Memorization Helps
Methods for Memorizing Facts, Passages and Hard-to-Remember Lists
Aug 31, 2007 Diane Laney Fitzpatrick
In the Catholic faith, there’s so much to know, so many things to learn.
In some parishes, by Confirmation, a teen is expected to know from memory the Gifts and Fruits of the Holy Spirit, the Beatitudes, the Works of Mercy, the 10 Commandments, the Apostle’s Creed, the Stations of the Cross, the Seven Sacraments and most Catholic prayers.
Not an easy task, and not a whole lot of fun, either.
The debate over memorization
Proponents of rote learning and memorization say the ability to recite poetry, Bible passages and citations from great literature gives testament to a tradition that goes back to the ancient Greeks. These advocates think it’s a shame that today people in their 30s can’t recite anything.
Critics of rote learning methods say memorizing words doesn’t help understanding, and better that we teach the meaning of a religious concept than the list that accompanies it.
Regardless of how your parish views memorization, students in religious education classes will have to memorize at least a few key Catholic prayers, church tenants and Bible versus.
Visual versus auditory learners
A class of students is bound to include different types of learners. It is believed that about 65 percent of the population are visual learners and will remember material by how they see it as it’s written. About 30 percent are auditory learners and will remember more from what they’ve heard.
As a religious education teacher, use a variety of memorization methods to help all of your students learn class material.
Make it personal
When helping students memorize, be sure they understand it first. The information will naturally flow if it has meaning. Conversely, it’s difficult to memorize meaningless words. Create examples, personalize information and make it interesting and even funny, to help your students remember.
Students as teachers
As passive learners, we remember only 10-30 percent of what we read, hear and see. When we teach someone else by showing and doing, we retain 70-90 percent of what we teach.
Give your students that advantage by letting each of them teach the class a part of the lesson. Or partner them up and let them “play school,” taking turns being the teacher.
Add motions, music
We tend to remember words to a song better than prose, because the words are attached to a tune and the melody pulls the words along with it. Take a particularly difficult passage and put it to music, preferably a well-known tune such as “Frere Jacque” or “London Bridge.”
Add hand motions and movements that can trigger students’ memories.
Break it down
Many times the hardest part of memorizing a longer passage or list is remembering what comes next. Type out the piece to be memorized and cut it into individual slips of paper, line by line. Have students take the strips and put them in order.
Write out the passage with blanks and have the children fill them in. Write out different versions with different words left blank for better practice.
The power of seeing
Type a passage in a large font and give copies to the children to tape to their bathroom mirror, at the breakfast table, on the back seat of the car, and wherever they can see them throughout the day. It will give them the needed prompts for practice, and will also be a reminder that they need to work on the task.
Draw simple pictures of key words in each section of the passage and put them in order, to serve as prompts for the next section.
The power of writing
Copying words onto paper helps to ingrain information into our memories. Have students write the passage as much as possible. To make it more interesting, Put blank pieces of paper around the classroom and have students walk around to each station, writing down the next part to each sheet.
Working on Memorizing
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