Enhancing Children's Memory: Expert Tips and Insights

EXPERT Farida Raj Special Educator LEARNING & MEMORY Are you a parent who spends long hours preparing the child to take the exam and are confident that he/she will do well, but are disappointed when he/she comes home says that he did not do well because he/she forgot the answers? PROBLEM: Poor memory Children with a Learning Disability (LD) have tremendous difficulty with storage and retrieval of information. In order to help them enhance their memory let us start by understanding what memory is and how it works.

EXPERT Farida Raj Special Educator DIFFERENT COMPONENTS TO HOW MEMORY WORKS SHORT-TERM MEMORY SENSORY MEMORY The information received is held here for a very brief time. If we are able to integrate it with previously held information which is meaningful to us then it is passed onto the Long-term memory. Note: Children with LD often have trouble in this area as it is affected by problems with attention, worry, anxiety, which often leads to mistakes. Hence there is a greater need for repetition & over-learning. The shortest aspect of memory that is a reflection of sensory impressions absorbed from the originating source of information. Information gathered by our senses is immediately passed onto the Short-term memory. SEQUENTIAL MEMORY This aspect of memory is required when information needs to be recalled in a specific order. E.g. Days of week, months, year or letters of the alphabet. In these instances, the order of the information is important. Note : Some children with LD can have trouble perceiving information in sequence and their ability to recall in order. This will in turn affect their ability to read and spell LONG-TERM MEMORY Here information is stored in large quantities, and is available for recall. correctly.

EXPERT Farida Raj Special Educator WHY DO CHILDREN FORGET? FAILURE TO STORE INTERFERENCE It is quite likely that the child owing to distraction or any other problem, was not able to process the information at the short-term memory level and therefore, the information never made it to the long- term memory. Children tend to forget when an old memory makes it difficult to remember a new memory, or a new memory may interfere with their ability to remember previously learned information. e.g. 7-year-old Raju faced difficulty with subtraction. While doing one digit subtraction he was told to take away the smaller number from the big number. When he moved on to double digit subtraction he continued in the same manner irrespective of the position of the numbers. Here the former memory came in the way of latter memory. OVER-LOADING When the child is exposed to too much information in a short span of time, it may cause him/her to forget. RETRIVAL FAILURE Retrieval is a process of accessing stored information. When your child is taking an exam, he is sure that he knows the answer, he feels certain that this information is stored somewhere in the memory but is unable to access and retrieve it. MOTIVATED FORGETTING The child may actively work to forget some particular memory that has caused him/her emotional or mental trauma as a coping mechanism.

TOP 10 TIPS TO ENHANCE MEMORY EXPERT Farida Raj Special Educator ESTABLISH REGULAR STUDY SESSIONS 01 Studying over a number of sessions will give your child enough time to process so that the information can move from the short-term to the long-term memory. Do not practice cramming or studying all the material in the last minute. 02 BRING A STRUCTURE & ORDER TO THE PROCESS OF LEARNING Sensitize your child to the importance of structuring and organizing study material. Teach the concept of grouping similar concepts and terms. This will help in memory enhancement. USE MNEMONICS & ACRONYMS TO HELP HIM/HER RECALL TERMS BETTER MENEMONICS is a simple way to remember information by associating a term you need to remember to recall a sentence or information. E.g. My Very Educated Mother Just Showed us Nine Planets . The first letter of each word stands for a planet in the sequence. Acronyms are an effective tool to enhance memory where the initial letters of a string of words can be used to remember and recall a single word E.g. VIBGYOR stands for colors of the rainbow, Violet, Indigo, Blue, Green, Yellow, Orange, Red. 03 04 GROUPING OR CHUNKING INFORMATION TOGETHER Grouping things together helps in creating order. It helps in memorizing. 05 REHEARSING & REPEATING Repeating, rehearsing information over and over helps to internalize the basic skills like spelling and multiplication tables. Rehearsing aloud is an effective memory tool.

