Mnemonic as an innovative approach to creative teaching of secondary school chemistry

Abstract

Chemistry as a secondary school subject despite its importance and central role in science and development is often found difficult to understand by students. Chief among the contributing factors being the approaches used by chemistry teachers which tend to make chemistry concepts to be too abstract and uninteresting to students. Thus, most often, students tend to view concepts in chemistry as being too “volatile” as they often are unable to remember them. Thus, in order to ensure that chemistry teaching and learning become more interesting and for students to be able to remember learnt chemistry concepts, the use of mnemonics was suggested. This suggestion is based on the premise that learning and remembering of  information becomes better when presented in forms that are personal, surprising or humorous and when various scientific facts and procedures to be learnt are well connected to more familiar words and phrases. Mnemonic is defined as a memory aid meant to assist in the learning and recall of information that might have been somewhat problematic to recall. Using some chemistry concepts, the paper identified some forms in which  mnemonics can be used innovatively in teaching senior school chemistry. The paper then advocated for the creative usage of mnemonics in teaching chemistry to be included as a vital component of initial training and the retraining of secondary school chemistry teachers. [AJCE 4(2), Special Issue, May 2014]