Primary Pieces

To learn, students must receive, store, retain, and retrieve information on demand.  The foundational information that students learn in the early grades becomes the basis for their higher level thinking and their increasingly sophisticated analysis and problem solving.  Memory weaknesses are often associated with learning disabilities, and may affect students’ retrievel of meaningful or nonmeaningful information, ability to hold and manipulate information mentally, or automatic retrieval of information from long term memory.

Types of Memory:
 

There are three general types of memory:  short-term memory, working memory, and long-term memory.  Working memory is regarded as the most important executive function process. 

Short Term Memory:  

Everything that we see, hear, feel, smell and  touch is perceived, processed and placed in short term memory.  Short term memory holds a limited amount of information (seven bits of information) for a limited time ( a few seconds) while it is processed.  The information is categorized into “discard”, “use right away”, and “long term storage”.  Selective attention plays a critical role in how information is processed in short term memory.

Academic tasks that require short term memory include:

• Following directions
• Listening
  
• Development of reading ,writing and math skills
  

 Working Memory: 

There are two pathways; visual information is processed on a visual-spatial sketchpad and auditory information is held and rehearsed on a phonological loop. Working Memory is the mind’s scratchpad.  Working memory acquires information from short-or long-term memory, sensory input and/or automatic memory, and then holds the information for a short time while a task is being performed (Baddeley, 2006). 

Working memory plays a critical role in listening comprehension, reading comprehension, oral communication, written expression, math problem solving and efficient task completion.  

Academic tasks that require working memory include:

• Planning, writing, spelling
• Math operations and problem solving
• Development of reading strategies and reading comprehension

Automatic memory enables a person to retrieve familiar or known facts rapidly from long-term memory when they are needed for problem solving.  When it works efficiently, it activates information and can quickly supply working memory with information needed on the desktop for problem solving.  For example, when the sounds of letters are retrieved automatically for decoding, automatic memory has processed the images of individual letters, combinations of letters, word parts, whole words and has matched them with their sounds and meanings.
 

• Rapid recall of basic addition, subtraction, multiplication and division
  
• Rapid naming of colours, numbers and letters 
• Rapid recognition of letters and phonemes
• Rapid retrieval of sight words such as an, the, and who
• Rapid retrieval of spelling pattern

Long Term Memory:

Long term memory cements information that can be used over hours, days or a lifetime.  We store information here, such as words,images, themes or ideas.  Associations may be kinetic, visual, verbal, sensory, emotional, or abstract.  

Academic tasks that require long-term memory are:

General – learning of curriculum content
Math – remembering algorithms for computation
Oral Language – retrieving ideas and information, developing vocabulary knowledge
Written language – recalling ideas and information
Reading comprehension – recalling plots, events, character traits.

 

Strategies to Improve Memory:

 

Direct instruction and teacher modeling of strategy is crucial.  There are four basic approaches:

1. Attending to details - the use of verbal cues and visual cues to enhance attention and help us remember
2. Repetition, rehearsal and review – the  use of visual, auditory, kinesthetic and or tactile are all beneficial.
   
3. Attaching meaning by using verbal or visual associations, acronyms, acrostics, or rhymes to make it meaningful.  Timelines, information maps, webs, and charts also help to organize information and create associations. 
4. Chunking information - using verbal or visual groupings

 Mnemonics is one of the most effective methods for improving student memory for factual information.

The use of research-based memory strategies, such as chunking, crazy phrases, acronyms, cartoons, songs, rhymes, and stories, provides student with the tools to overcome their working memory weaknesses and improve their academic success.