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- Education Corner has useful memory strategies for children and young people with SEND.
One of the best ways to encourage long-lasting learning is to have students retrieve key concepts from memory:
- Activities such as flashcards and quizzes all require students to recall information and are all effective learning activities. However, it is important to frame the quizzes as tools to help the children remember what they have learnt, rather than tests.
- Peer-led discussions can help display retained information, as well as other areas of association and individual interest.
There must be challenges as well as a high level of success with retrieving the information. It is important to make the tasks challenging but to also use an appropriate level of scaffolding.
For example, questions such as "What do you remember about cooking a cake?", could be reframed as "What do you remember about how you cooked the cake?"
Well-structured questions that include an appropriate level of scaffolding will increase recall success, and consequently improve long-term recall.
- Frequent practice with recall and repetition when learning new concepts and information will make both retention and recall stronger.
- Support schema formation by openly showing new and old learning patterns, connections, and relationships. This can be done in many ways and on various levels – from a spiral curriculum which encourages students to have a deeper understanding of key concepts and ensures that learners feel confident applying their knowledge in real-world situations, as well as concept maps to go over a previous lesson’s content.
For children that need support with retention and retrieval, it is helpful to receive pre-teach before the lesson.
- By using a multisensory approach, for instance: visual, and verbal information, this increases the opportunity for storing information.
