Why teach poetry to develop memory for children and adults

Memory is one of the most important mental processes. She is directly involved in human life. With age, memory begins to deteriorate, creating some discomfort. Many people suffering from memory problems wonder: is it possible to somehow train it?

There are many techniques developed by psychologists specifically for training memory and thinking. One of the simplest and yet most effective methods is memorizing poetry.

Mnemonics for memorization

Do you know what these verses are for remembering:

"You just have to try
And remember everything as it is:
Three, fourteen, fifteen,
Ninety-two and six"?

That's right - this is the number Pi - 3.1415926...

This verse allows one to apply the mnemonic principle of memorization, thanks to which a person can store and at the right time retrieve complex sequences, lists, and information clusters from memory.

For example, another option for remembering complex rules.

Conjugation of verbs that do not conjugate with “e”, all exceptions are summarized in one rhyming stanza:

“Chase, hold, look and see,
Breathe, hear, hate
And offend and endure,
And depend and twist.”

Although regular training by memorizing any poems allows you to accustom your brain to processing information and activate your memory potential. But to make the process more efficient, you need to know about some tricks.

Causes of memory impairment

Memory processes can deteriorate for many reasons.

Firstly, there is a direct impact on the brain of various factors. For example, traumatic brain injury, stroke, tumor processes. These may be infectious diseases of the brain and its membranes (meningitis, encephalitis), exposure to medications. This also includes smoking, alcohol and drug addiction.

Secondly, metabolic disorders and diseases of the cardiovascular system lead to memory deterioration. In this case, the blood supply to the brain and its metabolic processes are disrupted. This, of course, affects its functioning.

Thirdly, memory function is influenced by external factors. This is a lack of vitamins, stressful situations, lack of sleep. Information overload also impairs memory. Poor nutrition depletes the body of essential nutrients. Because of this, the brain does not receive enough nutrition and reacts with memory loss.

Fourthly, these are age-related changes. These are mainly sclerotic changes in the blood vessels of the brain. With age, blood vessels become less elastic and their lumen narrows. Due to this, blood supply and delivery of nutrients to the brain deteriorates.

To develop memory, you need to maintain good brain function. To do this, it is good to follow three simple rules :

1. Ensure sufficient oxygen levels in the blood to keep the brain active and functioning. To do this you need to spend enough time outdoors.

2. Play sports and lead a healthy lifestyle.

3. Enough sleep. This ensures normal brain function.

Is there any point in memorizing poetry?

A person of any age can recite at least a couple of lines of poetry by heart. But not everyone was happy to teach them. For some it was torture. But can beauty, and in this case, poetry, be torture?

A person can get the answer to this question many years later. Having realized that thanks to the works of poets fixed in his memory, he has wealth that he can use undividedly and at any time. And most importantly, no one will ever claim the right to inherit this property!

Before a person comes to such conclusions, he is forced to first memorize short poems under the guidance of adults:

Then more voluminous and serious poems:

Learn not to invite bad things, Foreshadowing troubles in advance... You have other conversations... Learn to blossom with your soul...

Further

Get used to noticing goodness and appreciating what life gives... And you won’t have to run for happiness... Happiness will run for you!

Learn not to expect a trick from people you don’t know and close to you... After all, everyone, high and low, has a desire to know happiness...

Get used to not being angry at evil, but take the risk of helping, sorting it out... If someone suddenly starts biting, it means that he was unlucky in some way...

Learn to ask for forgiveness and forgive... Fate will smile on you. And spring will return to your soul! Get used to being happy

Everything is explained by good intentions to develop his memory and brain. When memorizing, lines are first stored in short-term (so to speak, operative) memory, and then, when repeated, they move into long-term memory.

Smart people say that memorized poetic lines help a person bring his brain closer to the way of thinking of geniuses. There is no doubt that poetry enriches speech, helps in the acquisition of foreign languages, and gives a special charm to the world around us.

