Memorizing Poetry
Although I prefer to focus on concepts in my teaching, there are times when I do want my children to memorize. With young children, this can be tedious...or it can be fun. Try these games and activities to put a little variety into your memorizing. Although this article focuses on poetry, these techniques can be adapted to help your child memorize many other bits of knowledge. Use your imagination to help children memorize something important, such as scriptures, famous quotes, or lists. Even the major facts of an event can be memorized for quick recall. Add movement and variety to the process to keep children from getting bored. Use as many of the senses as possible, and don't use the same method each time.
Suppose you want your child to learn the words to a poem. The first thing you have to do is to make him very familiar with the poem. Read it to him several times over a week, and discuss it so the meaning is clear. Have him play with the poem by learning to read it himself, drawing pictures to illustrate it or doing a puppet show of it while you recite the words. By the end of the week, he should be fairly familiar with the poem.
Now the work begins. You want him to be able to recite it himself. First, write the poem on flash cards, one word per card. Tape them to a wall or board in order. (You can also choose to write them on a chalkboard.) Play the Memory Game by having him read the poem with you. Then let him choose one word to remove from the board. Replace it with a blank card, or if you wrote it on a
board, place a line where the word was. Have him recite it again, remembering the missing word. Let him continue to do this as long as he seems interested.
Another use for these word cards is to replace some of the words with the wrong words. Let him remove the wrong word and replace it with the correct one. The purpose is to help him play with the material as much as possible, in order to make the words very familiar to him.
Another method is to teach the poem line by line. Teach him the first line, in short pieces if you need to. Have him repeat it after you until he can say it smoothly. Then teach him the second line until it is also easy to say. Then hook the two lines together and let him say both. After that, add a third and so on. With very young children, you can tease them a bit. "Oh sure, you can say it when you are just sitting there. I'll bet you can't say it with your hands on your head, though." (Have them hop, turn around and around, touch their knees and so on. For some reason, children also find it an interesting challenge to recite with their eyes closed.)
Putting the words in order is also a good way to help children memorize. Using the same cards you made for the first activity, place the cards in mixed order on the floor and let your child put them in order. At first, let him copy from the poem, but later, see if he can do it without help. An easier introduction is to put each line on a card and let him put the lines in order. Then continue to cut the lines into smaller groups. This is a good activity early on when children are becoming familiar with the poem.
You might even have your child try to teach it to you. Pretend to be a very bad student, inserting ridiculous choices for the correct ones or saying it very badly. The sillier you are, the more fun it will be.
It is always a pleasant experience to have a poem to glide through your mind at moments when you are alone and quiet. Teach your child to call on a poem when he wants something special to think about.