Memory strategies to help students enhance their learning experiences

The need for a good memory is much greater for school going children than it is for adults. School children are constantly fed with new knowledge in multiple topic areas. They are also expected to learn and demonstrate the mastery of this knowledge. Thus, an effective and efficient memory is critical for success in school.

The purpose of this article is to provide strategies to help students enhance their learning experiences. The following general strategies help students develop a more efficient and effective memory.

• Reading in both verbal and visual formats - Reading in multiple formats is beneficial. Students have to understand and memorise these instructions and repeat them to explain the concept can be helpful for enhancing memory.
• Practice until you can perform error-free - As students encounter new information everyday, it is necessary to learn and practice the concepts taught until they are able to recall them free of error. These repetitions are needed to solidify information.
• Understand the concept and try to remember - Understanding the information taught in the class or what they read in the text books is usually not enough to perform well on traditional tests. Engage in some activity for the purpose of remembering what you understand.
• Repeat or write down instructions - If you have short-term memory registration, you will need to repeat or even write down instructions to remember them.
• Review before sleep - It is helpful to review material before going to sleep. Research suggests that information studied before bed time is better remembered.
• Self-test - All students benefit from self-testing. Try to identify important concepts, form questions and then answer them.
• Use diagrammatic representations - To remember a series of steps or events, it is helpful to draw diagrams or flow charts of the step/events.
• Revise the prior concepts - In order to enhance performance on new incoming information, students have to activate their prior knowledge to make the new information meaningful.

An overall goal for students is to develop a personalised strategy that increases efficiency when studying and learning. Initially, some strategies may take more time, but eventually the use of these strategies enhances ability to organise and retrieve information, thereby increasing learning efficiency.