From Reading & Other Learning Disabilities
A Blog by Dr. Gary G. Brannigan and Dr. Howard Margolis
To help you help your child improve his memory, our last three tips discussed meaning, repetition, discussion, elaboration, interest, and focus of attention. Our last tip will deal with history, novelty, importance, and list a few more factors over which you have some control.
From Reading & Other Learning Disabilities
A Blog by Dr. Gary G. Brannigan and Dr. Howard Margolis
To quickly and accurately retrieve something from memory, you first need to put it–exactly what you want to remember–in memory. This requires you to attend carefully to it. The same goes for your child. But most children will not attend willingly to what they expect will be uninteresting; they’ll attend willingly only to what they expect will be interesting. Before I elaborate, let me share my secret.
Here it is: I was a championship tennis player.
Last week we asked you to keep this in mind—Lots of M&M’s can make you FAT—and repeat it five times:
Then we asked you to think about it, repeat it, discuss it with friends, elaborate on it, give examples to your friend, and ask them for examples. And every few days, repeat it. Silently repeat it and discuss it with yourself as you’re waiting on a supermarket checkout line, as your waiting for a bus, as you’re in a waiting room.
From Reading & Other Learning Disabilities
A Blog by Dr. Gary G. Brannigan and Dr. Howard Margolis
Keep this in mind:
Repeat it five times:
From Reading & Other Learning Disabilities
A Blog by Dr. Gary G. Brannigan and Dr. Howard Margolis
By Teresa Foley, Ph.D.
Asnuntuck Community College, Enfield, Connecticut
From Reading & Other Learning Disabilities
A Blog by Dr. Gary G. Brannigan and Dr. Howard Margolis
Children with reading disabilities often struggle to remember what other children easily remember. This struggle often frustrates, stresses, and confuses them. As such, they often berate themselves mercilessly: “I never remember anything…. I don’t know how to remember…. I’m the stupidest jerk in the school.”
From Reading & Other Learning Disabilities
A Blog by Dr. Gary G. Brannigan and Dr. Howard Margolis
Teachers can strengthen the memory of children with reading disabilities. To do this, teachers must first capture and then keep the children’s attention. They must then focus instruction on the acronym REMOS: Repeat It, Elaborate or Explain it, Make it Meaningful, Organize it, and engage in Spaced or Distributed Practice.
In practical terms, the teacher must get the children to:
From Reading & Other Learning Disabilities
A Blog by Dr. Gary G. Brannigan and Dr. Howard Margolis
My child has a reading disability. Can the school strengthen his memory? Often, yes.
But often schools intensify the memory problems of children with reading disabilities by not scheduling instruction to improve memory. Effective scheduling would repeat instruction a day to a week later and then a month or so later. It would give struggling readers feedback about what they learned, what they did right, and how they could improve their performance. It would focus on the big ideas, the most important concepts and skills, those with the power to unlock and strengthen future learning. Often, such repeated practice and feedback, called spaced practice or distributed practice, is critical for helping struggling readers remember what was taught. Unfortunately, schools often teach struggling readers something on Tuesday and then ignore it, assuming they will remember and apply it. Too often, they don’t.
The terms short-term memory and working memory are shorthand for a variety of thought processes that capture, for a few seconds or moments, information. Unless a child with reading disabilities quickly makes an active, focused, and concentrated attempt to remember the information, he will quickly lose most, if not all of it.
