My youngest daughter was listening to my husband and I discuss the upcoming election and said "You're voting for Tom!"

She explained, "Just use their last names Mommy!"

Trotter
Obermeyer
Master

T.O.M.

"Make a name out of it. That is how my teacher taught us to remember facts."

I need to give that teacher a hug.

I grew up in Kansas where my music teacher and biology teacher did the same thing. I'm sure other teachers used the same concepts, but I only remember those two teachers using it.

How many of you remember: "Every Good Boy Does Fine" or "All Cows Eat Grass". Do you still sing the alphabet?

In biology we learned a sequence of 32 random numbers and letters by creating a catching phrase. We learned the sequence in the early part of the semester; It was part of our final grade. Decades later only remember the last few characters of the phrase, it spelled the name of a classmate.

Teachers are the difference makers.

Rote memory is unfortunately the most commonly required memory task for students in primary and secondary school. This type of learning involves “memorizing,” and soon forgetting, facts that are often of little primary interest or emotional value to the student, such as a list of vocabulary words. Facts that are memorized by rehearsing over and over often don't have obvious or engaging patterns or connections. With nothing to give them context or relationship to each other or to the students' lives, these facts are stored in remoter areas of the brain. These isolated bits are more difficult to locate later because there are few nerve pathways leading to these remote storage systems.