the subject of memory

and i don't expect you to actually answer me on this on this just want you to think about it but if i ask you

how how's your memory how do you remember things do you remember well or not a

lot of people

tell me

terrible memory i can't remember anything

you know the answer to that question is everybody in here

has a fantastic memory

even if you think you don't

it's just that some people don't know how to actually apply it to school related things

i talk to people all the time who say they can't remember anything

so they read their book but i have no idea i can't remember

and then i ask them what their favorite hobby is in a lot of people say

music

love music

and so i have them tell me their favorite artist

they tell me

and i say do you remember the lyrics to their songs

every one of them

they say and they're able to give me this long list of lyrics

that they have memorized and then when they're done i say

that's really good

you have a great memory

i said no it's terrible i said that you remember all that they say

that's different

okay so we gotta figure out how to get that knowledge of that memory that you have for

other things applied to school and that's what i'm gonna teach you so

today's workshop is called how to remember for tests

next week is memory tricks and the other one after that is more memory tricks so it's kind

of a three part series

if you're only here for this one

you'll get some things that i hope are helpful if you're here for all three of course which

i would love

then you'll get a whole bunch of teaching about memory and you'll find out that your

memory can work better than you think it can okay

so uh...to

start today what we're gonna do is i'm going to test your memory

'cause that's what this is all about uh... memory so what i'd like everybody to do is

to make sure that you have some paper in front of you which i think everybody does and to

have your pen or pencil kind of ready

but what i'm gonna ask you to do is to go ahead and do something i rarely ask and that

is to put your pen or pencil down

i actually don't want it in your hands at all for the next couple of minutes

i'm going to up do what at what i call the sixteen card activity

and i wanna make sure everybody can see these i think you'll be able to

but what i'm going to do in just a minute is i'm going to show you

a word on a card and i'll sort of uh... rotate it i'll say it outloud and then i'll go to the

next word and the next word

and i'm gonna end up showing you sixteen

words

by the time i'm done you're going to think it was like forty

but it's only sixteen and i want you to try to memorize them all which is easy for

me to say not so easy for you to do but here's the little trick to this as soon as i have shown

you the last word i'm gonna say the magic word which is ok

as soon as they say okay hurry

grab your pen or pencil

and write down as many of these words as you can remember before you forget 'em and you

don't have to write 'em in order just whatever's in there

hurry and write it down and then i'll explain what all of this is about okay so that's

the goal of this and again i want you just to stay quiet and concentrate and i'll

go through them pretty quickly

also

if somebody comes in

while we're doing this

this is a concentration exercise ignore them

and keep focusing ok cause it's easy to just watch them walk in and then you forget all the words

so hopefully we won't have anybody but if they do just try to ignore them the best you

can

what's the first word

pen yeah if you forget that one there's no hope for you right i'm showing you that like

twenty times the other words you're only gonna

see once so that's a lot tougher okay so here we go

pen love toast

toast

stay

basket pain

restaurant

ask

notebook

find

table

went

teacher

hungry know

dog

okay times up

now the reason that i know that time is up is because i look around and what do i see

yeah nobody's moving

that's how i know i look around

and all of you just a minute ago and you didn't know you do this you fulfilled one of my greatest

dreams as a teacher so isn't that nice

and that is as soon as i said okay

you moved

faster than i've ever seen anybody move and you started writing and you were doing it like

this really fast and looked around and knowledge was just flowing out of you that's like a teachers

greatest dream

but the problem is that lasts for no more than about thirty seconds and then people

are starting the

slow down the frown is coming out and after about one minute

i look around and almost everybody is basically done

whatever you can remember is there and whatever you lost

is gone forever

if you did this don't get embarrassed because i see this all the time i saw several of you

do this

i'm looking around thinking

are we done and i see some people doing this

and when you're counting the number of words

that basically means

your waving the white flag like i'm done and i'm hoping my list isn't too embarrassingly

small well if you

remembered a lot

that's great if you remembered only a little that's ok but what we're going to do to try

to um... sort of apply this to you in school is i'm gonna try and correct this with you and i want

you to look at your list of words no matter how short or long it was

and here's what we're going to do

i'm going to read a list of some of the words that i showed you on those cards

and every one of these words that i say

if you look and you see it on the list meaning you remembered it

i want you to put the number one next to it

if you didn't remember it if it's not there don't right now right too late you had your

chance before

so the first one is pen so if you remembered that put a one if not don't do anything next

one is love

toast

and again these are ones

stay

teacher

hungry

know

and dog

okay so those are the ones and i'll tell you what that means in a minute i'm going to go

back over another list of other words i showed you as part of the exercise

and any of these that you have on your paper

go ahead and put it a two next to it alright so the first one is basket

so if you remembered that two that's not nothing

pain

restaurant

ask

notebook

again these are twos

find

table

and went

okay now um...

see how good your memory is how many words were there all together

sixteen

ok well there were actually eight words in group one and eight in group two

so that means that's it

all right so what that means is if you look at your list now

and you have any word that does not have a one or a two right next to it what does that mean

it means

you made up a nice word

wasn't one of mine

and people say hi coulda sworn it was on there if you have any word without a number next

to it

good try cross it out and then i want you to do your math

for the day

and that is i want you to go down your list and count how many ones

did you remember

i want you to put that like something like this may be remembered five

or seven or four whatever

and i want you to count how many twos

did you remember

and put that down also that's going to be kind of the basis of my teaching for the next

twenty minutes or so

um...

okay so quick question just a show of hands

how many of you ended up with a higher score meaning you remembered more of the... ones

let me see show of hands

okay most people how about a tie

that happens pretty often okay and then did anybody remember more twos

sometimes i might get one

okay if you think about this

at almost everybody said

more

one's

that makes no sense

because

they were the same number of words in both so that means half of you should have remembered

more of these and half should have remembered more more of these

but it never works that way so that means there's something about these

that tends to make them stick better for most people what is that well here's the first

principle of the day and that is

whenever you are trying to learn something by reading it in the textbook or hearing it

from a teacher

something will happen in your brain

and that's this

the first uh... or group number one was made up of the first four words that i

showed you on the cards

the last four

so that was group one so what does that make group two then

the middle right that's the only thing that's left so the principal is

that when you're trying to learn something you will almost always remember alot from the

beginning and a lot from the and and not too much from the middle

this is the big problem for memory

those of you i think there were three of you who raise your hand saying you had a tie

i'm almost positive that if i had shown you twenty or twenty five or thirty words

so it was longer

you would've come

over to

this side because that's just the way the brain tends to work and so if all i did was

teach that to you and then we moved on to something else you'd think ok well

i learned something

but that's not what i want to do i want that fact that the way that the brain works

to change the way you read textbooks for the rest of your college career and that's what

i'm going to be teaching right now so uh...

most students tell me

that the one of the hardest things that they have to do as college students is to read

their textbooks

anybody can read em

but to actually remember when you read

is hard especially when it's a very difficult book

so everything that i'm gonna explain

for these next minutes is going to be about only one activity and that's textbook

reading

it does not apply to

uh... reviewing to

studying your flashcards to going over your notes that's different than this

this is the hard work of trying to concentrate on your reading okay

and what we're gonna to do to kind of uh... learn a little lesson here hopefully

is we're gonna look at two

students

uh...

who are both good students who try hard

and who want to do well

so they're kind of like a clone of the other one

but

student number one does some things when they read that make them forget almost everything

student number two does some things that help them remember almost everything so again we

want to figure out

what is that like what's the secret okay so almost every number that i put up here while

i teach this is going to be