Mnemonics

Getting children to read more has become a real challenge with television and video games playing such a huge role in their young lives. And one fallout from reduced reading is reduced vocabulary. So what can parents and teachers do to help young people build their vocabulary in this age of video?

Tonight.. in Assignment: Education.. Bill Ratliff shows us one method that seems to work. And as Bill tells us.. two Florida brothers came up with the idea.

--((Teacher Terry Bigelow says:)) "Look at the cartoon and concentrate and try and figure out how the word relates to that. That's the thing that's going to stick in your mind."--

Orange Grove Middle School Language Arts teacher Terry Bigelow is starting his class off on a vocabulary lesson using an unusual tool. It's a book called "Vocabutoons.. Vocabulary Cartoons." Listing words often found in S-A-T tests, the lessons then use rhyming words.. cartoons.. and captions. Mr. Bigelow says he believed it would work the first time he saw it.

--((Mr. Bigelow says:)) "I brought it home. I looked through it and I said wow!. I looked back through the words and they were words I was familair with.. words that I knew, but also with the rhyming link words I was remembering the picture.

As an example.. for the word "harrowing".. the rhyming link is hare rowing. The cartoon shows a shark chasing a boat.. being frantically rowed by a hare. It's a visual that sticks. This teaching tool is the brainchild of two brothers.. Bryan and Sam Burchers. Bryan says teachers need to be inventive when it comes to teaching vocabulary retention.

--((Co-Author Bryan Burchers says:)) "You know they give them the words. They give them the definition and say, okay, memorize these words for a test. But the kids don't have the tools to help them remember it and that's what mnemonics do."--

And mnemonics is simply the art of improving or developing the memory.

--((Co-Author Sam Burchers says:)) "What we're doing is taking rhyming and linking it with a visual."--

Many of these students say the approach works and even helped them on the Florida Writes and F-CAT tests. The Burchers say their vocabulary cartoon books.. including an Elementary edition.. are being used in about 700 schools nationwide, and are carried by most major bookstore chains. Bill Ratliff, Newschannel Eight.

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