I am a firm believer in using mnemonics as a memorization tool. Shoving information into the brain in large amounts can be absolutely overwhelming. I have found that when the student makes a fun sentence out of a series of information, not only does that child learn the information quicker, but he or she is likely to retain the information over time.
This example involves memorizing the states on a map. Many of my students would complain about the length of time it took them to remember 50 states, their locations, and their spellings. I made up these mnemonics (although it is better for the child to make up ones that are meaningful to him or her), and my students memorized these first 17 states in a matter of minutes, not hours.
