Important Disclaimer:
I am not affiliated with NACD in any way other than that I have
used some of their programs and have attended their parent training
seminar. I am not a
trained evaluator. I cannot
give advice or design programs for any children other than my own.
The ideas presented on this web page are written from
my notes and memories of what I learned from my NACD evaluators.
These are not my own theories, nor am I an expert in them; so
although I have tried to be accurate, what I have written here is subject
to error. I will be as
accurate as possible, but I cannot be responsible for any way that you
implement this information in
your home.
Also, I have learned that many professional educators
and medical caregivers do not agree with some of NACD’s theories. I
respect their opinions, and I am not qualified or willing to debate them.
I am just passing along these techniques
in the hope that they might benefit other families as much as they
have benefited mine.
I will answer questions as best as I can (please email me), but most of what I know is already written here, and I get out of my league very quickly after that!
Testimonials from other home schoolers:
My 6yo daughter absolutely astounding things with spelling and Katherine B. in TX's memory tapes. Give the words but especially the spelling rules, make sure your child knows the rules and understands how to use them.
Trina in TX
This system has worked unbelievably well, and it was inexpensive. Since it is working so well... I am going to change and use CD’s on my computer..... I also waited until I thought I was in a good place to start and now I kick myself. Start now, it is easy and in our home the results are incredible.
Diana
Katherine, we started using the memory tapes several months ago. At the time, I was struggling to teach my 4-year-old the days of the week and months of the year. We would drill every morning. Within about 2 weeks of using the memory tapes, he knew them all. I could say, "Today is Monday. On Saturday we're going to a birthday party. How many days until the birthday party?" And he would be able to answer me correctly.
I also used them for AWANA verses. About 2 weeks after using them for that purpose, Alex got an award at Cubbies for knowing the most verses of anyone in the class!
These are working great for us. It also reduces the amount of time I have to spend one on one with him repeating the same info. Now I make a tape, give it to him and instruct him to listen to it a couple times a day. They're great!!
Kelly
I just started this last week with my 10-year-old daughter. I don't do the earphones, she just listens to the CD. She learned 9 very long Bible verses in just a few days. So far, it's working great!
Maria
We are using them with our AWANA! BIG difference, and you know what....I love that I remember better, just by making the tapes for the kids. I like that benefit! Thanks Katherine B!
Mary Ann in NE
I use them for my 6 yr daughter and 4 yr old son...And they are unbelievable. My dd was able to memorize a 4-minute "talk" for church that included scriptures and quotes. My son listens also and quotes the scriptures, spelling rules and more. I don't worry that the people at church think they are amazing, all I care about is how amazed I am when I see them reaching a new level in their potential.
Diana
[The following is an excerpt from a longer review. Read it here!]
Our
5-year-old son had done well in both years of Cubbies, finishing each book
at or before the end of the year, but it took a lot of work. … We found
the review enjoyable, but wanted a less laborious method of adding new
verses. …
I
was intrigued by the ideas from NACD and… by the phenomenal successes
attributed to "Memory Tapes". I decided to give the technique a
try. …
[After
a few weeks…] we started hearing words like "genius,"
"gifted," and "over-achiever" used about him. We had
to smile, because only weeks before many of the same people had seemed to
think he was "special" (as in "Special Ed"). A few
asked how he was learning his verses so quickly, assuming we must be
putting tremendous pressure on him. When we told them, they wouldn't
believe us. "Oh, that would never work!" Some people just need
to put a label on everyone….
He
… finished his book by Thanksgiving. It's supposed to take a whole year.
…
Since
we review all his verses every day, he'd never had a chance to forget
them. …
After
the last club meeting, the AWANA Commander said that our son said his
verses very well. We were surprised that he was saying them to the
Commander, and not to his usual leader, but the Commander told us that
when a child finishes his book that quickly, it is AWANA policy to have
him say a few verses to the Commander to make sure he really knows them.
He added that once our son started, he insisted on continuing until he had
recited every verse in the book!
