Memorize History Lessons
History can be one of the most difficult subjects for many students. There are so many facts to learn: people, places, battles, laws, dates and more. If you have trouble memorizing everything, take heart. With the right approach, you can learn everything you need to know about history. Follow these steps to learn how to memorize history lessons.
Steps
Using an Outline
- Gather your materials together and find a quiet place to work. Get rid of distractions. Get away from the computer (or log out of email, Facebook, and your instant messenger) and put your phone away.
- Start by making a very broad outline of the material you need to remember. Chronological order is a good basic way to start. Use your textbook as a guide (many of them have an outline or list of key concepts). Just list the big events in chronological order. Leave a lot of space between them because you will be filling them in with details.
- Read your assigned text. As you read, fill in key details on your outline. Don't write everything down - you can't memorize everything. Instead, think about what are the most important things and write them on your outline.
- Follow your reading by reviewing any class notes. The information covered in class will be what your teacher thinks is really important. So be sure to include that in your outline.
- Continue building your outline until you have a complete description of the main events you need to learn in your own words. You can draw arrows from one person or event to another and add notes to them to show relationships between events.
- Make a timeline. There are many online places that allow you to make a digital timeline of your own. When you make it yourself, it tends to stay in your memory better, as it's your own creation.
- As you study, focus on the overall narrative. Big events in history don't just happen. Remember to think about the story in history. This is how you will really make sense of everything.
- Study your outline. You can review your outline much faster than you can read the whole text or go over all your notes. Make Make Digital Flashcards to Help You Study for a Test/Quiz/Exam for important things you need to review.
- Test yourself. Once you have studied your outline and know things pretty well, put your outline away and try to recreate it from memory. This will tell you what you really know. If you don't get everything right the first time, at least you now know what to study. Once you can recreate everything from scratch, you know you have your history lesson memorized!
Summarizing
- Have a general idea of what you need to read.
- Read the entry line by line. Try to recite 4 to 5 times.
- Take a piece of paper. Make a summary of the page you read.
- Turn the entry into a song. Sometimes tricky lyrics to an "awesome" beat can help you to remember tricky details.
- Try not to distract yourself by other things in the room.
Tips
- You need to try to recall the information to be sure you know it. Just re-reading things doesn't help your memory nearly as much as trying to actually remember them.
- Make sure you don't have any distractions near you like your phone, gadgets, TV, etc.
- Read more, first you must organize the lessons or the order that you are going to studying .Pay attention to key words and most importantly try to memorize what you have done week after week (Review notes at the end of the class or when at home ).
- One of the best ways to improve your memory for facts is to Make a Quiz yourself or have someone quiz you. Make flashcards with key dates, people or events on one side, and important facts on the other. Use these to quiz yourself, or pass them to parents or friends for them to quiz you.
- If your friends will make their own outlines, you can compare notes with them to see if you both put the same things on them. This will help you know if you're getting the right info.
- Make flashcards.
- Write the basic things in a notepad and highlight them in your book .
Warnings
- Don't treat learning history like learning vocabulary. You won't do well if you just try to memorize a list of facts. The key is to understand how dates and people and things fit into the story of the past.
Related Articles
- Study for a Math Exam
- Answer a Source Question in History
- Develop Good Study Habits for College
- Memorize Dates
