it correctly at this point without hearing that in my head. Other common useful ones are spring forward, fall back and i before e except after c, or as in a as in neighbor and weigh, also dessert (not desert) is the "fancy" one and together is "to get her". Then there are when you assume something, you make an "ass" out of "u" and "me" and a principal is your "pal". I use mnemonics all the time to remember things. I use initials a lot. Another one I use all the time I believe uses the peg system. I use my knuckles (and the spaces in between) to remember how many days there are in a month. You start with a knuckle for January. It's high compared to the knuckle "valleys" so it has 31 days. February is an exception right away, but it certainly doesn't have 31 days. Then March is 31 and April is 30. When you get to August you have to switch hands and thus have two months in a row with 31 days. -Pam Olivito

I teach mathematics to middle school students. With an Integrated curriculum middle school students are working a great deal with multi-step functions. This being said, there are many mnemonics to help students through the steps, in an appropriate order, however one in particular has become a topic of controversy in our school district.

Students use FOIL to help remember that when given a product of binomials they can form a quadratic function. First Oouter Inner Last helps students with the order in which they must multiply terms, however many teachers are finding that they would rather call this process the Double Distributive Rule, actually applying what is taking place than yet another series of steps for students to simply memorize and not understand what is taking place. Could there be a shift away from mnemonic devises as we continue to enhance testing as ask students to not only be able to complete problems and exercises but logically process the information and explain what is actually taking place?

(Pule, cohort 11)

[edit] Web sites for more information

The page for "Mnemonic" in Wikipedia is eclectic and rich, and I also feel obligated to link to it because it's Wiki--[1]
There are so many other web sites with information about mnemonics that to put any links in particular here would be quite arbitrary. If you want, you can click on the following links to run Google searches:
For types of mnemonics -- [2]
For more on mnemonic-related research -- [hl=en&lr=&q=mnemonic+research&btnG=Search or [3]
Mnemonics There are various examples of different mnemonics on this website.
Math links--Mathmem k-12 or Mathmnemonics
more math mnemonics at http://www.education-world.com/a_curr/archives/mnemonics.shtml

[edit] Paper sources for more information

Belleza, F. (1981). Mnemonic Devices: Classification, Characteristics, and Criteria. Review of Educational Research, 51(2): 247-275.
Higbee, K. (1988). Your Memory: How it Works and How to Improve It. New York: Prentice Hall Press.
Mastropieri, M. and Scruggs, T. (1998). Enhancing School Success with Mnemonic Strategies. Intervention in School and Clinic, 33(4): 201-8.
Mayer, Richard E. (2002). The Promise of Educational Psychology. Pearson Education, Inc., New Jersey.
Mayer, Richard E. (2003). Learning and Instruction. Upper Saddle River, New Jersey: Merrill Prentice Hall.
Oxford English Dictionary. 2002.
Paivio, A. (1971). Imagery and Verbal Processes. New York: Holt, Rinehart, and Winston.
Scruggs, T. and M. Mastropieri. (1992). Classroom Application of Mnemonic Instruction: Acquisition, Maintenance, and Generalization. Exceptional Children, 58: 219-229.
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