There
is an additional workbook for "over-achievers", but it's
backordered. We're not worried. We're working on Spurgeon's Catechism.
We also use Memory Tapes for poetry memorization. We are working through the poems in The Harp and Laurel Wreath by Laura Berquist. He can recite 18 poems so far, ranging in length from one stanza to six. … And he occasionally quotes a few lines from poems we haven't worked on yet, including Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening. This from the kid who has a hard time remembering his alphabet from one day to the next!
Daniel
Updated: October 22, 2002
These two posts may be the most-requested posts I
have ever put out on any home school board. They discuss a memory
tape technique for children developed by NACD
– the National Academy for Child Development.
All of us as home schoolers have to deal with getting
our kids to memorize – whether it be Bible verses, math facts, poetry,
or a list of Egyptian pharaohs.
What is the best way do this?
Set the facts to music? Make
the children recite the facts 10 times a day?
Write the verse on the bathroom mirror or paste it to the wall in
front of the potty? And above all, how do I make sure make sure that the
kidlings will be speaking to me when we’re finished?
This page describes a technique for memorization –
using short, home-made cassette tapes or CDs – that really works
well! For my family, it has
worked beyond my wildest expectations!
I will try to detail specifically how to make and use these memory
tapes/CDs in a way that often gives superior results.
Introduction – What is NACD?
Before I began using Sonlight and The Well-Trained Mind
curricula in our home school, I used a special program from NACD that had
been custom-designed for my children.
To give you a little background, NACD specializes in
developing teaching techniques and physical therapy-type activities for
learning disabled and brain-injured children.
They also have found that their programs also work great with
“normal” and “gifted” children, so they also design individualized
home school programs.
Over many years, NACD has done a tremendous amount of
research with literally thousands of children on exactly how the
brain works and how children learn. Many of their
techniques/ideas/theories are cutting-edge and sometimes unusual; but
they’re proven effective. I
am very impressed with the results I’ve seen in my limited experience
with them, and I am totally convinced that NACD folks really know
their stuff.
(If you are interested in learning more about NACD, I
highly recommend that you visit their website at www.nacd.org,
and/or order their introductory tape series.
It is about $50 and well worth it.
Very informative and useful, especially if you have a child with
learning difficulties or brain injury.)
Our results with NACD techniques have been nothing short
of astounding. I was skeptical at first, but over the two years I used
their program exclusively with my kids, they proved themselves right time
and again to me. I even took a 3-day parent training seminar that NACD
offers to parents of “level 1” children (no disabilities or only
slight ones) that taught us the basics of how to design our children’s
own programs. So I know a little about the concepts behind their
theories -- not a huge amount, but I’ll share what I do know.
How does the brain store information?
Without getting into a lot of detail, one of the main
concepts that permeates many of NACD’s theories and methods concerns the
dominant and sub-dominant side of the brain.
Very briefly...
 | The brain most
easily and efficiently recalls facts that have been stored on its dominant
side. For a right-handed person, that would be left side of the
brain; for a left-handed person, that would be the right side of the
brain. |
| The best way to “input” facts into the dominant
side of a child’s brain is auditorily, through the dominant ear.
|
How do I determine which ear is dominant?
In short:
| A right-handed person should be dominant in the right ear (and also the right eye, and right foot). |
| A left-handed person should be dominant in the
left ear (and also the left eye, and the left foot).
|
For the purpose of this memorization technique,
assume that your child is auditorily dominant on the same side of the body
with which s/he writes. (In
reality, many people are mixed dominant.
This can be complicated and can cause learning difficulties.
But it doesn’t affect how you do the memory tapes. I’ll try to
address some of this issue later. Please bear with me and I’ll get back to it.)
Since the brain most efficiently recalls facts that have
been stored on its dominant side, that is where we want to put the facts.
