…or “how to spell millennium.”

Last week we had the first round of our annual staff spelling bee. This is a hotly contested competition, and the final takes place immediately before the students’ spelling bee competition in February. I have made it to the final for the past three years, so I have a reputation to uphold!

Round one consisted of six words:

1. Definitely
2. Indefatigable
3. Melancholy
4. Millennium
5. Acquiesce
6. Tracheotomy

I was delighted to get them all right! So at least I’m through to round two…

However, the presence of the word “millennium” was a bit of a gift for me, because I definitely know how to spell it. At least, I do now…and I have for the past nineteen years.

Back in the year 1999, I was in my first teaching job at a school in Nottinghamshire. My tutor group and I did an activity thinking about our hopes and wishes for the year 2000 – we called them our “millennium pledges” and we were going to use them for the display board in our tutor room. I duly stayed after school one day, backed and edged the board in new display paper, got my tutor group’s pledges arranged artistically on the backing paper, and cut out and stuck every letter of the display title using letter stencils, in silver and then in black. I stuck the black behind the silver to create a neat shadow effect. I then covered the display in clear sticky-backed plastic covering film to protect the children’s work. Two hours after school, I was standing back to admire my handiwork, when my Head of Department came in to have a look.

“There are two “n”s in ‘millennium,'” she said.

Yes, you’ve guessed it, my display said “our millenium pledges” – with one “n.”

It turns out, once you’ve covered a display board in clear sticky-backed plastic covering film, you can’t peel it off again without ripping the paper. And ruining the students’ work. And the backing paper. And the edging paper. And, really, the whole display, which had to be completely re-done from scratch, including the children’s millennium pledges. I did make a teaching point out of it, and I hope that those children (who will now be about 33 years old!) can still spell ‘millennium’ correctly too…

Memory hooks

Whenever I see the word ‘millennium’ now, I am reminded of those hours of time cutting stencil letters out. Twice. The memory is painful, and very funny – in hindsight. But it is strong and powerful. It is a memory I can return to when I am thinking about how to spell that tricky word, and it provides a “way in” for me to the knowledge that I need to ensure I never spell it incorrectly again. Although this memory hook was created by accident, it is also possible to use this technique to enable you to remember key information, for example when revising for tests, by deliberately creating a memory hook to link you to the information you want.

The memory hooks can be anything – an emotion, an image, a place, a person, a piece of music…I have a strong emotional hook to the spelling of the word ‘millennium’! Find something that you can use to trigger your memory, and you will find it easier to remember the things you are trying to learn.

One way to do this might be by putting revision reminders in different rooms of your home. Let’s say you were revising for a History test: you could put facts about people around the bathroom mirror, facts about places on your bedroom door, and information about causes and consequences on the refrigerator in your kitchen. Then, if you’re trying to recall the name of a key person, you can visualise your bathroom mirror and the post-it note you’d stuck just to the left of it…and hopefully, that will give you the memory hook to bring the name to mind.

Memory hooks really work…and that’s why my Joint First Place trophy from the 2018 Staff Spelling Bee has pride of place on the bookshelf in my office, just next to my Lego Millennium Falcon.