Aha Moments & Mnemonic Devices

Even well into adulthood, I used to have the hardest time (embarrassingly enough) remembering which direction I had to turn to loosen or tighten things like screws or knobs. This culminated one day when I was trying to get some screws off the license plate of my car and it took me way too long to finish the task. After I complained to a friend, she taught me “Righty tight-y, lefty loose-y” as a way to remember this which worked like a charm! All the years of struggling to keep this straight in my head boiled down to a couple of simple lines and it’s something I won’t ever forget.

I was recently reminded of my “Ah-ha!” learning moment when I received an e-mail from one of our tutors. She was writing to share about an awesome breakthrough experience she had with one of her students who had struggled in the past to memorize the quadratic formula. As the tutor and this student were getting ready to go over the quadratic formula, the student told the tutor that he wasn’t looking forward to having to attempt memorizing it again. The tutor then presented a fun mnemonic for memorizing the quadratic formula to the student and he was able to memorize it in 5 minutes! Here's the formula and the mnemonic:

"Negative b couldn't decide whether he should go to the radical party or be square. He missed out on 4 awesome chicks and the party was over at 2am!"

I love hearing stories like this! We’ve been focusing on “creating the moments when you’ll love learning the most” for our students and the wonderful thing is that our tutors soak in these moments as much as their students do. The excitement that our tutors exude is contagious – it shows students that they have someone by their side cheering them on. It only takes a moment for something to click…even (as in my case) if it’s something you have been unsuccessfully trying to grasp for a long time. Maybe it’s through a fun mnemonic, some catchy lines or an explanation that’s presented in a unique way. Whatever it is, the moment that light bulb goes on for a student can be the beginning of something really great!

-Christian Kang, Tutoring Director Northshore

Looping: Becoming a Believer!

I started at Nurturing Wisdom before we incorporated looping as a major strategy for our tutoring. Now, I can't imagine doing a session without it, no matter the subject matter!

Looping has transformed me into an even better tutor than I thought possible. Because I'm only giving students one problem at a time, I'm constantly assessing my students as they work. I have to decide if they're showing mastery of a concept and are ready to move on to a harder problem, or if I need to keep repeating that same skill. Now, I'm truly teaching to mastery.

I started using looping with my ACT math students as a way to review a large number of algebra and geometry skills. Thanks to the book Why Don't Students Like School, I'm learning that students need to be exposed to concepts repeatedly in order for those concepts to be stored in long-term memory. I've realized that, when I first started tutoring, I wasn't giving students frequent enough practice.

A breakthrough for me came when I started working with a student who seemed to forget concepts after only one week. I started using looping with her, reviewing the same math concepts each week. Even though she was seeing the same material session after session, she made incredible progress because I was constantly taking these concepts to higher and higher levels. She was able to take her ACT math score from the low teens to a 25 by the time she took her second ACT test!

Before I started using looping, my students' ACT math scores would increase by just a few points. Now I see even bigger jumps! The score increases aren't the most important thing, though. The best part is that I'm seeing students' confidence increase greatly. Looping helps me give my students many chances to be successful with math.

During my three years at Nurturing Wisdom, I've gone from being intrigued by looping, to loving it, to being a true, devoted believer in how powerful of a strategy it can be for tutoring! I'm never going back!

~Heather Roan, Staff Development Coordinator

Making Memorization Fun

"How did you memorize all those lines?"

Those of us who've done theater are well acquainted with that question. I graduated from a conservatory program where I studied Acting. Over the years, I've been in quite a few plays, all of which involved memorization - sometimes just a few lines, sometimes pages and pages of text.

I think we can all agree that memorization is not the most fun activity. But quite often, especially with vocabulary or basic math facts, it's necessary. Here are a few tried & true tricks for taking the pain out of memorization, and injecting some fun into the process!

1. Give it a little rhythm. It may sound strange, but getting your inner Jay-Z on as you memorize words or definitions can really help. Chant the words as you tap out a rhythm on the table. You can even create a little melody, and sing them.

