High School Survival Tips

Please use these

Homework Help

The Independent Learning Centre in cooperation with the Dufferin-Peel Catholic District School Board is offering free on-line tutoring in Mathematics Sunday through Thursday evenings from 5:30-9:30. If your child has not already registered for this free service, please visit https://homeworkhelp.ilc.org/ . You will need your child’s OEN number to register. This number can be found on your child’s timetable, or can be obtained from the Guidance Department

KHAN Academy

With over 10,000 video tutorials the Khan Academy can assist you with course work from mathematics to your social science class. http://www.khanacademy.org/

Math Homework Help Pilot Project

The project provides students in Grades 7 to 10 with free, real-time math tutoring by certified Ontario teachers, simply by visiting www.ontario.ca/homeworkhelp

Memory Techniques

http://web-us.com/memory/mnemonic_techniques.htm

Mnemonics

‘Mnemonic’ is another word for memory tool. Mnemonics are techniques for remembering information that is otherwise quite difficult to recall: A very simple example is the ‘30 days hath September’ rhyme for remembering the number of days in each calendar month.

The idea behind using mnemonics is to encode difficult-to-remember information in a way that is much easier to remember.

Our brains evolved to code and interpret complex stimuli such as images, colors, structures, sounds, smells, tastes, touch, positions, emotions and language. We use these to make sophisticated models of the world we live in. Our memories store all of these very effectively.

Unfortunately, a lot of the information we have to remember in modern life is presented differently – as words printed on a page. While writing is a rich and sophisticated medium for conveying complex arguments, our brains do not easily encode written information, making it difficult to remember.

Using Your Whole Mind to Remember

The key idea is that by coding information using vivid mental images, you can reliably code both information and the structure of information. And because the images are vivid, they are easy to recall when you need them.

The techniques explained later on in this section show you how to code information vividly, using stories, strong mental images, familiar journeys, and so on.

You can do the following things to make your mnemonics more memorable:

Use positive, pleasant images. Your brain often blocks out unpleasant ones.
Use vivid, colorful, sense-laden images – these are easier to remember than drab ones.
Use all your senses to code information or dress up an image. Remember that your mnemonic can contain sounds, smells, tastes, touch, movements and feelings as well as pictures.
Give your image three dimensions, movement and space to make it more vivid. You can use movement either to maintain the flow of association, or to help you to remember actions.
Exaggerate the size of important parts of the image.
Use humor! Funny or peculiar things are easier to remember than normal ones.
Similarly, rude rhymes are very difficult to forget!
Symbols (red traffic lights, pointing fingers, road signs, etc.) can code quite complex messages quickly and effectively.

Designing Mnemonics: Imagination, Association and Location

The three fundamental principles underlying the use of mnemonics are imagination, association and location. Working together, you can use these principles to generate powerful mnemonic systems.

Imagination: is what you use to create and strengthen the associations needed to create effective mnemonics. Your imagination is what you use to create mnemonics that are potent for you. The more strongly you imagine and visualize a situation, the more effectively it will stick in your mind for later recall. The imagery you use in your mnemonics can be as violent, vivid, or sensual as you like, as long as it helps you to remember.

Association: this is the method by which you link a thing to be remembered to a way of remembering it. You can create associations by:

Placing things on top of each other.
Crashing things together.
Merging images together.
Wrapping them around each other.
Rotating them around each other or having them dancing together.
Linking them using the same color, smell, shape, or feeling.

As an example, you might link the number 1 with a goldfish by visualizing a 1-shaped spear being used to spear it.

Location: gives you two things: a coherent context into which you can place information so that it hangs together, and a way of separating one mnemonic from another. By setting one mnemonic in a particular town, I can separate it from a similar mnemonic set in a city. For example, by setting one in Wimbledon and another similar mnemonic with images of Manhattan, we can separate them with no danger of confusion. You can build the flavors and atmosphere of these places into your mnemonics to strengthen the feeling of location.

For a detailed explanation of how to use imagination, association and location mnemonics, try these articles:

The Link Method and Story Method – Remembering a Simple List
The Number/Rhyme Mnemonic – Remembering Ordered Lists
The Number/Shape Mnemonic – Remembering Ordered Lists
The Alphabet Technique – Remembering Middle Length Lists
The Journey System – Remembering Long Lists
The Roman Room System – Remembering Grouped Information
The Major System – Remembering Very Long Numbers
Using Concept Maps to Remember Structured Information
How to... Remember People's Names
Memory Games – Have Fun While You Improve Your Memory