I Can't Remember! - A Learning Strategy...

Posted by Greg Cruey Apr 17, 2006

Can you name the eight planets?

Now before you get all snitty with me, I know there used to be nine planets. But for a few days now there's only been eight, officially. The International Astronomical Union decided last month to come up with a clearer definition of the term "planet." They look at two choices - one that would make for 12 planets and promote the asteroid Ceres to be the fifth planet in between Mars and Jupiter), and another model that would remove Pluto from the list of planets for being, well, too small. The second plan won. So now there are only eight planets (although there are a lot of Pluto-lovers in the world and the issue is far from settled).

I talked with my science class mixed group of 4th and 5th graders) about the news on Pluto and discovered that few of them could name all eight of the planets in order. So we came up with a type of acrostic together.

An acrostic is a string of words that help you remember something semantically unrelated based on the first letter of each word. The acrostic we came up with was this: My Van Exploded, My Jeep Stopped Underneath New York. (My students actually came up with all the words except for "Jeep," they couldn't think of the name of a car that started with "j" on their own). How does the acrostic help? The first letter of each word is the first letter of the name of a planet:

• My (Which starts with "m" and should help you think of Mercury)
• Van (Which starts with "v" and should help you think of Venus)
• Exploded (Which starts with "e" and should help you think of Earth)
• My (Which starts with "m" and should help you think of Mars)
• Jeep (Which starts with "j" and should help you think of Jupiter)
• Stopped (Which starts with "s" and should help you think of Saturn)
• Underneath (Which starts with "u" and should help you think of Uranus)
• New York (Which starts with "n" and should help you think of Neptune)

Why did this happen underneath New York? Beats me. But it works. And the kids think they know twice as much as they did a week ago because the class average was only four planets from memory before the acrostic.

And success breeds success...