Get Creative: Take it a little farther by substituting the words of the catchiest pop song you know. Then, when you're studying for your Latin grammar test, you can simply crank up the Katy Perry and belt out, "'Cause baby you're a genitive! You indicate possession!" That will be so stuck in your head, you'll never forget the genitive again.

2. Boogie. That's right, boogie! Okay, you don't have to dance. But memorizing any information as you do a physical activity will lodge the information so deeply into your brain -- into your whole body, in fact, that you'd be hard pressed to forget it.

Get Creative: Do a set of ten crunches. Every time you crunch, yell out "Jugar!" Every time you release, "To Play!" This helpful multi-tasking will simultaneously prepare you for your Spanish quiz, and your next sports game!

3. Say It Out Loud. This is an extremely helpful little trick. The more senses you can use to internalize information, the better. You're using your eyes, as you read the information off the page, you're using your ears, as you hear what the words sound like, and you're using muscle memory, because you're feeling what it's like to form the words with your mouth.

Get Creative:

If you're like me and have no shame, say the words out loud in a British accent. The strangeness of the sounds will also help the information stick.

4. Take a trip. Studying in different locations has been proven to help information stay longer. Walk all over the house as you memorize.

Get Creative: Make a game of it: set the timer on your cell phone for two minutes. Every time it beeps, move to a new location. Your family may think you're insane, but you'll do great on that next quiz!

5. Build a Memory Palace. This trick is not for the faint-of-heart. Joshua Foer, a journalist, recently wrote an article in the New York Times about his recent foray into memory competitions. In it, he describes the way he builds an imaginary mansion in his mind, populates it with off-the-wall images and characters, which he then associates with specific nuggets of information to memorize. When it's time to recall the information later, he simply takes a mental stroll through his own imaginary memory palace, and uses the crazy images he himself created to trigger his memory into pulling out the bits of information that he wants. An impressive feat.

Have any memory tricks you'd like to share? Let's hear 'em!

Tutor Snapshot: Julia Wollrab

Julia Wollrab is a tutor in Chicago, with extensive and varied teaching experience. She has a B.A. in Latin American Studies and a minor in Art History from the University of Chicago. Julia also had a career as a professional ballet dancer, working as a soloist with companies all over the world.

When asked to pick my favorite travel story, I find it impossible to isolate a single experience. Was it midnight dining on suspicious yet deliciously spicy goat at a roadside restaurant in Ethiopia? Getting lost in the labyrinthine streets of old Cairo, where one is exposed to a range of human activity that fiction usually only approximates? Coping with the "interesting" toilets in a theater in Hangzhou, China in my "Tarantella" tutu? Surviving the crowds in the Mexico City streets and subway trains without dislocating a shoulder? Scaling the Great Pyramid, or the Great Wall? Successfully navigating enormous potholes at high speeds in a 1986 Ford Escort on the Alaskan highway? Exploring the exoticism of Oak Park, Illinois? Which moment has most thrilled and inspired me? It's hard to say.

I've been extremely fortunate in that my former career as a dancer meshed perfectly with another of my passions: travel. Touring with various professional dance companies over the course of 20 years allowed me to indulge my craving for adventure - on stage and off. Many a paycheck went straight to my plane ticket fund, for trips that supplemented the extensive touring I was already doing.

What is clear to me is that this form of experiential learning - exposure to radically diverse spatial and cultural environments, to both tragic poverty and awesome beauty, and confrontation with the unexpected - has provided me with a sort of "feedback loop" of learning. Eventually it inspired me to engage in formal academic study at the University of Chicago. The more I am able to witness, to actually "be" somewhere and absorb information with my senses, the more I become intellectually curious about how things came to be that way. Conversely, the more I learn through research, the more I want to witness how that reality, or that history, is lived out day-to-day.

It's fun to share my love of travel and culture with my students - especially as we work on their history or social studies texts. And sometimes, the only way to really stave off my obsession with travel as learning and learning as travel is, simply, more travel.