Memorizing poems is one of the most effective methods of improving memory not only in children, but also in adults, since the rhymed stanza combines several factors at once, allowing the brain to build new neural connections, demonstrating neuroplasticity:

rhymes naturally “connect” the lines,
emotional content allows the brain to switch on more easily and record information more diligently,
imagery creates associative echoes between semantic elements.

In the past, graduates of the Institute of Noble Maidens were required to know by heart more than fifty poems. But for memory development, the number of poems learned is not the main goal. As we see, there is one important purpose of poems: they develop and strengthen the memory of both adults and children.

Children's poetry for memory development

Memorizing poetry with a child also follows several general recommendations, according to which you should choose poetic works:

The main requirement is that all words must be understandable to the child and correspond to his level of development. If some of them are unknown to the baby, their meaning should be explained - this will broaden his horizons;
The poem must be age appropriate. If a work for a 3-4 year old child is filled mainly with nouns and verbs, then at 4-5 years old the poem already contains abstract quantities and phenomena, and motivation is always added - for a matinee, a story to grandparents. From the age of 6, the content becomes even more complex, and text analysis is added to memorization.

Poems for developing memory in children are works by such famous authors as Korney Chukovsky, Agnia Barto, Samuil Marshak, Sergei Mikhalkov, Eduard Uspensky, Boris Zakhoder.

As a rule, children's publications are divided into different ages, making it easier to select suitable texts.

Examples of poems that develop memory for children

Poems for children under 4 years old
About chicks
It's raining, it's pouring everywhere. The chicks are happy in the nest. Mom will stay at home. It won't fly anywhere.
About the sheep
Oh, and a fashionable sheep, All in curls, All in rings. Even the horns in front were curled in curlers!
About the cloud
Hello, little cloud! Isn't it boring up there alone? Do you want us to play together? Do you want to read fairy tales? Do you want us to kick the ball? Just be kind, don't cry!
Poems for children from 4 to 6 years old
Swallow's wings flutter
The swallow's wings flash in the silver sun; The meadows are filled with flowers, The forests are noisy all around. How happy the swallows are to the sun, How high they soar! The whole blue height rings with their cry of joy.
The fields are spread out all around, and there is no end in sight. The rye has risen, is excited, - Space and grace!
Poem about July
The cuckoo's last cry is like an autumn call. The summer chamomile wreath will soon fade. But in the heart, like in a daisy, We will take home the July daisies - Let them shine for us in winter.
A path runs through the meadow
A path runs through the meadow, dives to the left, to the right. Everywhere you look, there are flowers all around, and knee-deep grass. The green meadow is like a wonderful garden, fragrant and fresh at dawn. Beautiful, rainbow flowers. Bouquets are scattered on them.
Poems for children from 6 years old
For Mom
The golden sun rolled down like a wheel, the gentle sun turned into a mother, Dear little mother, Mom, smile! With your tender heart, cling to me!
Mom is like a sorceress, If she smiles, My every wish comes true!
Mom kisses - Bad things are forgotten. A new day, a fun day begins right away!
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About fairy tales
All fairy tales in the world are different, You can always dream about a fairy tale. But in childhood, I tell you, there are fairy tales in reality, friends! Isn't life really a fairy tale? What about reality? Nature's beauty Can't be called a fairy tale? And a fairy tale is kindness!
She will wean us all from being angry, She will teach all people to be friends... Those who avoid fairy tales in life will find it boring to live in the world!
New Year's verse
They say: on New Year's Eve, whatever you want, Everything will always happen, Everything will always come true. Even the boys can have all their wishes come true, they just need to make an effort.
Don’t be lazy, don’t yawn, And have patience, And don’t consider learning as your torment.
They say: on New Year's Eve, whatever you want, Everything will always happen, Everything will always come true.
How can we not make a modest wish - to complete school assignments with “excellence”.
So that the students begin to study like this, So that the two cannot get into their diaries!

Memory efficiency

The effectiveness of memorizing poetry depends on the individual characteristics of information perception. Visual learners who predominantly perceive information through visual channels will more easily perceive and remember lines from printed text in a book.

