How We Support Children to Remember More at  Langdale Primary School

The development of working memory is crucial to pupil engagement and academic success, especially when it comes to reading. To retain what they’re learning; pupils need to develop strategies that support their memory and ultimately improve their ability to retain information and learn.

Working memory refers to the ability that we have to hold and manipulate information in the mind for short periods of time. There’s a limit to the amount of information that can be held in the working memory and, if this limit is exceeded, at least some of what we are trying to remember is forgotten.

How much information can be stored is affected by many factors, particularly in the school environment, where background noise can affect retention.

Working memory helps children to hold on to information long enough to use it and plays an important role in concentrating and following instructions. Weak working memory skills can affect learning in many different subject areas including reading, writing and maths. Good working memory skills help pupils to retain important information, such as instructions from the teacher, in the face of distractions from classmates, wall displays, noise and their thoughts and feelings.

The staff at Langdale have developed a range of strategies to help children to remember more…

• The Rosenshine's principals are embedded into all lessons.
• Encourage questions to help them understand the subject.
• Create rhymes and songs.
• Make learning exciting.
• Encourage active learning.
• Use visual aides.
• 'Over-learning' to help knowledge to stick.
• Regularly check for understanding.
• Spaced retrieval (quizzing) so that long-term memory and recall are strengthened away from the recency of knowledge.