Don’t Forget Acronyms
By Shelly W. Santaniello

Amnemonic device is a trick or strategy to help you remember something. As adults, we use them every day. We use a rhyme to help us remember how many days are in each month and we use associations or alliterations to help us remember people's names. We might also use an acronym as a mnemonic device. If you're trying to remember that you need milk, eggs, toothpaste and sugar, you might repeat the acronym METS on the way to the store.

An unusual name. When we teach new concepts to our students, acronyms can be a great memory device. Younger students need to be directly taught the specific acronyms related to the topic being studied. By middle school, students can begin to make up their own acronyms to help them study and memorize information.

A fun acronym for students is ROY G. BIV. For younger students, these letters refer to the lovely colors of the rainbow. For older students, they represent the colors in the spectrum of light: Red, Orange, Yellow, Green, Blue, Indigo and Violet. This acronym is easy because it spells someone's name. An unusual name, but a name nonetheless!

A math acronym that can be used with second and third grade students is BBB: Bottom Bigger, Borrow. In a subtraction problem, if the bottom number is bigger, you need to "borrow" from the next place value.

The third graders at my school are taught an energy unit each year. The children have been quite successful remembering the six forms of energy by using the acronym SCREAM. The letters represent: Sound, Chemical, Radiant (which includes Heat and Light), Electric, Atomic and Mechanical.

Fun for the whole class. It's also fun to create acronyms as a whole class activity. Students might compose an acronym to aid in memorizing the names of the continents and the oceans. Your students could devise an acronym that will help them to remember the steps in a long division algorithm. Perhaps your class could create an acronym to remember the parts of a flower, an insect or a tree.

Creating and practicing these acronyms will help your students to organize their new knowledge, rehearse it and eventually transfer it to long-term memory. After all, a teacher's goal is always to teach students things they'll remember from year to year. So, the next time you're planning a new unit, try to incorporate an acronym. Remember, TAMME (Teaching Acronyms Makes Memorizing Easy) is your friend!

Shelly W. Santaniello is an elementary school teacher who lives in Needham, MA, with her husband and three children.