An audio medium, such as a telephone, or reciting a poem out loud will help auditory learners master the text faster: it is easier for them to remember what they hear than what they see. Pantomime and gestures are aids in memorizing material for people with developed motor memory.

Modern technologies with applications for memorizing verses on a smartphone can be of great help. Here's an example where you can find this:

"Fox" techniques for memory development

To improve and develop it, so-called mnemonics are used. They store information in the brain's storage areas that can be used at the right time. The mnemonic memorization technique is one of the most exciting and effective methods of memory development than training the brain with ordinary poetry.

This technique is often used by linguists when they need to remember complex rules. To do this, a boring scientific text, a list of actions or a list of goods is turned into a poetic stanza. This cunning, or fox-like, technique makes it easier to learn and remember a difficult rule. For example, about the peculiarities of conjugation of the following verbs:

Drive, hold, look and see, Breathe, hear, hate, And depend, and twist, and offend, and endure. You remember, friends, they cannot be conjugated with -e-.

Deal with unclear points

It is very difficult for us to remember what we do not understand. And poetic language, as a rule, is very different from colloquial speech: you will probably come across unfamiliar or outdated words, unusual grammatical phrases and constructions, unknown names and titles.

For example, let’s take Pushkin’s poem “I erected a monument to myself not made by hands...” and write out from it all the words with which difficulties may arise: Pillar of Alexandria, piit, tungus. We learn that the Pillar of Alexandria is a monument to Alexander I in St. Petersburg on Palace Square, piit is an outdated designation for the poet, and Tungus is the name of the Evenki. Now you can imagine what we are talking about.

But keep in mind that in some cases it is important to understand not just individual words, but the context: allusions, allegories. Therefore, it is useful to read an analysis of the poem or look up the history of its creation

How to memorize poetry

There is a difference in how an adult, a schoolchild and a preschool child remember them.

For an adult

The primary perception of a poem is facilitated by repeated reading it out loud. Sound perception together with visual perception will increase the speed of memorization. It would not be superfluous to mentally reproduce the images and events of the poem, highlight the characters and become aware of the feelings conveyed by the author.

A written poem will help with its visual comprehension. Memorizing a poem can be compared to building a snowman, where a stanza is a knurled “lump” of lines strung together. A cheat sheet from the first letters of a line or looking up a forgotten word will also help in memorizing the work.

The same memorization rules can be used by schoolchildren, adding to them drawings based on the content of the verse. However, adults can also test their artistic skills.

Watch the video and evaluate the proposed method of memorizing poems. It’s called the “curtain method” (at 2 minutes 40 seconds):

To kid

The above in the video can also be suitable for a child. But you can also add a good service for remembering:

The picture above shows how easy it is to use.

The earlier a child begins to read books, the faster in the near future he will learn them with interest. Of course, lying in a stroller, he will only perceive the voice of the reader. At the same time, his voice and intonations remain in the child’s memory. Upon reaching approximately three years of age, adults should introduce him to short poems and reveal the lexical meaning of new words. Getting used to poetic speech is facilitated by repeating what you have learned at any convenient moment. No less exciting for kids is the task of reproducing the content remembered in the drawing. You can also motivate your child with the opportunity to read a learned poem to family or friends.

Techniques

Have you ever heard or perhaps seen in films how an intelligence officer, having glanced at a document or a secret scheme, remembered it instantly? Do you think this is a myth? But no. Everyone has such an amazing ability. This has long been established by science, and is used to train intelligence officers.

For example, this: a person can simultaneously perceive (remember) 7 blocks of 7-8 words. In addition, poems are taught by stanzas, not by sentences or rhymes.

When memorizing, it is important to use the articular apparatus and recite the entire stanza out loud - this will affect auditory memory. It is important to pause for 4 seconds between stanzas - this allows you to comprehend what you read, associate, develop an attitude towards what was written, and engage emotions

Not all poems are divided into stanzas, or not everything that we need to remember falls under poetic rhythm and is divided into blocks. In addition, if you need to remember a digital series, it is difficult to use the entire set of triggers (an event or factor that causes a certain reaction).

