Good memory is useful in many everyday situations. At school, it enables fast assimilation of new knowledge, coping with tests, increases activity during lessons. In contact with peers, it facilitates conflict resolution, gives the opportunity to amuse friends with a remembered joke, impress with knowledge. Good memory improves the organization of life – it is easier to have a lesson plan in mind than to constantly check it. A person with good memory is more credible, has a sense of control over reality.
How to support a child in shaping memory skills?
1. Concentration
The ability to concentrate is at the heart of memory. It decides whether a given material will be noticed at all and then “saved” in a long-term memory store. The easiest way to focus on what interests us raises positive associations, gives pleasure. Young children are able to focus for a very short time, and their concentration largely depends on their interest in the subject. Older children focus more consciously on the content they want to assimilate, but still, interest in the subject or positive emotions associated with the teacher is the most important factor/determinant of success for them.
If we want to help a child focus on learning a given material or skill, let us show him how to spice up this task, for example by playing roles, drawing, creating stories.
You can choose from many so-called Online Quran Classes in USA, which, in addition to making it easier to remember, also help in focusing attention through their attractiveness. Added to this are educational films and games, both board and computer ones. In addition, a suitable environment without distracting stimuli is helpful: an orderly desk, silence or the music chosen by the child. Because children often can perfectly focus their attention on what interests them, let us encourage them to focus on less attractive tasks and appreciate their efforts, not just measurable success.
2. Operating Memory
Good operational (working) memory facilitates the transfer of newly absorbed knowledge to long-term memory storage. Its capacity does not differ significantly from person to person: it can contain from 5 to 9 elements, i.e. for example name and address or mobile number, the beginning of the sentence that we want to learn by heart. It enables the manipulation of new information and extracted from long-term memory storage. It is somehow an intermediary between information received from the sense organs and long-term memory. It allows you to store for a piece of short-time information needed to complete a task, e.g. answering a teacher’s question, understanding a mathematical text task, rewriting from the board.
Working memory can be trained through games such as memory, checkers, word games, in which you need to repeat the lengthening chain of words.
3. World Knowledge System
It is easier for us to absorb information that we can incorporate into existing schemes. Therefore, extensive knowledge of the world improves memory performance. New information can be more easily remembered when it can be encapsulated with an entire network of associations. Knowledge can be acquired in a more attractive way by searching for curiosities on the Internet, doing projects on a given topic, taking part in various quizzes. It is worth asking children about what has interested them lately, what they have learned about the world, appreciate cognitive curiosity. For young children, it is extremely important to patiently answer the endless questions “why?”
4. Science in Motion
Movement gives us energy, oxygenates, reduces internal tension, and releases mood-improving endorphins. Is the natural need of children? Learning in connection with movement is much more attractive, and triggering pleasant emotions additionally makes it easier to remember the material.
In motion, you can learn foreign languages, poetry or prose fragments, any material transformed into a song or poem. At the school that Ron Clarck created, children, learn to dance and moving, most of the memory material. This is a very good form of learning for children with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder who cannot concentrate at all while sitting still at the table. In addition, children gain the opportunity for sustainable development – they not only absorb information but also train muscle strength, agility, and reflexes, coordination of the whole body.
5. Positive Emotions
It is known that memory works better when we are relaxed and we associate the material well. For children, the teacher is the key. An effective teacher is a teacher who has a good, warm relationship with his students. In teaching many subjects, you can use associations that stimulate the imagination and bring positive emotions (such as atoms that pull out their “paws” in the translation of chemical bonds, poems about pratchawce or mathematical jokes). Attractively constructed educational games with nice graphics and sound are also helpful.
6. Diversity and Rest
A brain that deals with one type of activity for a long time get tired quickly. Intensive mental work should be interspersed with rest breaks and changes in the type of tasks. It is also worth encouraging children to interdisciplinary projects that allow them to unleash creativity and build a richer network of associations in a memory warehouse. For example, when developing historical themes, you can suggest children compose their own music to match the events in question (war, industrialization, and rural life), create stories and illustrate them.
7. Diet
A memory-supporting diet should be rich in vitamins and minerals as well as substances that activate the work and regeneration of nervous system structures. Products recommended by dietitians (bananas, walnuts, sea fish or dark chocolate) should be included in the child’s diet according to his individual preferences, taking into account food allergies and other health conditions. An important task for parents and teachers is to make children aware of the need to take care of their body and mind, and to create a children’s habit of eating well, including drinking enough fluids.
8. Feeling of Safety
Feeling stress can significantly disrupt learning and extracting learned pieces of knowledge from memory. Students often complain of feeling “light-headed” during a test or oral response. A child who easily answers a variety of questions at home, from classrooms brings one or two.
Everyday serious insecurity can reduce the hippocampus – the brain structures that store information. Strong fear of an unpleasant teacher, fear of poor grades, mocking by peers, parents’ reaction to school failures can also significantly affect learning opportunities or opt Tajweed Classes Online. Resistance to stress
and a sense of security in a child can be built by setting realistic requirements, emotional support after failure, learning relaxation exercises, and in the event of more serious problems – at meetings with a psychologist.
