Jane Mose
Author, speaker, teacher, and mom dedicated to showing Christian love to children with special needs and their families
WORKING MEMORY: WHAT TEACHERS NEED TO KNOW
If you gave these same instructions to all your students, would they all be equally successful?
“Please give me the red pencil, then pick up the blue eraser and put it in the green box.”
I’m guessing that some of your students could do this easily, while others would struggle. Those who could do it easily are the ones with a stronger working memory.
Working memory is short-term memory—the information that a person holds in the mind long enough to complete a task, but doesn’t necessarily remember for a long time. When you remember two numbers long enough to quickly add them and then forget them, you have used your working memory. So how important is working memory for your students?
To answer that question, let me ask you another one. Which is the better predictor of a student’s future academic success: their cognitive ability level (IQ) or their working memory? You probably guessed from the title—it’s working memory! (Of the two, which more closely correlates with their parents’ socioeconomic status and level of education? Their IQ.) Students who struggle with working memory are much more likely to struggle in school.
Signs of working memory difficulties in students:
- Repeating or skipping words when doing a task
- Repeating or skipping numbers in math calculation; place errors
- Appearance of not paying attention
- Difficulty following directions
- Not taking good notes
- Poor reading comprehension
- Problems writing sentences
- Giving up in frustration
- Being reserved during group activities in the classroom and sometimes failing to answer direct questions
School subjects affected by working memory:
- Spelling
- Math
- Reading
- History/geography
- Spanish
- Handwriting
- All of them!
Working memory and…
- ADHD: By definition, children with ADHD will generally have poor working memory.
- Dyslexia: About 70% of children with dyslexia have poor working memory.
- Cognitive Ability Level/IQ: Working memory is one component of IQ, but a child with a normal IQ can still have a low working memory.
- Age: The average 4-year-old has about one-half or one-third the working memory capacity of an adult. To determine if the child has low working memory, use a standardized test to compare to other children of the same age.
Can working memory be improved?
Like most brain processes, improvement can usually happen with practice. The challenge is determining the best way to practice and strengthen working memory skills.
Software programs like Cogmed and Mindware have mixed reviews. Some studies show long-term academic improvement from using these programs. Some studies show short-term improvement that might not be generalized to other situations. The only area of agreement seems to be that these programs are effective for helping children with ADHD.
Classroom schedules are busy, so finding adequate time to have students do working memory practices and drills could be challenging if not impossible. But you can do a lot to help your students who struggle with working memory. In my next post, I’ll share some specific ways you can support students with poor working memories so that they can be successful in your classroom.