TOP 10 TIPS TO ENHANCE MEMORY EXPERT Farida Raj Special Educator LINKING OF NEW INFORMATION 06 While studying unfamiliar material try to establish relationships between the new ideas and previously existing memories. It improves recall of recently learned information dramatically. 07 VISUALIZATION Symbols, pictures and images help your memory to create visual images of the content, pay attention to pictures, charts and graphics. Teach your child to create his own visual cues by drawing charts in the margin of his/her notes or use highlighters and pens in different colors to group related ideas in the written study material. MAKE THE CHILD THE TEACHER ASK YOUR CHILD TO TEACH THE CONCEPT 08 Research suggests that teaching concepts to others enhances understanding and recall. Ask your child to reach a concept to a friend. ATTENTION 09 In order to move information from short to long-term memory teach your child to be attentive to what is being taught with no distractions or diversions around the place of study. Make the learning environment distraction free. VARYING STUDY ROUTINES If your child is stuck on a routine pattern of study, help him vary it. Change of location and time not only brings an element of novelty to the study sessions but also increases effectiveness of efforts and improves recall. 10

SUPER FORMULAS FOR LEARNING THE SQ3R METHOD EXPERT Farida Raj Special Educator SURVEY The SQ3R is a reading comprehension method that can be helpful for reading and learning. The three letters and a number is a formula with which we can transport even the most boring and uninteresting reading matter to the relevant compartments of our minds. Help the child acquire this study skill. It refers to the quick scanning of the entire reading material to get an overview. WHAT S SQ3R? QUESTION The survey will get the child to ask questions. On finding answers to these, he can select specific areas and can structure his study. i. Should I study this content? ii. Why should I study? iii. What should I study? REVIEW Teach him/her to review the correctness of what he/she has read. Let him check if he/her have answers to all the questions that came up. REPEAT RECORDING Teach your child to read the selected part that they highlighted in the question phase and read it thoroughly. Ask him/her to close the book after every section and repeat what he/she has read. This will facilitate memory.

EXPERT Farida Raj Special Educator USING SEMANTIC MAPS A Semantic map is a web of words used to explain connections between words or a set of words. Teach the child with LD to group information using a semantic map. E.g. If a child is studying the geography of his country, he/she can organize the information with the main topic in the centre and group the essential attributes into 5 or 9 spokes, and then fill in more specific features as shown to the left.

EXPERT Farida Raj Special Educator WHAT IS YOUR CHILD S LEARNING STYLE? Before you start to work on enhancing your child s memory check your child s learning style. If child is a AUDITORY LEARNER If child is a VISUAL LEARNER A visual learner is one who learns/remembers when learning matter is presented to him/her, visually e.g. maps , charts or pictures. An auditory learner is one who remembers things by hearing/listening e.g. radio, tape recorder. Once you are sure about his/her preferred style of learning, you can present the material to be learned in the appropriate form.

EXPERT Farida Raj Special Educator MOTIVATIING YOUR CHILD IS KEY Motivation & setting positive goals for your child is crucial to his/her success in academics. Learning is not just about awareness or focus of attention. It also involves motivation. Children with LDs often encounter unhappiness/failure in social situations. This leads to self doubt and low self esteem which in turn affect motivation and result in lack of efforts. Children in these situations often misjudge their capabilities. Therefore it is very important for you to help them understand their strengths and set realistic and achievable goals. You also must help them recognize that goals are subject to change and he/she is free to maintain them or raise them if they are set too low. Success in the classroom will not only improve your child s memory and learning but will also motivate him to persevere and stay with the task. It will eventually lead him/her back to self-assurance as he/she will experience new success and encouragement.

This content has been developed in collaboration with Remedial & Special Educator Ms.Farida Raj. NAYI DISHA RESOURCE CENTRE It has been adapted from her book ''Breaking Through" - A Hand Book for Teachers and Parents of Children with Learning Difficulties & reproduced here with consent. Join Us on Facebook Join Us on Twitter Nayi Disha Resource Centre is an online information resource platform that supports families of persons with, Specific Learning Join Us on Linkedin Visit us at Disabilities, Intellectual & Developmental WWW.NAYI-DISHA.ORG Disabilities. www.nayi-disha.org