Does your child find it hard to retain any bit of information in mind when he/she is doing something? For example, your child has been given the responsibility to boil milk, but he has left it to answer a text and forgets about it altogether. Working memory challenges can create troubles with particular tasks like these.
Working memory refers to how we hold on to and analyze the information that our short-term memory stores. When kids are learning, they use working memory all the time. Short-term memories are needed for things like following multi-step directions or solving a math problem in the head.
One of the top schools in Greater Noida improves students’ working memory by building simple everyday life strategies. Here’s how you can do it too!
- Work on visualization skills.
You should encourage the kids to generate a picture in their mind of what they have or just read. For example, if you have asked the kid to decorate the table centre piece, have your child imagine and draw what the centre piece should look like and how they could arrange it. As kids are better at visualizing, they can give a detailed description of the image instead of drawing it.
- Have your child teach you.
When you want to explain something to the child, you have to make sense of the information and mentally fill it. Suppose your child is learning how to dribble a basketball. Ask your kid to teach you that skill. Teachers do something similar by pairing up the students in the class to start working with the information right away rather than waiting to be called on.
- Try games that use visual memory.
The kids can also play loads of matching games that can aid their visual memory, like the classic game concentration. Give your children some magazines and ask them to circle all instances of the word the or the letter b. License plates are also fun. While travelling, you can take a turn in reciting the letters and numbers on a license plate and saying them backward too.
- Play cards.
Have you ever tried games like Uno, Go Fish, Crazy Eights? While playing the game, kids have to keep the game rules in mind and remember what cards they have and which ones they have already played.
- Encourage active reading.
The top school in Greater Noida encourages reading in students. Students are encouraged to highlight and underline essential texts in the class. You can even talk loudly and ask them questions relating to the text, which can aid their working memory. If active reading strategies are practiced with the child for a long time, it can help them form long-term memories.
- Chunk information into smaller bites.
Have you ever wondered why phone numbers have hyphens in them? The reason is simple because it is easier to remember one long string of numbers. Keeping this in mind, you need to give your child multi-step directions. Write these directions or give them one at a time to retain them for a long time.
- Make it multisensory.
When the students can use multiple senses to process information, it can help with their working memory and long-term memory. Your child can write down the task that you tell him/her. Ask your child to read the book loudly so he could hear it too. Walk through the house, discussing the family chores your child needs to complete. Applying these multisensory strategies can help kids retain the information in their mind long enough.
- Help make connections.
You should help your child form associations by connecting different details and make them memorable. One way is the use of mnemonics. For instance, to remember any particular name, kids can connect it to any animate or inanimate object. Finding ways to associate information help in forming and retrieving long-term memory.
Preschool admissions at Cambridge School Greater Noida have begun. Get your child enrolled here because teachers use memory-boosting tricks and games to help your child build executive functioning skills.
