10 Strategies to Enhance Students' Memory

The article I chose was "10 Strategies to Enhance Students' Memory" (http://www.readingrockets.org/article/10-strategies-enhance-students-memory). I chose this article because I have a struggling reader who struggles with remembering things, but once he remembers something, he doesn't forget it. I work on repetition strategies with him, and he gets on the computer everyday to work on listening to letter sounds and letter recognition, but I was struggling with finding other ways to help him remember things. I try to use songs or relate concepts to things that they are interested in and this works, but he sometimes will only remember half of what I said and not the whole concept. Last Friday, we were working on addition problems and he would have gotten most of the answers right but for 1.) his finger was moving faster than his brain when counting so he often skipped objects when counting or counted objects twice so I had to make him slow down, and 2.) he might have known the answer, but couldn't remember what that number looked like to write it. He could look at the number and know how many objects he needed for that number, but to tell him to write the number 8, he didn't have a clue what it looked like. Even though we use our number poems, he kept saying "Across the sky and down from heaven, that's how you make a number 8!" Even though I corrected him and made him repeat what I said, he kept saying the poem wrong. I was baffled because I thought he knew this information beforehand. That activity showed me that I must repeat concepts with him such as these daily.

Three important ideas/things from the lesson today are teach students to use visual images and other memory strategies, teach students to develop cues when storing information, and review material before going to sleep, but the most important thing I learned today is teach students to over learn material.

Teach students to use visual images and other memory strategies: I often have students draw a picture to go along with a sentence that they had to read or pick three words from the letter that we are learning this week to draw pictures of them that will help them remember what they are, but I know in the future this will really help my student with spelling and vocabulary terms.

Teach students to develop cues when storing information: This is something I use to teach new concepts by creating a song, or using information that they can relate to. This will be very helpful for my student in the future, especially if he can create the acronym himself.

Review material before going to sleep: This is not something that I can control, but I found the information interesting and I think I will mention it to my student's parents to see if it may help.

Most importantly, teach students to over learn material: This is something that I needed to learn myself. I thought that after he knew the material, he would continue to remember it, but I was wrong so I must keep on him about different concepts so he will not forget them for next year.