IMPORTANT NOTE: Do not use the modified headphones with a child who is so young that you are not yet certain which hand is dominant! If you cannot yet determine handedness with certainty, use the tapes alone, without the headphones, inputting information into both ears! Mistakenly inputting information into the sub-dominant ear can switch dominance and contribute to learning difficulties. Wait on using the headphones until you are certain which hand is dominant. (Handedness is occasionally evident as young as three, but can take as long as age 7, especially in boys.)
Memory Tapes
Gather your supplies.
To make memory tapes for your children, you will need the
following:
| A tape recorder/player with microphone (built-in works fine). You can also use a CD burner and microphone to record CDs if your computer is set up for it. It is very nice to have a tape or CD player with multiple headphone jacks, so that more than one child can listen at one time. I bought mine from www.vernlib.com. |
| A good supply of short audio cassette tapes – two to five minutes in length (or blank CDs). You probably won’t find tapes of this length at your local electronics store, but there are several sites on the web where you can buy them cheaply. One I have had recommend (but not used myself) is The Tape Center. |
| A set of headphones, preferably one for each child. You can get the $5 cheapies at Wal-Mart if you want, but the cheap ones I bought for my kids never lasted very long. I found it worthwhile to invest in a heavier-duty set – the kind they use in schools and libraries – with padded, comfortable ear covers. They just last longer. (But don’t spend too much because you’re going to cut a wire in them.) |
Adapt the headphones for use in the dominant ear
only. More expensive
headphones have a separate volume control on each ear.
If you are fortunate enough to have these already, you can simply
turn off the sound to your child’s non-dominant ear.
Otherwise, cut the wire that leads to your child’s non-dominant
ear, so that the child only hears through the dominant side of the
headphones.
Adapting the headphones so that sound only goes into the
dominant ear assures that all the information on the tape inputs into the
dominant side of the child’s brain – because, to reiterate:
| the brain most
easily and efficiently recalls facts that have been stored on its dominant
side. |
Inputting dominantly also:
| helps to firmly establish the correct ear as dominant in young children; |
| helps reduce the possibility of the child developing mixed dominance in the ear; and |
| can help switch dominance back to the correct ear in
cases where mixed dominance has already occurred. |
Record the information onto your tape.
How you do this will vary with what it is you are trying to teach
– math facts, Bible verses, important phone numbers... whatever you want
your children to memorize.
Example: Math facts
| Go through a list of facts your child needs to know.
Eliminate the ones he already knows and can recite to you
instantly – there is no sense in drilling facts that he already
knows well. If he
hesitates over a fact, write it down for him to learn.
Stop when you have written down five facts your child does not
know well. |
| Start recording onto the tape.
Say the five facts over and over, in a random order, for two
minutes. Vary the order
as you go. Keep the
intensity level up – in other words, keep your voice as cheerful and
auditorily interesting as you can (don’t drone in a monotone). |
| Example: “5
x 2 = 10. 3 x 5 = 15. 5 x
11 = 55. 4 x 5 = 20.
7 x 5 = 30. 3 x 5
= 15. 4 x 5 = 20.
5 x 2 = 10.…” and so on. Stop
after two minutes. |
To use the tapes:
| Set up the player, the headphones, and the child in a
comfortable place. I find it best to have a semi-permanent location
for this activity, as children love routine and predictability.
|
| Have the child put on the headphones, making sure
that the sound is going into his dominant ear.
Again – if the child is right-handed, use the right ear, and
vice versa. |
| Have your child listen quietly to the tape for the
entire duration of approximately 2 minutes.
Afterwards, he is finished.
Do not test him on the material.
Go on to something else and forget it for now.
|
| Repeat this process at least twice a day for a week.* |
| At the end of the week, briefly test your child over
the information on the tape. Don’t
make a big deal out of it. Just
check off the things he has learned, and add the things he has not
learned to the list to put on next week’s tape.
Add enough new information to next week’s tape to make
another two minutes worth of information. |
| Make a new tape for next week.
Continue as long as you like. |
*The
frequency with which you will use the tapes will depend on your individual
child, so you’ll have to experiment to see what works best.
