Cued Spelling: Mnemonic Ideas

Sometimes Cued Spellers think of really clever and imaginative ways of remembering spellings. These mnemonics often seem very strange, but they make sense to the Speller who thought them up! It is very difficult to teach someone how to think up mnemonics, because one that works for one person may not work for another - you have to think up your own, that are memorable for you.

Some mnemonics that were thought up by 7 to 9 year old children are printed below. These are only intended as examples to give you an idea of what can be done - do not think that they will necessarily be any good for you to use yourself.

1. beautiful - big elephants aren't ugly (in fact, they are beautiful)

   (mnemonics may only refer to that part of the word that the Speller finds difficult)

2. because - big elephants cannot always use small escalators
3. Canada - Cannonballs are nice and dirty articles
4. caught - cats always use great heavy toilets
5. dictionary - names:- DIC    TION    ARY    (Dick and Harry shun the third person!)
6. ghost - ghosts hate oranges, sausages, tea
7. graphs - giant rabbits are pretty hopeless skippers
8. lasagne - little apes sit and gobble nuts energetically
9. piece - a piece of pie
10. professor - 1 frog and 2 snakes
11. question - queens undress everywhere so they're in our news
12. special - some people eat crabs in a lavatory

Lots of these mnemonics are quite funny - no teacher could have thought of them! - and some were illustrated. This helped the Spellers to remember. Some seem very complicated, but remember that in Cued Spelling you don't have to be able to read or write down the mnemonic Cues, only be able to say them. In the long run you will remember the word after you have forgotten the Cue. But don't make the Cues too complicated!