In this case, try another method: number each word in the poem, read it several times, saying the number out loud. Ask someone to name individual words from a verse, and you, without peeking, name its number.

Try this guide to practice

Pay attention to your attitude towards what is written. Read 2-3 times and retell as you remember, focusing on your perception

If you do this for a week, you will notice improvements every day. However, this is still not enough.

To develop mnemonic abilities, you need to use not only poetry, but also games, pictures, and logical deduction tasks.

So is it worth spending time memorizing poems?

What if you don’t need them in life?

Costs. The intellect developed with the help of poetry will help a person accumulate useful information that will help in achieving his goals.

A rich vocabulary and good diction will provide an invaluable service in establishing relationships with people, as well as in personal growth.

B. Pasternak's poem is about this. (Can you learn it?)

That's how they start. About two years old melodies burst forth from the mother into the darkness, chirping and whistling, and the words appear about the third year. This is how they begin to understand. And in the noise of the running turbine, it seems that the mother is not the mother, that you are not you, that home is a foreign land. What should a terrible beauty do, sitting on a lilac bench, when she really shouldn’t steal children? This is how suspicions arise. This is how fears grow. How will he let the Star exceed his reach, When he is Faust, when he is a fantasist? This is how the gypsies begin. So the seas open, floating above the fence, where homes would be, suddenly, like a sigh. This is how the iambs will begin. So the summer nights, falling face down in the oats with a prayer: be fulfilled, Threaten the dawn with your pupil, So they start quarrels with the sun. This is how they begin to live in verse.

The problem of culture

Returning to the unfortunate child who is being tortured by Pleshcheev, a second serious problem is noticeable: the lack of poetic culture (and indeed culture in general). It’s already clear about general culture: the mother doesn’t even react when the child swears in the video for the first time. Let's talk about poetic culture.

The child in the video does not feel the poetic rhythm, gets lost from it, and constantly breaks the line, making it prosaic. This rarely happens to children who have been sung a lot of songs and read poetry from early childhood (by the way, I note that Chukovsky is especially good in this sense, who is usually spanked for terrible, terrible stories; he is good for his extraordinary poetic energy and amazing variety of verse: he unobtrusively introduces a child into the world of Russian poetry, introducing him not only to trochees typical of children’s poetry, but also to dactyls, and amphibrachs, and peons...

The child grows up already saturated with these rhythms; the poems are easily perceived and easily learned. And when this is not the case, trying to learn a poem turns out to be akin to trying to master Tuvan throat singing in one evening. Here's a recording and half an hour of time for homework - try to learn and sing:

Of course, there is verse deafness. Children, when learning long poems, often forget individual words. But some substitute synonyms while maintaining the size - “my uncle had the most honest rules when he was terribly ill,” while others throw out the forgotten word, rearrange the words - and, it seems, do not at all hear what they came up with. “Well, it was day, through the flying smoke the French came like clouds”

In these cases, it is imperative to pay attention to the rhythm, beat it, tap it, chant it - learn to hear poetry

Deafness can also be less pronounced - for example, when reading Pushkin aloud, children, out of habit, read “red-hot” and “hopelessly” as “red-hot” and “hopelessly,” which is why the poems immediately begin to limp. They, of course, know nothing about Church Slavonicisms and do not understand why there should be E instead of E, and they are not even embarrassed by the rhymes of the “hot - Universe” “hopelessly - tenderly”. But what prevents adults from talking to them about this?

A complex approach

To maintain a high tone of memory and the entire brain as a whole, the load must be constantly increased. And also develop some functions with the help of others. Specially designed Vikium online simulators are suitable for this. They are built in training in such a way that your strengths become a support for the development of your weaker ones. An adaptive algorithm tracks your daily progress and gradually increases the load to prevent degradation

The peculiarity of this training is that it involves three main functions of the brain - attention, memory and thinking. Overall productivity, the operation of other functions, as well as our ability to learn depend on them.