Some children will need to listen with a greater frequency.
For example, children with learning difficulties may need to listen
to the tape from three to ten times per day, depending on the severity of
the learning difficulty. They
may also need tapes of a shorter duration – say, 1-2 minutes.
Start by making your tapes two minutes long, then “input” them
into your child’s dominant ear twice a day.
Adjust this frequency and duration if it doesn’t seem to be
working well.
Can I (or should I) set the facts to music?
NACD does not recommend setting facts to vocal music.
But whyever not?! Learning
facts to music is a tremendously popular memory method these days, and you
can buy wonderful recordings that sing everything from math facts to Bible
verses to state capitals.
And this method is popular because it does work.
You can memorize facts, Bible verses, poetry, the ABCs,
whatever – that have been set to music. It does get into the
brain, and it does stick. But…
| Facts, as we have noted, are stored dominantly
in the brain. |
| However, vocal music is stored sub-dominantly.
That is, in a right-handed person, vocal music is stored in the
right half of the brain, and in a left-handed person, it is stored in
the left half of the brain. |
So by using vocal music, you effectively force the brain
to store the facts on the sub-dominant side.
They will go there, certainly, and they can be remembered.
But this is not the most efficient way to store and retrieve the
information, because the brain can only retrieve the information by
recalling the music at the same time.
To illustrate my point (actually, NACD’s point), try
to alphabetize a string of words in your mind without having to repeat the
“A-B-C-D...” song in your mind (most of us learned our alphabet in
that way). Or try to repeat a Bible verse, or the books of the Bible, or
any other fact that you learned to music without also repeating the
song itself in your mind. If you learned it to music, it can’t be done
(or at least it is very difficult). The facts are forever connected to the
song in your brain.
So NACD doesn’t say that setting facts to music
doesn’t work – it does. But since using a spoken voice and the
dominant ear causes the facts to be stored and retrieved most efficiently
– on the dominant side – that is the way they recommend doing the
tapes.
Does this memory tape technique really work?
Yes, it works! It works really fast and the facts really do stick!
A short story…
A friend of mine was at her wit’s end with her 6yo
daughter Maddie and her AWANA verses. Maddie was not able to keep up with
the class, and was so discouraged about falling behind that she no longer
wanted to go to AWANA at all – formerly her favorite activity. She felt
“dumb” because she did not know how to memorize well, and was ashamed
to show up without knowing her verses.
When I mentioned how well the tapes worked with my two
children, my friend drilled me for the “how-to” details, then went
right out and bought some tapes and headphones, and set it all up. She
then recorded Maddie’s verses for that week, and started Maddie on them
only 3 days before her AWANA meeting – 4-5 minutes, 2x/day.
About 30 minutes after AWANA ended that week, I got an
excited phone call from Maddie herself. She was absolutely beside herself
– whereas before, she had been struggling to learn 2-3 verses in a week,
this time – in only 3 days – she had memorized and quoted 10 verses!
Within 3 weeks, she was completely caught up with the rest of her class,
and her self-esteem was soaring. I’ve never heard a 6-year-old sound so
grateful!
To recap:
| Facts are stored dominantly. For very best
results, input facts in a spoken voice only through the dominant ear.
(You determine dominance by the child’s “handedness”.) |
| Vocal music is stored sub-dominantly. Facts
stored to vocal music are also stored sub-dominantly.
And although the brain can recall them, the process is not as
efficient and facts tend to stay permanently connected to the music.
|
| Totally beside the point, but interesting… classical
music is stored globally – on both sides of the brain.
I have no idea how this would affect the memory tapes
technique; it’s just a tidbit I remembered and throw out now just
for fun. |
| For the record – many people do express mixed
dominance in their eyes, ears, or feet (hands are almost never
wrong unless the person has lost the use of his dominant hand). But
mixed dominant issues – although significant to learning in other
ways – do not affect how the memory tapes should be used. Facts are still best stored in the dominant side of the
brain. |
| Tell me more about mixed dominance issues. |
