Training your memory: how to quickly learn a poem

You can't help the child to learn a poem? And all because you may be pressing the wrong strings, and pressing so hard that it becomes difficult for the child to remember even a couplet. Meanwhile, everything is so easy and simple! Reading the tips...

Magnificent Eight

Sometimes a child is frightened not by the poem itself, but by its size. In this case, we divide the poem into parts, into quatrains, and memorize each one in order. There are two quatrains in the first hour. Then the next two. Exactly two, not more!

Thus, the child will learn poetry more easily, since eight lines is a volume that is not difficult for the average student to remember. When he sees that two quatrains are quickly memorized, the fear of learning the entire verse will pass.

Full immersion

Well, now let's use our imagination. Bring your text to life. Help your child imagine what is happening, tell about the village in which a little boy lived, about how hard it was for his father to feed his large family, about the severe frost. When you visualize the text, the child will accept it more easily and will be imbued with emotions. And what evokes emotions is much easier to remember.

Associations

Difficulties often arise with individual words used by the poet and which have lost their relevance. And, as a rule, it is difficult for a child to remember them. He stumbles when he comes to a word, for example, “short fur coat,” which the “little man with a fingernail” was wearing. It seems that everything is clear that this is a short fur coat, but it is difficult for the child to remember the word.

Come up with any association for this word. Ask your child what first comes to his mind when he hears the word “short fur coat.” The child will tell you. Try to express the associations in one word. And your little schoolchild will mentally refer to this word while reciting the poem. And over time, he himself will learn to come up with associations, because they help to remember the rarest words of poets in our time.

Drawing a poem

You can also Quatrain after quatrain. And it is not at all necessary to create masterpieces of fine art. Schematic drawings will suffice. It’s better if they are funny, of course, if the content of the work allows this. First we draw, and then we tell the poem based on the pictures. In general, play illustrator. This method is good because visual memory is connected to the memorization process.

A book under the pillow

The most magical way! In the evening before going to bed, you need to read a poem, hide the book under your pillow and go to bed. And in the morning it suddenly turns out that the poem from the book migrated into your head overnight! To be honest, I did the same thing when I was in school.

It turns out that there is a completely scientific explanation for this magical method. I won't go into details. I will only say that the human brain is designed in such a way that it remembers very well what was written, read or heard before going to bed.

Dictaphone

Nowadays every phone has a built-in voice recorder. Make an audio recording of a poem read by your child. The main thing is that it be read with expression. And then, have the student turn on the recording and listen to it three times. So, you will connect auditory memory to the process, and significantly increase the child’s chances of remembering those lines that cannot be learned in any way. In addition, this method makes it possible to hear yourself from the outside and, if necessary, work on your speech, pronunciation and intonation.

Theater

Oh, this is our favorite family method for memorizing poetry! Each line of the work is not only read, but also shown. Either by the child himself or by all family members (if there are many characters). I am sure that my daughter will never forget the phrase “Father, do you hear, he is chopping…”. Since our dad showed it very picturesquely) Everyone laughed. So a verse assigned to your home can provide you with interesting family leisure time.

Cut stitches

And this is a way to consolidate a learned verse in memory, to transfer it from short-term memory to long-term memory. What long-term memory is is described in detail here. You need to print the poem on a piece of paper or just write it. The main thing is that the font is large. And then take and cut the verse into separate lines. Mix and invite the child to lay out the lines in the right order.

I really hope that the above 10 ways will help you and your child make sure that memorizing poems by heart is a creative, interesting, and sometimes also very fun process! The same as preparing for a retelling.

Deal with unclear points

It is very difficult for us to remember what we do not understand. And poetic language, as a rule, is very different from colloquial speech: you will probably come across unfamiliar or outdated words, unusual grammatical phrases and constructions, unknown names and titles.

Understand all unclear words. Look up their meanings in the dictionary.

For example, let’s take Pushkin’s poem “I erected a monument to myself not made by hands...” and write out from it all the words with which difficulties may arise: Pillar of Alexandria, piit, tungus. We learn that the Pillar of Alexandria is a monument to Alexander I in St. Petersburg on Palace Square, piit is an outdated designation for the poet, and Tungus is the name of the Evenki. Now you can imagine what we are talking about.

But keep in mind that in some cases it is important to understand not just individual words, but the context: allusions, allegories. Therefore, it is useful to read an analysis of the poem or look up the creation story.

How to train your memory - 5 mega useful exercises for 5 minutes a day

Let's play memories

Every day, when talking to your children, ask them to recall the events of the day. Encourage them to describe people, actions, and objects in detail. Let the baby remember the weather, smells, clothes, number, gender and age of people, the sequence of events.

