Memory and Sight Words

Make Lists

Sometimes we can’t remember everything; we have to write information down in a list! This is another important point to teach kids and young adults, who sometimes feel overly confident in their abilities to remember instructions (i.e. The student who says they don’t need to write down their homework, but when they get home, they can’t remember what to do).

Practice making lists for all sorts of tasks: homework, the steps to start a project, the steps in a science lab, and even the day’s schedule. Writing these steps out can help them linger in a child’s brain a bit longer, while also creating a permanent record for what to do next.

Use Brain Games

Brain games are puzzles, brainteasers, and other activities that can make working on working memory skills a bit more fun. As a bonus, these also work on various other executive functioning skills such as attention, metacognition, planning, and time management. Create your own brain games, or use these digital and printable executive functioning brain games to get started.

Visualize

Visualizing is picturing images and words in our brains. In an adult real-life example, you might do this while someone is giving you directions on how to get from point A to point B. Picturing the route in your mind can help you navigate to where you want to go. The same is true with following any set of directions or instructions. While going over the steps for a project or activity in class, have students close their eyes and imagine doing each step.

Chunk and Group Information

Chunking is breaking information down into more manageable pieces. Since we don’t have an unlimited amount of working memory space in our brains, chunking makes easier to remember and recall information when we need it. One simple example of this is spelling out words: fri-end or Wed-nes-day. Another example is remembering sections for our grocery list instead of trying to remember every single item off the top of our head. You might group what produce you meat separately from the meats you need. Breaking these pieces of information down can help them stick longer in our brains.

You can practice this with kids by giving a set of items, numbers or letters. Then, have students repeat them back in “chunks.” For example, if you are remembering the number 135684, a student might say: 13-56-84 or perhaps 135-684.

Use Mnemonics

Mnemonics are memory devices we use to remember a longer set of words or phrases. One of the most common mnemonics used is PEMDAS, or “Please excuse my dear aunt Sally” to remember the steps for order of operations. Practice by making a mnemonic device for:

• The order of the planets in our solar system: Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, Neptune (MVEMJSUN)

• How to spell the word FRIEND

• The five great lakes: Superior, Michigan, Huron, Erie, Ontario (SMHEO)

Use Puzzles and Games

Many games, puzzles, and activities can help boost working memory skills. These can be great to do as a brain break or targeted directly to strengthen executive functioning skills. Here are a few favorites to test out:

• Follow the Beat – Clap out a beat with your hands. Have the student copy it right back. You can continue this with longer and more complicated beats as the student improves.

• Tongue Twisters – Say a phrase and have the student repeat it back. This can be fun because you can take turns giving this a try. Come up with your own silly phrases or use well-known tongue twisters.

• Card Games – Games like Uno and Go Fish are great options.

• Chess – A favorite game that works on skills like planning, attention, and working memory at once.

• Wait A Minute – Ask a question but have students wait a full minute (or longer) before answering. See how long they can hold onto their answers before they forget!

• Distraction – A game you can find on Amazon that boosts attention and working memory skills.