I need some help here; Does anyone know of any books, etc. that list mnemonics and other “tricks” that can be used to help children remember math concepts? I have a special ed. director who thinks that “individualized instruction” is basically using mnemonics, songs, and various other “tricks” to get the student to remember the particular concept. Now she wants me to write an objective that pretty much states that given various strategies involving mnemonics, etc. this child will be able to do the grade level curriculum. This child has significant short-term memory deficits and is by far the lowest math student in her class, and in my opinion needs more specific individualized instruction than tricks, but I’m not the one at the top. I’m going to try to individualize as much as I can while keeping the student in the regular program and class.
Thanks!
math facts the fun way
Has helped some of the kids I work with to remember their math facts… I think their website is http://www.citycreek.com
Memory
This site features a very helpful article about memory aides—right now. Look on the home page. Anita www.learntoreadnow.com
Re: Books with mnemonic strategies???
The CityCreek stuff (Times Tables the Fun Way is the product I used for one year) is really fun to teach, but, in my experience, students remember the stories for a long time, but don’t retain the facts well at all without the prompting they receive from the pictures and key words. If I prompted them with a phrase such as thirsty sixes, they could tell me that 6x6=36, but confronted with just the equation they were often pretty lost.
I have had much more success teaching math facts using visualization with Lindamood Bell’s Seeing Stars. Seeing Stars actually teaches students to visualize the relationships between numbers and the equations themselves. In other words, it teaches real math relationships rather than cute stories. It definately takes a better understanding of math facts and number relationships, as well as V&V skills on the part of the instructor, but students are able to function independently with regards to math facts, even a year later, something I never saw with TTFW.
I really, really hope you won’t spend too much time on the tricks. They rarely work and even when they appear to work, the longer-term retention level is terrible.
Send me an email asking for my math facts outline; I give a method which involves a visual-verbal-rhythmic-kinesthetic approach to remembering math facts, and you can rewrite it to make it look like a trick.
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