The story method is a way to link information together for easier recall. Here is an example:
“A man is washing his hands on the edge of a river. A bee stings him on the Adam’s apple which causes him to jump up and trip into a giant container of Jiff peanut butter.”
The above example is the first three presidents: Washington, Adams, and Jefferson.
(For a more refined version, check out the beginning of Joshua Foer’s TED talk, “Feats of Memory Anyone Can Do”,)
The story method has been used for a very long time by pretty much ANYONE who needs to remember a important information, including speeches and other text-based passages.
If you are reading this post, then you have likely, and hopefully, learned how to use the number and alphabet peg list in the Tool Box. If for memorization, then you can easily see how placing the images you have used in those lists can be linked together to remember credit card numbers, passwords, license plates, and anything else with number and/or letter combinations.
Just to a make sure, let’s use a couple examples.
Suppose you want to remember a birthday. The person’s name is Annie. Her birthday is 12/23/2000.
It is recommended that you begin imaging the person. In this case, let’s picture Annie from the famous musical.
1 = a candle, 2 = shoes, 3 = a tricycle, and 0 = a donut.
Start with your choice of Annie, and put the symbols for each number in a story starting with the candle, then shoes, then the shoes again, etc.
Suppose you want to remember your license plate. In this case, you would use a combination of the alphabet list and the number list. EMS365 would, for example, may be a story involving, in order, an elephant, a monkey, a snake, a tricycle, a dice, and a glove.
There are endless possibilities, and it’s a lot of fun.
Of course, this site is more concerned with teaching educators how to make information for memorable for a longer period of time.
The key here, as it is with any material you are teaching/learning, is to determine what you want students to memorize, and then decide the best tool for implementation.
As always, please comment on information you would like to memorize for yourself or for the students and Teach Memory will use this to create further blog posts! We need you to help