Thus, by training your brain for just 15 minutes a day, you can greatly improve its performance. This will allow you to master new skills, absorb information faster, become more productive and improve the quality of your own life.

Source

Peculiarities of memory of children of primary school age

At the stage of transition from the preschool period to the primary school period, the child has the following features of memory and the memorization process:

visual-figurative memory predominates;
there is a tendency to rote learning through repeated repetition;
Concrete information is easier to remember than verbal explanations or abstract definitions;
children remember for a long time the material that evokes an emotional response in them;
thanks to increased curiosity, children remember information of interest easily and quickly;
The more senses are involved in the learning process, the better everything will be remembered.

During primary school, significant changes occur:

there is a transition from involuntary to voluntary memorization;
the formation of verbal-logical memory begins.

The first time after entering 1st grade, the child uses the natural capabilities of his memory. It’s easier for him to memorize the material without delving into its meaning.

Primary school students gradually develop a tendency to use voluntary memorization. Younger students learn to use various methods to facilitate memorization. The problem is that they cannot yet independently plan and control the memorization process, or give themselves the necessary instructions. Therefore, they will need help from teachers and parents.

Features of memory in children

With age, a preschooler's skills and abilities improve. At four months, the baby begins to recognize familiar faces and objects. In the period from one to three years, involuntary memorization appears, that is, this process does not require volitional efforts.

From the age of three, voluntary memory appears. It is due to the fact that children begin to play, and this requires the assimilation of certain information: rules, actions, list of objects, etc.

During this period, preschoolers are actively involved in feasible work, for which it is important to remember the sequence of actions. Some experts mistakenly believe that at this age children are characterized by mechanical memory.

They resort to it only when it is difficult for them to comprehend the information.

Based on the storage period of information, there are three types of memory. If it is short term, the child quickly forgets what he saw. For example, he can say what kind of dog he saw on the way to kindergarten, but the next morning he won’t remember it.

Long-term memory is more important - a person retains this information throughout his life. Memorization is influenced by emotions, vivid images, and repeated repetition.

Preschoolers

At the age of 5-6 years, involuntary memory still predominates in children

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During this period, they only care about what is of interest. They perceive better not passive activities, but those that involve active participation in the lesson

Psychologists have also found that at the age of 6-7 years, a child needs external motivation to remember information. Therefore, any training should take place in a playful way. By this time, children's self-control skills increase.

The lesson should not be long, since due to his age it is difficult for a preschooler to sit still

Memory can be developed at this age with the help of sensory impressions. The more a preschooler comes into contact with different materials, the better his nervous system is stimulated. Under the influence of these factors, new connections are formed in the brain.

Visual and auditory impressions help the transition to voluntary memory. During this period, children begin to associate certain emotions and feelings with a specific person.

Pupils

At 7-8 years old, the child goes to school. His leading activity is educational. Compared to the preschool period, memory becomes more conscious and organized. The work of the first signaling system predominates, which stimulates visual-figurative perception.

Interesting. Students better assimilate facts, persons, objects, and events. The development of memory in younger schoolchildren should be aimed at facilitating the transition to secondary education. Logical thinking will help them with this.

Due to their age, children are still poorly able to structure information and break it into blocks. They find it difficult to create and use diagrams. The teacher's task is not to encourage rote memorization. In elementary school, self-control skills are not yet ideal, especially in first grade.

At the age of 10, children still have a predominantly figurative memory. They learn visual material better. It is still difficult for them to perceive abstract concepts. Game-based teaching methods also remain relevant.

At the age of 11, a child goes through the process of forming a formal-logical type of thinking, which helps to reason, build chains of judgments, and calculate the consequences of actions.

At school age, children are better able to learn. Therefore, during this period the development of cognitive functions is good.

This is especially important when identifying problems. They manifest themselves in poor academic performance.

With the help of special classes, you can improve your HMF (higher mental functions), this will have a positive impact on your grades.

