Remembering a lesson or the subject matter is important for a student. Students, who remember well, excel in their exams and have a good academic career. Now it is very interesting to know about how do children remember!

Memory:- It means to  retain anything learnt, observed, heard and seen. Some pupils remember quickly, some take time. It depends mainly on one’s intelligence. It is a psychological process. The following tricks may be useful for children as well as their parents.

1. Remembering:- Once a topic is learnt it is desirable to remember it. For it, the first requirement is both physical and mental health. If the child is ill or under nutritious, he cannot remember. Similar in the case with mental health. For mental health, emotion plays a great role. If the

child is rebuked, punished or reprimanded, he cannot remember. So keep the child in good humour even if he forgets.

2. Retention:- Retention means to retain the matter learnt in memory. It is found that retention is sharp between the ages of 5 to 10 but deteriorates after age 25. In older people retention is very low. For better and longer retention interest is the greatest and powerful factor. So to arouse attention first make the child interested. It depends upon:

(a)    Retention depends on child’s knowledge and mental ability.

(b)    Retention depends upon child’s mental and physical health.

(c)    Retention depends upon child’s interest and attitude.

(d) Retention depends upon the effectiveness of teaching and types of motivation.

(e)    Retention depends upon association of subjects. For example science and mathematics are associated. 5, 10, 15, 20, 25.... series is easy for retention.

(f)     Retention depends upon the efficacy of the subject. This means the child should realize why he reads that subject, in what way it will help him in pursuit of a profession in his future. For example science may help him in engineering and medical profession. Arts subject may help him for lectureship or administrative service.

(g)    Retention depends upon continuous practice; reading time and again helps retention.

(h)   Retention depends upon the innovative way of presenting a topic. There are teachers who teach their subject in such innovations and interesting ways that his pupils remember it at once.

3. Recall:- When we want to tell a past incident to a friend, we try to recall the incident that happen in the past. If it has happened one or two days back we can narrate the incident accurately. But if it is some years back, we may fail to narrate it fully. So the things or lessons children learn in the school or from some other sources, they have to produce it orally or in writing (in case of examination). The more accurate is the recall, the greater is the reproduction. Just like retention, recall is another step to memory. The more the retention, the greater is the recall.

How to achieve it?

(a) Correlation:- It is a process most students practice sole mote. It means to establish relationship between or among subjects learnt. For example pen and ink (or refill), husband with wife, father and mother etc are words that are related and easy to recall. Similarly mathematics, geography, science are correlated. It is not at all difficult to establish relationships among school subjects. Most of the students merely do it without knowing this principle.

(b) Similarity:- This means to find similarity between two things. A funny example is a boy born and brought up in a big town has seen cows. If by chance he comes across a bullock in a village, he calls it cow. Similarity has two aspects -form and quality. These two aspects are responsible for correlation written above. Similarity in form as cow and bullock, cuckoo and crow are some examples. But similarity in quality is difficult to find. Quality-similarity is of higher class. For lower classes words with pictures, stories with pictures are necessary procedure for similarity.

(c) Rest:- Rest is very essential for recall and also for remembering. It is found by experimental research that rest of one hour after learning a lesson helps memory more than lessons learnt one after another continuously. It is found that parents compel their children to learn continuously even ask them to burn midnight oil. This retards memory.

d) Rhythm:- This very important to remember poems. In lower classes ask students to recite poems according to its rhythm; and this practice is being followed both in English medium and Oriya medium schools.

(e) Part learning and whole learning:- This procedure is for poem-learning. If a poem is long, teachers and parents ask their children to prepare it stanza by stanza. But research has shown that reading the whole poem a few times helps memory more than splitting the poem into stanzas and preparing full stanza at a time. Whole learning is time-saving.

(f) Repetition:- There is a law in learning called Law of Use. It means repetition. if a lesson learnt once and was not learnt afterwards it is forgotten completely. Brain is like a machine. The more you use it, the better is the result. Its corollary law is Law of Disuse. It means you do not use a machine, it rusts. Similarly if you do not repeat a lesson frequently, it is forgotten.

Memory is a very complicated process. Thousands researches have been done on it since time immemorial. This so vast a subject, that it cannot be confined within a few pages. So the following advices are meant for parents so that they can develop the memory of their children. They are:

1.    Look to the health of your children. Ill health impairs memory.

2.    Before teaching or before a child is going to learn a lesson, ask him questions on his previous knowledge of the subject he is now going to learn.

3.    Part and whole learning is advisable for small poems, but not  very long poems. Divide the long poems into meaningful units and ask the child to proceed one after another.

4.    Give rest to the child for some time after finishing one lesson. Let him/her sleep for full eight hours at night.

5.    See to his attention. Inattentive children cannot remember. Try to ensure their attention. Never rebuke, reprimand and never punish them.

6.    For better mathematical under-standing ask the child to accurately memorize multiplication table.

7.    Sit with your children while he is reading and explain the difficult words before he begins to learn a lesson.

8.    Every child has his own way of remembering. If he remembers by his own way, encourage him, never tell the way you have remembered when you were student.

9.    Encourage the child to think. The thinking power is very much necessary in all walks of life.

10.  Be involved in your children’s study, your children will be more attentive and remember more.