The saying, “a mile of a roadway will take you a mile, but a mile of runway will take you anywhere,” accurately depicts how we gain literacy. The goal of educators is to promote critical thinkers and literate individuals who can critically assess information as they receive it. With the next generation of rigorous and complex learning standards on the horizon, it is important that students learn the necessary skills to be successful. Connolly and Giouroukakis (2016) argue that “students must learn to distinguish information of quality and substance when they go about assembling an understanding” (p.44). With current academic standards rooted in reading and writing, educators must look for new and innovative approaches to not only aid in the development of students’ skills, but also to foster scholars who learn to process information as it is introduced.
The FIRST-Letter Mnemonic Strategy can be seen as an integral evidence-based strategy when learning to organize large amounts of information, all of which will result in instilling organizational skills and strengthening comprehension competency. Mnemonic devices are memory tools that help us remember something. For this strategy, the first letter in each word represents a specific term that is essential to comprehending the topic of discussion (Nagel et al., 2003). The high school English regents, for example, stresses the importance of assessing/synthesizing information through critical literacy and claim/evidence based responses. Students often do not argue what is presented to them, or they have difficulty providing reasons to support their positions. Therefore, as educators, we share successful writing approaches rooted in higher level writing, all of which students remember through the FIRST-Letter Mnemonic Strategy.
With the heavy reading and writing emphasis on the English regents, students are expected to read several passages, answer multiple choice questions, and then construct two essays that require synthesizing passages, finding common themes, and composing a claim supported with sufficient evidence. In order to ease students’ schematic knowledge retrieval on the exam, we introduce “STOP” and “DARE” to foster proficient written responses on the exam.
STOP encourages students to…
- Suspend judgment
- Take a side
- Organize ideas, and
- Plan as one writes.
Through this mnemonic device, students look at what is presented, annotate frequently, and choose a side based on the readings.
After this foundational approach, students are taught to DARE:
- Develop a topic sentence
- Add supporting ideas
- Reject the other side, and
- End with a conclusion
All of these are essential components of a well-written and cohesive essay. Furthermore, rather than memorizing each component of the annotating and writing process, students remember STOP and DARE when it comes to reading and constructing a written response. These two mnemonic devices are instilled in students, and once they are given the exam, students know what to do to complete each task.
By Lucijan Jović
Mr. Jović M.S.ED, is an English and Special Education Educator who looks for new and innovative pedagogical approaches to meet the needs of the diverse learning community. Mr. Jović believes that to best support students’ development, we must first learn their strengthens, weaknesses, and interests. By doing so, we can foster critically literate individuals who think, speak, read, and write with proficiency. Mr. Jović teaches 7th and 8th grade English & Special Education during the week and also teaches 6th grade to students with limited English proficiency on the weekends.
References
Connolly, M., Giouroukakis, V. (2016). Achieving next generation literacy. ASCD books.
Nagel, D., Schumaker, J., Deschler, D. (2003). The FIRST-Letter Mnemonic Strategy.
Edge Enterpreises inc. https://www.edgeenterprisesinc.com/product/first-letter-mnemonic-strategy-instructors-manual/