I learned the Mnemonic Major System when I was in college taking mathematics classes and trying to learn lot’s of technical material. Now that I teach, I pass the system along to my students. How do students learn and remember things? it’s an age-old question that I have been refining for many years. Remembering things means to put them in your memory. But how is this done and how can we make it easier?
How I use the Major System
In my classroom I have been teaching The Major System and the Peg system for almost 20 years. I’ve used it in gifted classes when I taught for the college gifted programs during the summer and also in my special education classes where I have a variety of students at different ability levels.
Here are the numbers to letters conversions.
I believe the Major System system helps students remember what they learn and helps them achieve at higher levels. Having a trained memory, using good study techniques, and employing the techniques of good storytelling are the pillars of good teaching and help students achieve at the highest level.
To teach for comprehension and understanding, It’s very important for students to build their background knowledge as everything flows from that. This is why I spend time in the beginning of the school year to teach my students a system to help them build their background knowledge.
Daniel T. Willingham in his book Why Don’t Students Like School says,
Background knowledge allows chunking, which makes more room in working memory, which makes it easier to relate ideas, and therefore to comprehend.
Not only does background knowledge make you a better reader, but it also is necessary to be a good thinker.
Comprehension depends on background knowledge.
Einstein said:
Imagination is more important than knowledge.
But I believe Einstein had it wrong. Knowledge is more important because it’s a prerequisite for imagination. I used to believe the opposite, but there is a relationship between increased background knowledge and increased imagination.
The benefits of using the Major System
In this age of high-stakes testing it is important for students to remember content to be proficient. I have found that once the facts are learned using the Major System, they become like magnets- the students find more relevant information related to the new information learned.
Having more background knowledge is also one of the most important factors in being creative. With more background knowledge it is easier to make more connections between and among topics and ideas that are not related. The Major System increases background knowledge of the content vocabulary, number sense and comprehension.
According to Marilee Sprenger,
Explicitly teaching memory strategies improve student achievement.
I believe the Major System helps my students achieve more at a higher level and the major system also gives them confidence to remember math and science content.
Professor Arthur Benjamin Ph.D., Johns Hopkins University, teaches a memory class using this same system. Dr. Benjamin is Professor of Mathematics at Harvey Mudd College. He has a video preview of his memory class here.
To help students achieve, I teach the Major System in the beginning of the year. It only takes a few minutes in the beginning of each class. After we get the basics down in a few days, I show them how the Peg system works. Using the Peg system and the Major System while telling a funny story makes it easy to remember many numbers and other content. I also tell the students about Agent 42 and how she could beat me when dividing by 91.
I usually teach the basics about Albert Einstein such as when he was born and what his major contribution was. It’s interesting that he was born on March 14 which is considered pi day or 3.14. So this is my reason for picking pie to train our minds on using the major system.
Over the years, I taught my students the Major System and the peg system. It wasn’t until after I read books by Daniel T. Willingham and others that verified my classroom experience. And that is, having a trained memory helps increase background knowledge, which in turns helps students reading comprehension and achieve at a higher level.
I’ve always believed, and have witnessed in my classroom, that the more one knows the more connections one can make. And that is at the heart of higher-level thinking: making connections and synthesizing information. To do this one needs a large background knowledge on many topics. It really is the more you know the more connections you can make and the more you can learn. The research supports this. Students have come to school with a higher vocabulary achieve at higher levels than those that have smaller vocabularies.
When it comes to knowledge those who have more gain more. Willingham
Robert J. Marzano writes that
While different kinds of background knowledge can be important to students depending on their interest and non-academic areas of their life, it is academic background knowledge that most affects a future tied to academic achievement.
By the end of the first week my students know the basics and we’re ready to start training. We usually learn the birth dates of some of the scientists and mathematicians.
Our first scientist, Albert Einstein, was born in 1879. I’ll show shortly how to remember this year. As the students get better we need to train on some of the things to get better.
I picked pi, as that’s the birthday for Albert Einstein. Many people using the Major System try their memory on this irrational number. My students are amazed that they’re able to rattle off the numbers without much effort. It gives them great confidence in their math and science abilities to do something they never thought they could do.
I wrap the peg system and the major system into a funny story about how Agent 77 and Agent 99 are lost on a distant planet and the crazy adventures they go through to get home. This is how I teach and I’m willing to share.
How it works
The major system translates numbers into letters. The letters represent consonants in a word. We have to add the vowels to make words, and we make words into a story. Everything is translated by how it sounds, not how it is spelled. We then translate the story back into the original numbers. Once learned, this system is very powerful.
Next
Next post I’ll show using a video how I translate pi and dates using the Major System into a funny story, and, if you’re willing to put in a little time, how to remember pi to 100 digits. It’s really not that hard.
