I teach a class of eight students English. The class size may be small, but teaching them is a Herculean task because some of them have severe dyslexia. Coupled with irregular attendance, some of them don’t progress very far in their literacy journey.

I’m talking about teenagers who still don’t know how to spell ‘are’. It’s kinda depressing.

For the longest time, I was held back by the conventional thinking that dyslexics have poor working memory. So, I have been focusing on deliberate practice and repetitive drills so that certain things will become automatic to them.

However, with the seven personal pronouns (I, You, He, She, It, We, They), I realised that they are not going to master the past or present continuous tense if they don’t have a firm grasp of subject-verb agreement. So I created a video with the help of Invideo and forced them to memorise all 7 pronouns. I wouldn’t say that it worked out beautifully, but I did attain varying degrees of success with various individuals. So that’s all good.

Buoyed by this success, I focused on my next task, which was to get them to memorise seven subordinating conjunctions. Because as since when while although however.

I first wrote one conjunction on a piece of paper. Because as since were written in blue ink; when while were written in green ink; and although however were written in red ink.

After that, I said aloud two sentences. I asked them to step forward with their assigned conjunction if they thought that they could use it to combine the sentences into it.

Subsequently, I used three key words to help them understand the purpose of these conjunctions: reason, contrast, and time. Hopefully, this would help them use them accurately.

This lesson worked out better than expected. I found out that because I had assigned one student with one conjunction, I inadvertently made memorising the list easier for them. They could look at their classmate and think about the conjunction he or she was assigned.

It’s like a modification of the memory palace. To use objects in a given space to help you recall stuff. Except that in this case, I’m using them as learning receptacles!

Today, I will test them to see if they still remember all 7 conjunctions. Wish me luck!

🍀