By devoting just a few minutes a day to such a conversation, you train your powers of observation, the ability to notice the peculiarities of people’s behavior and the qualities of objects. Analytical skills develop, the ability to speak coherently, and active vocabulary increases.

Count in your head

Mental arithmetic activates areas of the brain responsible for memory development. Encourage children to add, subtract, multiply and divide the cost of purchases, house numbers, passing cars, objects. Do it casually, in a playful way, at every opportunity.

Guess

An exercise for developing memory in the form of a game. You can do it verbally or reinforce the words with pictures. Variants of such games can be found in stores.

The principle is as follows:

The driver describes an object or animal.
The partner must guess what or who is meant.

The exercise trains memory, associative and figurative thinking, the ability to concentrate, and listen.

Do something with your hands

Appliqué, handicrafts, playing musical instruments, drawing or coloring - any type of activity that involves fine motor skills activates the prefrontal cortex of the brain. Memory, speech skills, and perseverance develop.

Use associations

Memorized information quickly flies out of your head. The association method helps to consolidate it almost forever.

The essence of the method is that we need to create a combination of new information and what is already familiar to us. Our brain is better at remembering images, what we can see and touch, and then imagine. It is for this reason that we remember people's faces better than their names.

First, come up with strong visual images for each line. At the same time, the association should be individual and arise in your head without effort.

For example, let's take an excerpt from Pasternak's poem:

February. Get some ink and cry!

Write about February sobbingly,

While the rumbling slush

In spring it burns black.

So, here are the associations for the first line: a man in a coat walks through dirty but deep snow.

He has spilled ink in his pocket, which he scoops up and holds in his palm. Ink simply poured into a pocket is quite a memorable image. The brighter, more unusual, and more interesting the association, the better.

In the same way, come up with associations for all subsequent lines. And then memorize and repeat. Any technique will be absolutely useless if you do not make an effort to remember.

How to learn a verse: 10 super fast techniques

Your child will definitely succeed!
A universal way to memorize poetry has not been invented. Each child has a preferred way of assimilation of information - visual, auditory and kinesthetic. An attentive mother will be able to choose the right one in practice.

Explain the meaning

Memorizing understandable text is easier and faster than memorizing unknown words. In the works of the classics there are many outdated concepts, changes in form for rhyme, and terms that are not used in everyday speech. Start learning by heart by explaining the meaning of the entire poem and each line separately.

Read the verse with the expression 2-3 times ;
Ask your child to explain how he understands it;
Find out which words are particularly difficult to remember or unclear;
Explain the meaning with an example. You can use pictures or videos for this.

Ask your child to retell the action in his own words. If he can come up with a coherent story mentioning all the characters and events with the correct interpretation, then the analysis can be considered complete.

Interesting on the topic:
Mnemonics for children, tips and exercises for schoolchildren

Teach in parts

A long poem often frightens children, making them feel helpless. Memorizing text in small blocks allows you to cope with a difficult task.

How to easily learn a big verse:

Learn no more than two quatrains at a time;
Take a break between “sets” of 40-60 minutes;
Repeat the blocks not in order, but randomly.

This approach allows you to avoid the most common mistake, when the beginning of a long poem is remembered well, but by the end students begin to get confused. After the individual parts of the verse have been memorized, you need to “put” them in your head in the correct order. To do this, read the work with the expression by heart several times before going to bed and in the morning, as soon as you wake up.

Engage Visual Imagery

Visualization is a method that helps preschoolers and primary schoolchildren learn rhymes.

How mom can help:

Find the base noun in each line.
Draw the images in a column. At first, you can do this for an adult. After the technique has been used several times, it is better to ask the child to draw. This is how motor memory is added to visual memory and imagination works.
Learn quatrains based on images.

You can use individual cards, showing them as a hint one by one or as needed.

Use associations

A method similar to the previous one. Here, not direct images, but associative connections are used as anchors for memorization. Suitable for schoolchildren from fourth to fifth grade with a developed imagination.

We read the poem line by line, coming up with a vivid visual image for an object or action. For example, Tyutchev’s work can be associated with Harry Potter:

A child learns a poem on the street

Enchantress Winter - winter holidays at Hogwarts.
Bewitched, the forest stands - a forbidden forest that has stood still.
And under the snow fringe there is an icy web.
Motionless, mute - silence under the cloak of invisibility.
It shines with a wonderful life - a sparkling patronus.

Associations will be individual. For training, use vivid memories, favorite movies, computer game characters.

