Tuesday Teacher Tip for Middle School/High School
Some of you may have heard of SAFMEDS., an acronym that stands for S-say, A-all, F- fast, M-minute, E-each, D-day, S-shuffled. Students develop a deck of cards, each has text printed on both sides. One side is the front, the other the back. They are intended to help students become fluent in basic concepts, definitions, and/or terms, which makes more complex information less difficult. Dr. Ogden R. Lindsley came up with this strategy. Research has demonstrated that once performance is fluent,(speed plus accuracy) the person is able to retain the information longer, use the information in new ways, and learn related information quicker. These cards go beyond a student’s standard “flash cards”
First make the cards about the size of a business card. Some students simply cut a standard 3 by 5 index card in half. Then cut out the definitions and the terms. Put term on one side and definition on the other.
Next: Begin to practice.
Tips:
1. You may want to study the cards before a timed session. 10 to
15 minutes a day is all you need. Do about 5 minutes of 10
second timings. A convenient time is during commercials of
your favorite TV show.
2. You can include drawings, pictures, and diagrams on one side of
card.
3. With SAFMEDS, the student sees what is on the front of a card,
says what’s on the back, then quickly moves on to the next card.
These sessions should be brief, timed, often no more than 30
seconds or one minute.
4. Keep the text on the back side relatively brief.
5. Make any blanks consistently the same length.
6. Put blanks toward the end of the text on the front side.
7. Highlight salient text on cards that are otherwise too similar
in wording.
Examples:
This would be too long:
Front: The Universe is considered to be an aggregate of __________________ according to R Buckminster Fuller in Synergetics.
Back: Frequencies, angles and frequencies
A SAFMEDS example:
Front: Universe is an aggregate of
Back: Frequencies
Remember to shuffle the cards to prevent serial learning. Decks can be between 50 to 100 cards. Later on you could make a review for a major test up to 200 cards. Decks can be as small as 20 cards, also. The size of the deck is sometimes determined by subject matter.
The learner should be the person holding and flipping the cards. For speed sake, you could learn to use your left and right hands. See what is on the front, then say what is on the back. Turn the card over after saying the back. Correctly answered cards should be put in one pile, errors into another. You could have another pile of “skip” responses, which are not necessarily wrong. Always use some sort of timer. At the end count up the number of corrects and errors. Tally the numbers. Chart your numbers. Make sure you always say your remarks out loud. If you don’t know say “go!” and move on to the next card. After several sessions, you may notice certain problem cards. You will need to spend extra study time with these. You may need to reexamine these cards to see if the wording could be improved, or some other stimulus added.
submitted by Jimmie Kay Thomas
Caddo Magnet High
GLE Lesson Plans 
