Understanding Will - Part 2. I can't remember facts and processes.

This is the second in a series of blog posts that have helped Will develop learning and organizational strategies that have helped him succeed both academically and socially. A short introduction to this series of posts can be found here

Will said:

I find it difficult to remember facts and ways of doing things.

What is going on in Will's brain?

1. Will has to encode, retrieve, hold and manipulate task relevant information using the mechanisms that control attention and the switching of attention. This is a complex, cognitive activity and it places high demands on his working memory.
2. Will finds it difficult to select, manipulate and inhibit information that is not meaningful or interconnected. Inefficiencies in Will's attentional process place high demands on his working memory and he struggles to remember facts and processes.

The Impact:

1. Will needs to understand information before he can remember and assimilate it. If he does not understand information, he struggles to hold, chunk, store, retrieve and transfer the isolated, unsupported facts and he is unlikely to remember it/them.
2. Will lacks relational understanding and this prevents him from recalling and applying knowledge.

Strategies that help Will learn:

Will's retention of facts and processes is supported by helping him understand the relevance of information and how it is interconnected to prior learning.

Modelling the following strategies (demonstrating how they are used) and then encouraging Will to use them helps him to remember facts and ways of doing things.

• Mnemonics and acronyms (e.g. singing the alphabet, thirty days has September song for remembering the number of days in each month, remembering FACE for the names of the notes written in the spaces on the treble clef music stave,
• Chunking(breaking down information into smaller chunks that are easier to remember)
• Categorization and associations (sorting and organizing objects/information into different groups by attributes e.g. colour, words starting with same first letter, types of chemical compounds.)
• Visualisation strategies e.g. Mind Mapping, use of graphic organisers, icons and drawings and colour coding (Computer software can often be used for these. Will uses MindNode for Mind Mapping)
• Frequently reviewing and rehearsing processes and information using the above strategies, e.g. a mind map to help.