Memorizing "Fern Hill"

My students and I are currently working on memorizing the poem “Fern Hill” by Dylan Thomas. In the past, I’ve had students memorize:

• Hamlet’s first soliloquy, ‘O that this too too sullied flesh would melt…’ (I,ii)
• Hamlet’s explanation to Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, ‘I have of late, but wherefore I know not, lost all my mirth…’ (II, ii)
• Hamlet’s second soliloquy, ‘O what a rogue and peasant slave am I…’ (II,ii)
• Hamlet’s third soliloquy, ‘To be or not to be…’ (III,i)
• Mark Antony’s lament in Julius Caesar, ‘O pardon me thou bleeding piece of earth…’ (III,i)
• “I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud” by William Wordsworth
• “Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening” by Robert Frost

I always like to change the passage for the memorization assignment to something that I haven’t committed to memory before. Not only is it much more fun for me to keep the material fresh, but it gives me the added opportunity for demonstrating my own techniques. I like to tell students that they will have to find a routine that works for them. While wikiHow has some great ‘tips for memorizing’ worth sharing with students, here are my own unorthodox techniques:

• Read the poem aloud a couple of times
• Find opportunities to add dramatic flair or exaggerate my tone of voice
• Use a sharp pencil to copy the poem onto a piece of paper, paying careful attention to the way it looks
• Carry that paper everywhere I go for the duration of this exercise
• Read a line twice, then repeat while looking away
• Read the following line twice, then repeat both…
• … half-stanza by half-stanza, always repeating from the very beginning
• Have a peer point out my errors.

Additionally, I like to have an electronic copy projected in the classroom, hiding words (usually the nouns first) by changing the font to white. It is always amazing to see how much the students enjoy this practice, with the added benefit of seeing them own a great piece of literature.