Additional option

If you wish, you can try another alternative method that allows you to learn not only the verse, but also any other necessary information in a short time. The method consists of the following five steps:

Read the poem out loud several times.
Repeat the text along the chain line by line, as indicated in the first method. After all the material has been worked out, you should repeat it completely, and then take a break for 15 minutes.
Read the verse again from the paper and try to read it out loud from memory. If this was not possible, for example, only part of it was remembered, you should re-read the text 2-3 times, take a break again and try again.
This sequence (15 minutes of rest - reading a poem from a sheet - repeating from memory) should be repeated until the material is learned well. At the end, you can give the text to someone close to you, ask them to listen to the verse and correct it if necessary.
It is most correct to use this technique in the morning or before bed. Then the material will be remembered better.

Necessary factors

Of course, it is useless to talk about how to learn a huge poem in 5 minutes in a dream. This is not possible, but there are real ways to speed up the retention of information. When starting to work on the material, you should take care to fulfill the basic requirements listed:

Don't start learning a poem at the last moment. The worst idea is to try to do this during recess before class. The ideal pattern is to start studying the verse two days before the due date. Most people remember information better in the evening (ideally before going to bed). But everything is too individual. If you can learn a poem in the morning, you can do it at this time.
You should eliminate all sources of noise, turn off the phone and TV, and ask relatives not to distract you from your work for a certain time. Ideally, you need to lock yourself in your room and fully concentrate on mastering the material.
You definitely shouldn’t learn a poem in a hurry, on the run, casually, or while upset or angry. A bad mood and negative emotions will prevent you from focusing on the priority task and will constantly distract you.

Use the snowball method

If associations don't help, try memorizing them. To do this, read the first line and repeat it out loud several times. When you remember it well, move on to the second: read it several times and connect it with the first. Repeat several times: first line, second. Then move on to the third. And so on until the end.

Memorizing a poem takes a long time, especially if you have a large amount of text to memorize. But before the speech, you will only need to read the first line: the rest will appear in your memory on their own.

3-4 years

Children of this age should be offered active rhymes that contain many verbs, nouns, and specific quantities (objects, toys, people, animals, etc.). It will be easier and more interesting to memorize them; thinking and speech will become developed and trained.

Counting rhymes occupy a special place. They are very easy to learn, they are practical and can then be used during games. Children love to learn them. This is a good way to train memory, speech, and thinking.

Tricks

One of the most effective methods for strengthening memory is the usual memorization of poetry.

When memorizing poetry, you can use the following tricks:

Rhymes allow you to build neural connections.
The emotional focus of the work will make it easier to activate memory processes in the brain.
Thanks to imagery, associative parallels can be created.
You shouldn’t memorize a piece; it’s important to memorize it consciously.
You can download many poems of different thematic areas to your phone at once. Compose a kind of collection in which you include works that are good and interesting specifically for you, your child.
If it is difficult to learn ordinary poems, you can replace them with a ditty or a rhyme. They are easier to remember.

Take care of your memory

This article takes five minutes to read. This is so little in terms of time and so much in terms of self-development. After reading it, I think many will want to try to learn poems for memory, and find out if the result really appears. It's so simple.

How many poems did you learn at school? Even a child can handle them. And if it’s so simple, then you can do it too. And once you start, there will be no turning back - this process is so interesting. Reading classic poetry, in itself, calms, balances, and helps cope with stress. After all, why does stress and depression appear? This is the result of personality dissatisfaction.

We often lack new emotions, philosophical thoughts, creativity, and clearing our consciousness of everyday thoughts. Poems for memory development perfectly fill this deficiency. Learning them is good not only for the brain, but also for the psyche.

Teens and adults

When adults learn poems, a paradox arises - works with simple natural syllables are easier to learn, but poetry with simpler, more complex syllables is better able to develop memory. Convenient works should be learned to increase the list of memorized poems, and inconvenient ones - to train the brain, improve memory, and attention. Among the latter, you can choose poems by Pushkin and Lermontov.

In old age, learning is especially difficult. Memory loses its flexibility and efficiency.