Captured Thought: Memorization

Since Mr. Allen explained his method for memorization, I have been searching for a place to use it. I thought about using it for the social studies quiz, but that didn't seem to work because that was just memorizing facts instead of remembering people or big concepts. I tried to apply it to spanish; however, it didn't work in my brain with the translating. Also, vocabulary and grammar doesn't seem to apply to the whole "landscape visual" theme. I pretty much figured that math and science wouldn't work because its numbers and you don't need to memorize anything, all you have to do is apply values to an equation. I couldn't find any use, yet, for this new trick for memorization.

I wanted to start off with something simple to put into my landscape, so that I wouldn't have to get too out of the box for my first attempt. The perfect opportunity came to me when my little brother asked me if I could help him study for his social studies test. He needed to learn different regions of the U.S. and what the environment was so that he could apply it to how the Native Americans utilized the resources.

He was having difficulties remembering which region had certain climates and what the natural resources were for each region. This information seemed pretty obvious to me because I know that in the Southwest it is dry and irrigation is needed to farm, and I know that in the Plains region there are rolling praries (good for farming) and there are many buffalo. He couldn't grasp his mind around the fact that the climate then is very similar to what it is now. I can't blame him, he's only in elementary school.

I figured that this would be a great opportunity to share Mr. Allen's landscape technique. I didn't mention to my brother that I had just learned about this in english class; I thought it would ruin the spontinaity of the entire moment. I told him that we were going to relate all the regions to the places around our house, which represented the great plains region because of out wide open backyard.

One of the most creative places we came up with was the far north region. Our neighbors to the North are sometimes rude, so I told him to remember that it's cold in the North, just like their personalities; therefore, they couldn't farm. Those same neighbors are Greek, and in Greece they depend on fishing in the sea for nutrition. So the indiginous tribes of the Far North also depended on the ocean for food. Lastly, they were able to hunt small animals in the North; so those small animals represented our neighbors' little yippy dog.

It seemed that the funnier and stranger I got with my connections, the more he remembered them. When he got home after school, my brother said that they got to choose two regions to talk about. He told me he picked the ones that I personally thought were rediculous due to their lack of clarity. This proves the point that the more creative I was with coming up with connections, the more he remembered.

In class, my first idea of this memorization method was that it would be hard to incorporate into my studies, it would take a long time, and it would be boring. I realized, after this experience with my brother, that the landscape idea was quick and fun because the faster you came up with something, the stranger it was, so we remembered the idea from its new unique quality.