Next Post: Creating Your Own Peg Lists

The classroom journey is is essentially a memory palace.

All the corners, starting from the student’s back left, is odd numbered. The sides are even numbered.

In other words, the student’s back left corner is 1, the left wall is 2, the front left corner is 3, the front wall is 4 and it continues to until you get to the back wall, which is 8. The ceiling is 9 and the floor is 0.

The beautiful thing about this system is that you can use it anywhere, and students can use it in any classroom.

The limitation of this is that you do not want to use it more than once (maybe twice) because the students may confuse what images they placed in specific points of the room. You can add to it, but assuming that the information is indeed important, you want to leave it there all year.

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Let’s use the Bill of Rights as an example.

In the 1 position, you could have the Statue of Liberty tied up with a gag in her mouth (freedom of speech). She is being pelted by nerf darts which are being shot by a young kid in the 2 position (right to bear arms). The boy is startled and turns around to see a soldier yelling “Hey, I’m trying to sleep” while standing on an army cot (quartering soldiers). And so on.

Remember, it is best for the students to come up with their own as much as possible, but they have to learn it somehow, so you be the judge on how to introduce this strategy.

It’s pretty simple, and pretty effective.

Of course, keep in mind that this is the introduction. You will put this technique into use when working through the lesson.

If you would like to start with just getting the students to associate the number peg list in the room, then by all means that can be a useful tool later on. Again, you make the choices on what works for you!