Working memory is not just remembering things, but it is the ability to hold information in memory and manipulate information in our heads. We use this ability to pull from past experiences and apply it. It develops early in infancy and is seen when you play a “hide the toy” game with a baby. You take a toy and, while the child is looking, put it under a blanket. Initially, the child will likely not look for the hidden toy, but over time, the child will pull the blanket off the toy to find it. This is using working memory. The child uses past information about the toy being under the blanket and is able to pull from past experiences to find the toy.
Since children don’t have as many experiences to draw from and because they have as much language to connect to those experiences, working memory takes more effort in children than adults. It is hard to follow multiple-step directions if you don’t know the words first, next, then, or last. Time and distance between the input of the information and the need to use it also stretch as children get older.
Weak working memory skills in the classroom:
- Can’t remember to turn in homework that has been completed
- Forgets materials for class or has incomplete materials
- Forgets what they are saying when they are talking
- Can’t keep track of a schedule when it changes
- Following directions is difficult. They may get one or two steps, but won’t get them all
- Forgets about long-term projects or upcoming tests
To improve any executive function skill, you want to teach the skill directly, incrementally increase the load of that skill, and do it repeatedly. When we teach an executive function skill, we do this by building that skill into the environment and modeling it. Add routines into the classroom that require the student to practice that skill with a structure in place.
To support working memory, get students’ direct attention before telling them something. Reduce distractions in the environment. When there are other things going on, it pulls the focus away from the needed task. Don’t multitask. Multitasking is a fallacy because we think we are focusing on many things at once, but we are actually quickly switching focus between different tasks. Help the student learn strategies to support their working memory. These will look different for each person, so trial different ideas and have the student give input to tweak the concept to best work for them.
What we want to do is work out our working memory. There are many ways you can help students do this. Practice repeating information or writing it down. Rehearse something over and over. I can’t tell you how many times I have repeated a phone number or other bit of information over and over while I looked for a piece of paper to write it down. Use visual supports instead of just saying something. When we say something, it is “gone” as soon as it is said, but when we provide visual supports, then that stays in place and can be used later.
Additional ways to support working memory include using a mnemonic. We all used these in school to learn the colors of the rainbow or the order of operations in math. When we chunk information into smaller bits, it is easy to remember. George Miller shared Miller’s theory of memory in 1956 and found that we can remember 7 bits of information +/- 2. Creating routines helps to build a pathway for information, thus making it easier to remember. Consider teaching someone else what you learned or how you remember something. Research supports that teaching others will help you remember and learn information.
When using our working memory, we often use our inner voice. We “talk” to ourselves in our head to walk us through the steps. To teach this to students, you need to model it for them by talking your thought process aloud. Growing up, I remember my mom talking about needing to defrost meat for dinner and that she needed to pull it out of the freezer in the morning so that it had time to defrost. Just her saying this thought aloud modeled for me the thought process to learn this skill. The visual side of this is using imagery. Imagery is a mental anchor that allows you to see it in your head and practice what you need to do visually before doing it. Russell Barkley states in the book Executive Functions, What They Are, How They Work, and Why They Evolved. “Repeated practice; self-monitoring, self-stopping, seeing the future, saying the future, feeling the future, playing with the future so as to effectively plan and go toward the future.” A fun activity related to imagery is to ask students, “How do you visualize the months of the year?”
This activity does three things:
- Introduces visualization
- Shows the students that not everyone visualizes things the same way
- Begins to get students to think about how they think
Consider your classroom now. Do you have supports in place to model working memory for students? Try adding one or two of these strategies to your classroom to support the development of working memory.
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