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I can still remember some ‘silly’ words or acronyms I was told when I was at school to remember the order of different events. Examples include ROYGBIV for the order of colours in the rainbow and SOHCAHTOA (sock-a-toe-a) – a famous way of remembering arrangements in trigonometry, which I and many others always use in our own teaching.

Borderline pupils often lose a significant number of marks by either forgetting or muddling up specific mathematical words needed in exams. In a bid to help my pupils, I use different strategies such as rhymes, silly sentences, acronyms and their own ideas, and it’s these strategies that I thought I’d share with you today.

Some of the following ideas are from my pupils and other teachers.

Angles

From smallest to largest, we have: acute, obtuse and reflex. Ways to remember this:

• The sizes from smallest to largest are in alphabetical order.
• The A in Acute makes an angle less than 90°, as the diagram shows.
   

Parallel lines create lots of angle rules and pupils have to use the correct mathematical words to get full marks in exams. Although we use the terms ‘Z’ angle and ‘F’ angle, for example, pupils need to remember which of these is corresponding and which is alternate. Here are my tips:

• Alternate is ‘Z’ angle, which is A to Z in the alphabet.
• For ‘F’ or corresponding angles, I use FC (football club).

Naming Shapes

Here are some nice associations for remembering the names of different shapes and the number of sides they each have.

• 3-sided shape = triangle: tricycle, three-wheeled bike.
• 4-sided shape = quadrilateral: quad bike, four-wheeled bike.
• 5-sided shape = pentagon: pen in hand, five fingers.
• 6-sided shape = hexagon: 'x' in 'hex' and in 'six'.
• 8-sided shape = octagon: octopus, eight legs.

Averages and Range

Often pupils remember that one of the measures of average requires them to put the numbers in order, but they forget which measure this is. I use the rhyme below to help.

Hey diddle diddle, the median’s the middle;
you add and divide for the mean.
The mode is the one that appears the most,
and the range is the difference between.

I get my pupils to learn the rhyme in Year 7, chanting it together as a class, and then refer to it every year after, whenever the topic is revisited.

Another useful rhyme, which should be said as a rap, is:

The mean is mean, you want to know why?
First you add them up then divide by.

There are lots of other ‘songs’ on youtube that you may also like, such as the ‘circle song’ and ‘Pythagoras’ rule’; I suggest searching 'circle song' or 'pythagoras song' and choosing the ones you like the most.

Formulae

The idea of writing variables in a triangle is quite old. It is used often in science and is just as useful in maths for questions on speed and density. Once pupils understand how the triangle works, they just need to remember the order of the letters. Here are some suggestions.

The speed, distance and time triangle usually doesn't pose too much of a problem, as the letters are written alphabetically, starting from the top: D, S, T.

Or, try S.DOT, i.e. speed = distance over time.

The density, mass and volume triangle is not so easy. I asked my Year 9 group to think of something to help. One girl came up with ‘My Violin Days’, as she used to play the violin. The class liked the idea and all of them adopted it as a way of remembering the order M, V, D.

Finally, when I introduce pi I get the pupils to make a ‘silly sentence’ using the first few numbers. The number of letters in each word must match the value of the digit in that position. For example:

 ‘For I like a great fantastic pi.’
  3.  1  4  1  5  9  2 ...

I hope you find some these suggestions useful. If you have ideas of your own, please share them by leaving a comment below.

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