My Third Grade Teacher

                               

                                       Mrs. McConahay was my third grade teacher. 

Our classroom was located on the second floor of Sumner School, an old building with large windows, two short blocks from my house. I walked home everyday during our lunch break.

Spelling was difficult for me.

The reason was perhaps due to the German reading lessons I received from my mother before school. She was determined to help me read and write in my mother tongue. German words seemed to be much easier to spell and pronounce. There weren't so many silent letters.

Each week we received a list of 12 new words in school. We wrote the words on the lined paper in our tall spelling folders. We also recited the spelling aloud in class. Then Mrs. McConahay gave us a so called trick to memorize the correct spelling. On the day of receiving the new list she invited us to go over each word in our heads before we fell asleep. She explained that we would remember the words and their spelling the next day and longer if we did the trick that night. It worked. My spelling difficulty improved. 

This "trick" was a shaft of light that would stay with me forever.

The trick is simply the importance of recall. When we remember or recall a new learning within 24 hours the information is stored in long term memory.

Today I teach this trick to my piano students. I tell them about Mrs. McConahay and my spelling challenges. I invite them to play through their new pieces on the evening of their piano lesson and assure them that they will remember all we talked about in our lesson if they do this simple task of recall. 

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