“Fact in My Pocket” is a novel, effective strategy that students can use when they are trying to commit some piece of academic content to memory. We can recommend this strategy to our students when they are trying to learn such things as math facts, spelling words, vocabulary words, and science terms.
To incorporate this strategy, students will need two index cards or strips of paper, along with two pockets. Assume, for example, that Jordy needs to learn her multiplication facts. She begins by identifying the two facts that she finds most difficult. She then writes the facts on the strips of paper, one fact per strip. As she heads to school in the morning, she puts one strip in her left pocket and the other in her right.
Throughout the day, she takes out the strips to practice the facts. If she does this before school, at recess, at lunch, and after school, she will most likely know these two facts well by the end of the day. The next day she can repeat the process with two other difficult facts. Were she to employ this strategy every day for a week, she would master ten facts. Students and parents appreciate the novelty and ease of this approach, and the results will be worth the effort.
New Teaching Tips appear every Sunday of the school year.
