It’s the first day of term and you’ve been met with a sea of expectant new faces. You may not know yet which will be your star students or troublemakers, but what you do know is that you have a lot of names to learn.

“This year, I had 182 names to learn in September. Then halfway through the year, I swapped a group with a colleague so the total went up to 209,” says Trisha Walker, a teacher of modern foreign languages.

In secondary schools, it is not unusual to have upwards of 100 names to get your head around and that’s unfortunate, because learning names is tricky.

“Remembering names seems to be difficult because they are typically arbitrary and abstract pieces of information. We can’t work out someone’s name just by looking at them,’ explains Dr Jon Simons, who is a reader in cognitive neuroscience at the University of Cambridge and a specialist in human memory.

However, with the right sort of approach, memorising names can be easier than you think - and even a bit of fun.

Chunk it up

“If you’ve got over 100 new pupils, you’re not going to remember them all on day one. So make it less daunting and chunk up the challenge - remember five new names every day, for example,” suggests Michael Tipper, a memory improvement coach and World Memory Championships silver medallist. “Explain to your students that this is one of your learning tactics so you won’t offend any whose names you don’t learn early on.”

Be mindful

“Often, when we can’t remember names, it’s not a memory problem but a concentration problem,” Tipper says. “When we meet people, we’re so busy thinking about saying our name properly and making the right first impression, we’re not actually paying attention when they say theirs.

“So when you meet a pupil, be really present - actually listen to their name. At the same time, get a really clear image of their face. What shape is their nose? Do they have any moles? Your challenge is about remembering their face as well as name, so be mindful. Not only will that help you but the pupil will feel you’re engaging with them.”

Repetition, repetition, repetition

“Numerous studies have found that repeating information out loud or subvocally [mouthing it or saying it in your mind] helps you to retain it in short-term memory and increases the likelihood of it being transferred into long-term memory,” Simons says. “So use their name as much as possible: ‘That’s a good story, Susan’, ‘Susan, I want you to work with…’ and so on. The more times you repeat it the better.”

Former English and drama teacher Fiona Scott uses a game of repetition to help her remember the approximately 150 new names she needs to learn each school year.

“We went around the room in turn singing each other’s names, building slowly. For example: ‘I am Jessica’, ‘You are Jessica and I am Katie’, ‘You are Jessica, you are Katie and I am Fiona’, and so on. It really helped me.”

Give it room to grow

“Another effective strategy for remembering information, first explored by researchers in 1978, is retrieval practice using an increasing delay,” Simons says. “You might, for example, say someone’s name as soon as you hear it, repeat it later in the conversation and finally think about the names of all the people you have met a few hours later, days later and even perhaps weeks later.

“Such increasing interval practice can improve memory considerably. It makes the retrieval task increasingly difficult, creating a deeper level of processing of the information than when retrieving after a short delay, which is comparatively easy.”

Turn it into a lesson

If time allows, Tipper suggests devoting your first lesson with a new class to learning names - which, he believes, might allow you to grasp all 30 or so in one go.

Depending on the subject and age group, he says, “You could ask the pupils to draw a picture that represents them and write their name underneath, get them to research the meaning of their name and talk about it, or practise introductions as a class. Once you start to make names more interesting by talking about them, they’ll be more likely to stick in your memory.”

Make it memorable

Even if you don’t have a whole lesson to spare, you can make names easier to remember by using your imagination, Tipper claims. “Take a name like James, for example,” he says. “It’s just a five-letter word and not that memorable. But think about what ‘James’ conjures up for you.

“Perhaps it’s King James II. If so, then imagine the James you have just met in a crown and a king’s robe. Perhaps ‘James’ also makes you think of James the band.

“So you can imagine this pupil dressed as a king singing into a microphone. Now you have a few reference points to help you remember the name. The more exaggerated, absurd or humorous the image the better.”

Think phonetically

“If you come across a name you’ve never heard before, it can be useful to break it down phonetically, then create a memorable image from those separate parts,” Tipper says.

Science teacher Dr Alison Bune says she does just this to help her remember any names that are new to her among the 100 she typically has to learn.

“I will ask the pupil how it’s pronounced, then think phonetically. For example, I might think of Nejum as “knee-jam”. I go through this process with the student, so it can be a bit of fun.”

Be sneaky

If you’ve forgotten a pupil’s name, there are usually easy ways to pick it up - scanning the register for a refresher or listening in to what their friends call them. But if you’re stuck, Tipper suggests trying one of these tactics: “You can say, ‘What’s your name again?’ Then when they say, ‘James, Miss’, you say, ‘I know your first name, I mean your surname!’ Alternatively, you could ask, ‘What name do you prefer to be known by?’”

Jessica Powell is a freelance journalist