Paired Associates Strategy

The Paired Associates Strategy is designed to help students learn pairs of informational items, such as names and events, places and events, or names and accomplishments. Students identify pairs of items, create mnemonic devices, create study cards, and use the study cards to learn the information.

Research has shown that before students learned this strategy, they answered correctly only an average of 8 percent of test questions related to paired information when the paired information was identified for them. After they mastered the strategy, they answered correctly an average of 85 percent of the questions about paired information that was identified for them.

When given reading passages to study on their own, they answered an average of 22 percent of test questions correctly before instruction in the strategy versus answering 76 percent correctly after mastering the strategy.