Models of Teaching/Coaching: Memorization

Models of Teaching/Coaching

    Summer, 1997                                                             

Peter S. Pierro, Ed.D., Instructor   

Session - Week #2

This week’s featured model and founder Memorization, Jerry Lucas and Harry Lorayne

The Handout to the Class

Yes, that’s the Jerry Lucas you watched playing with that great Ohio State Big Ten championship basketball team with John Havlicek and Bob Knight, the winning team at the 1960 Olympics, and three professional teams, including the New York Knicks. He was author of The Memory Book, (1974) and Learning How to Learn, (2001) and over 70 books on Education and Memory, some as a co-author with Harry Lorayne.

Memorizing your “facts” is a pretty simple yet successful way for teachers and coaches to have their kids learn. However, do  they always know what the process is behind the fact that they are using without thought or hesitation? We ask someone what 9 x 7 is equal to and they say 63. Then we ask them how they know that. They will say I just memorized the multiplication facts. So you ask, have you ever taken seven stacks of dimes with nine dimes in each stack and put them together and counted them and found that you actually have 63 cents? At least try 3 x 4 to see that it actually is 12.

This model shows us some other ways that we learn our facts and remember what we have learned. 

The Link-Word Method

For your high school American History test you have memorized the four U. S. presidents who had been assassinated:  Lincoln, Garfield, McKinley, and Kennedy. 

You are not sure that you will remember “Garfield”, so you link a word, the name of your favorite comic strip, Garfield the cat to Garfield the president in your mind. When the question came up in the test you wrote three names quickly and then asked yourself, “What was the name of that cat?” “Garfield!”

Mnemonics

What are the names of the Great Lakes?

HOMES

Lakes Huron, Ontario, Michigan, Erie, and Superior

Drill

I told my 4th grade children to write each of the weekly Spelling words 20 times and heard 29 groans. I knew if they did that they would not write a column of the woe  “method”. They would write a column of “met” and then attach a column of “hod” ruining their visual image of “method”.

So I said, “I want you to write each word 5 times and write it in your very best handwriting - and that's what I got.

Instructor’s Notes on the Class Session

The class members were much more comfortable with the student-centered learning process. Some of them had gotten together and had a discussion on it. The class session interaction was markedly better.

There was a lot of  interest in the Link-Word method with examples of their usage. An older member laughingly commented on needing a second linking-word to remember the first one. A movie going person talked about knowing the links but not being able to recall the title of the movie. On one occasion she knew that Humphrey Bogart  and Ingrid Bergman were the leading actors and there was some talk about “playing it again” but she couldn't remember the title.  She will never forget “Casablanca" again but she has added Sam, the piano player, to her links.

They found mnemonics to be interesting in recall. One person gave a lengthy example of the names and locations of the planets and another furnished us with Roy G. Biv as the colors of the rainbow. A math teacher/coach suggests “My Dear Aunt Sally” for the order of calculations to her advanced students -  Multiply, Divide, Add, Subtract.

They came up with a lot of short-cuts such as K, BB, and HBP in baseball scoring.

The discussion on Drill brought up ways to have drills more interesting to players such as competing on free shooting practice. Reasonable repetitions were to replace dull drills. 

I shared that I had seen Jerry Lucas playing with Ohio State University against the University of Illinois in Champaign. He was awesome in all aspects of the game, offense and defense. Dunking the ball on passes was a sight to recall.

I memorized every player in every team in the NBA so I knew what they were going to run many times before the rest of their teammates did.

— Jerry Lucas