Remember actively

Mom’s help is important, but how to learn a poem so that it “bounces off your teeth” even after a few months? This can only be achieved by reciting by heart.

Do not force the quatrain to be told in full until the child remembers the lines well. Correcting mistakes when reproducing a familiar text can be more difficult than learning a new one.
Do not rush to help if the child has forgotten the next word. Active memorization is activated at the moment when children try to remember what they have previously learned on their own.

Reciting poetry by heart develops long-term memory . This is why literary school lessons suddenly “pop up” many years after a person has graduated from school.

Write

This tip is good for students - write the text by hand. Learn long poems in blocks of two quatrains. It is important not to replace the pen with a keyboard. Write from memory, from dictation.

Writing by hand involves several memory mechanisms:

Sensual. The feeling of a pen in the hand, the sound of movement on paper, pressure, diligence when writing - all this gives children’s brains more “hooks” for memory to cling to.
Auditory. Spelling words slowly combines active action with listening to your own voice.
Visual. The image of the written text, the peculiarity of the letters, perhaps errors and corrections add associative memories associated with the poem being studied.

Ask the student to rewrite the quatrain several times. So he can memorize a verse in 5 minutes without additional cramming.

Add emotion and movement

Emotionally charged events are stored in memory faster. And if you add movement in addition to reading the verse, you will increase the speed of memorization even more.

A child can jump, squat and read a poem at the same time. You can even... do push-ups in the process! After doing some push-ups, ask your child to repeat the verse by heart in a calm state. The child will “remember” the poem quickly - because the brain, in contrast, perceives it as an easy task.
Depending on the meaning of the text, express sadness, joy, sympathy, thoughtfulness with gestures and facial expressions.
If you don’t know how to make someone learn a poem or fable from literature, try reading and playing the work role-playing . This will be a good incentive for long-term work.

Use a voice recorder

You can learn a verse assigned in literature “in between times” if you record your own voice on a voice recorder. Before this, it is important to analyze the text so that the student can read the entire poem with correctly placed intonations. Mom will need to check how well the text is remembered, since after repeated listening, children develop a false feeling that they know everything.

This method works well if you have a few days to memorize. You need to listen to the recording 2-3 times with breaks of several hours .

Snowball technique

A method based on sequential repeated repetition of text “line by line.” This is exactly how the first rhymes are taught to children in kindergarten.

Read the first line several times.
Ask your child to repeat it out loud until he remembers it completely.
Move on to the next one, then the third and beyond.
When repeating out loud, start from the first line each time.

This method can be supported by movement, pictures, and facial expressions. It may not be possible to learn a verse in 5 minutes, but the quality of the material learned will certainly please you. A bunch of quatrains arises automatically.

Note! Use the snowball technique to learn a short verse of 2-4 quatrains. Larger volumes require division into blocks.

Choose the right time

Research shows that memorizing poetry before bed increases the effectiveness of memorizing the text by 50%.
Children should not be forced to study when they are hungry, sleepy, or simply not in the mood.
Schoolchildren should rest for at least an hour after classes or lunch, and then begin to learn poetry.
It is better to remember the text if the verse is taught in several stages, giving the brain time to process the information.
The longer the poem, the more time it will take the child to remember the correct sequence of reproduction.

Use the snowball method

If associations don't help, try memorizing them. To do this, read the first line and repeat it out loud several times. When you remember it well, move on to the second: read it several times and connect it with the first. Repeat several times: first line, second. Then move on to the third. And so on until the end.

Memorizing a poem takes a long time, especially if you have a large amount of text to memorize. But before the speech, you will only need to read the first line: the rest will appear in your memory on their own.

TOP 5 best applications for memorizing poems and texts

How can you help me learn poetry if my mother doesn’t have time to study at the moment? Use special services that present the material in a playful way. Here are some of them.

ByHeart

You can upload any poem to the free online service byheart.op-team.ru. To completely memorize you need to go through 6 levels, each of which is more difficult than the previous one. The program shuffles the text, and the child must assemble the correct “puzzle”.

Learn poetry!

Application for memorizing poems and texts Learn poems!
Google Play app. The most popular poems are loaded into it, but you can enter any text yourself. Memorization is based on “shading in” individual letters and words as they are learned.

Poems for children from 3 to 5

A free application with a ready-made set of interesting thematic rhymes. Works offline. Audio broadcasts are accompanied by colorful pictures. It is possible to set a timer. The disadvantages of mom include the inability to download additional poems.

Learning poetry

application for memorizing poetry
A new Russian online application on the website media.prosv.ru, which requires registration. Each poem is accompanied by a professional audio track, divided into semantic fragments . There is a selection and explanation of difficult words. Several learning algorithms. An annual subscription costs 149 rubles.

