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Developing short-term memory skills

Taken from SPELD SA Newsletter, Autumn 2003

Intention

• Students need to have a reason to remember
• Establish an expectation to remember

Support

• Give student time if struggling
• Provide scaffolding/cues
• Divide learning task into small, achievable steps
• Teach each step explicitly
• Make sure one step is learned before moving on to the next

Teach memory strategies

• Rehearsal/repetition; simple recitation is useful for learning facts, eg, multiplication tables, lists; items at the beginning of a list are most likely to be recalled, so have several short lists rather than one long one.
• Narrative chaining
• Relate information to a theme or make up a story incorporating the information
• Chunking
• Group information into sub-units, eg the phone number 82164532 (8 bits) might be reduced to 3 bits (821645 32); the word ending "e d" (2 bits) could be reduced to "ed" (1 bit)
• Mental visualisation; create a mental picture of the content to be remembered, eg, details of a story, a process, directions. Close your eyes. Can you see it inside your eyes? For some students this may be difficult and require guided practice.
• Mnemonics
  • Talk about the memory tricks you use, eg, to remember the spelling of stationary/stationery: cars are stationary, stationery paper
  • Make up a sentence using the letters of a word, eg, "because" - Big Elephants Can Always Understand Small Elephants
  • Make up a sentence with the order of the points of the compass - Never Eat Soggy Weet-bix
  • Rhymes, eg, Thirty Days have September, April June and November

Practice

• Students with memory difficulties may know something one day and have forgotten it the next
• Provide many opportunities for practice - consider also the value of computer programs with their immediate feedback, infinite patience, and potential for variety
• Review previous learning regularly, eg, spellings, maths concepts, routines

Memory aids

• Encourage the use of the following tools:
  • Diaries
  • Illustrations
  • Charts
  • Calendars
  • Graphs
  • Cue cards
  • Concept maps
  • Notes
  • Flash cards
  • Summaries
  • Post-it stickers with reminders
  • Copies of daily/weekly timetables
  • Checklists of tasks to complete
  • Calculators
  • Multiplication tables
  • Cards with correct letter formation
  • Indexed book with frequently mis-spelt words
  • Business cards with address, important telephone numbers, etc

Metamemory

• Knowing how to remember
• Ask student: how are you going to remember this information?
• Model strategies they might use, relate it to their own experiences
• Student chooses their preferred strategy and talks themselves through the task
• Give constructive feedback
• Picture/written cue cards can be used until the student can perform the task automatically