Research finds that people who master material quickly and retain it longer use more elaborate strategies for memorizing material. Your good students have done this independently. Teachers need to help students learn how to develop their own memory system. Sylester states in his brain research that it's our emotional system that drives our attentional system. This system drives learning and memory.
Mnemonics is a scientific tested technique based on our knowledge of principals of memory.
Mnemonics strategies gathered from research articles has been used to learn people's names, foreign language, to learn the states and capitals, letters of the alphabet and spelling words to name a few. In the study, students were taught to memorize spelling words using their own way to learn them for a 3-week period. The mnemonic technique was taught for a 3-week period. As the study was being conducted, I felt that there were positive interactions made between the students and myself. We discussed ways each child studied for the spelling tests.