Poems playfully

Google Play app. Memorizing poetry is based on moving words in the text. Students are asked to restore the disturbed order. The program is designed to train not only memory, but concentration.

Additional recommendations

To make memorization faster and easier, use these tips.

Create a positive environment. If you find it easier to concentrate in silence, study when no one is home. If you are used to background noise, turn on soft music. Exercise where you feel comfortable and where there are no distractions.
Ask someone else to help. Read him the poem you learned. You can use the echo method: a person tells you a line, you repeat it, and then try to reproduce the entire passage. Or he says the first line - you say the second, he says the third - you say the fourth. And then vice versa.
Make a cheat sheet. Write down key words from the poem that will help you quickly remember the content. If you teach using the association method, you can draw a schematic comic: associations for places that cannot always be reproduced correctly.
Take breaks and repeat the poem before bed. This will help you relax and sort out new information.

The most common mistakes

What can interfere?

I can't, but I have to. It happens that memory completely refuses to remember information or even perceive it. In this situation, memorization is practically impossible. It is better to postpone this activity for a while. Before this, you should just rest so that your “head clears” and memorization becomes possible. In this case, it is important to adequately and as fairly as possible, honestly assess the situation and not confuse “I can’t” with another common phenomenon – “I’m lazy”;
Mechanical memorization without comprehension. By simply trying to memorize without delving into the meaning of the work, you are making a mistake. Even if you succeed in doing this, the text will not be remembered for a long time, and the slightest hitch or obstacle will lead to the fact that it will hardly be possible to tell it to the end;
Memorization of individual stanzas. It is important to maintain consistency in memorizing the lines of a work of literature. In this way, it is not only remembered, but also the chronology of the plot is preserved, which is necessary for its further reproduction;
Not all at once. The ability to finish what you start, and only then take on the next task, will come in handy here too. That is, the task of how to quickly learn 2 verses will have to be divided into 2 parts - first quickly learn one verse, and then the second verse. Otherwise, there is a risk that during a recitation you will create a third one from two works;
First I’ll learn it, and then I’ll read it. This is the wrong algorithm - you need to do exactly the opposite. Reading it at least several times is the first thing to do;
Do not pry. Also wrong. If you forget a word or a line, you don’t need to try to remember it yourself at all costs, being afraid to look into the written text. Such pauses will result in a gap in the memorized text.

learn the verse quickly

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Hum

We always remember a song more easily and effortlessly than a poem. Why not turn it into a song? Choose any melody you like to match the text and sing.

By the way, even non-rap fans claim that recitative reading is the best way to promote memorization.

Many poems have already been set to music, and today finding any song on the Internet is not a problem. Look, maybe everything has already been done before you.

ways to quickly memorize a verse

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Parse every word

An obvious but very important tip. The child may not understand some words or structures in the verse. Make sure he understands all the epithets. Otherwise, no amount of cramming will help you avoid tears and mistakes. For example, in a poem by Konstantin Balmont, a child may well not understand the meaning of the word blade of grass.

Such examples, simple for an adult and complex for a child, are found in many works. For example, everyone knows Tyutchev’s first quatrain:

But no one remembers the last one:

Primary school students may well not know who Hebe is and how she relates to Zeus. Such moments are worth paying attention to.

What are the benefits of memorizing poetry?

Studying texts written in poetic form by heart trains your memory. In order for the brain to remember certain amounts of information in the future, it needs to be trained. Poems are ideal for this, especially from the school curriculum.

Memorizing poetry is also useful for adults, as it keeps the brain in good shape and works faster.

In addition to the obvious benefits, memorizing poems also brings other benefits that have a beneficial effect on the formation of the child’s personality.

Memorizing poetry is beneficial:

Studying poems from memory forms a large vocabulary.
Memorization is good for the speed and quality of thought.
The beauty and completeness of speech is formed.

The results will become obvious if you train your memory in this way regularly, and not occasionally. Now it becomes clear how Borodino can help in life.

If you repeat a poem in front of a mirror or recite excerpts in front of a small audience, then embarrassment will disappear and the child will be calm about public speaking.

Read aloud

You should start studying a poem by reading it. This must be done at a normal pace, loudly and with expression. Then it is advisable to copy it onto a piece of paper. When a person writes the text himself, it is remembered much easier. Try not to do this too quickly.

Write one line of poetry, then read it. Then another one and another. When all the lines have been rewritten, read them carefully one more time. Now, in order to start learning a verse, you need to use one of the types of memory, or you can do all of them in turn.