Instructional and Environmental Strategies for All Learners - Challenges with Memory/Recall (Updated July 2020)
Challenges with Memory/Recall
- Provide multiple opportunities for practice in different formats.
- Use flashcards for individual or group review.
- Use songs, rhymes, or rhythms to help remember information.
- Chunk pieces of information together. (For example have students learn the number facts in sets of three).
- Use acronyms to remember words or phrases.
- Use mnemonics to remember sequenced steps.
- Help students remember items of a list by visualizing that each is "located" at a different place in a familiar room (for instance to remember 3 shapes that are quadrilaterals, a student might visualize a square on the bed, a rectangle on the dresser, and a parallelogram on the desk).
- Use semantic maps and diagrams to help students remember the connections between concepts.
- Re-teach item of information as often as possible, varying the approach a little each time.
- Maximize the student's potential for success by providing a balance of visual and auditory stimuli in your teaching.
- Teach students to use self-questioning techniques.
- Play memory games.
- Provide the student with a written out schedule of classroom routines and timelines.
- Allow the student to trace over geometric shapes and other important visual patterns during visually presented lessons.
Additional Links and Resources:
- Wisconsin Assistive Technology Initiative Assistive Technology
- Math Learning Disabilities (LD Online)
- Consequences, Characteristics, and Causes of Mathematical Learning Disabilities and Persistent Low Achievement in Mathematics (National Center for Biotechnology Information, NCBI)
- What is Dyscalculia? (Attitude: Inside the ADHD mind)
- Intensive Intervention (National Center on Intensive Intervention, NCII)
- Virginia’s Guidelines for Education Students with Specific Learning Disabilities (Math strategies are available starting on page 23.)
- The Concrete-Representational-Abstract Approach for Mathematics Instruction (CRA)
- Page 3: Evidence-Based Mathematics Practices (IRIS Center) The Iris Center is a great resource for evidence-based math strategies for students with mathematics difficulties, such as schema instruction, explicit instruction, and using multiple representations.