Working Memory is the ability to store information briefly and manipulate it in mental processes.

Intended Outcomes:

To improve your child’s ability to…

· Respond appropriately when having a conversation.

· Carry out instructions.

· Read unknown words.

· Paraphrase spoken information (e.g. repeating back information heard/ instructions to clarify).

 · Answer questions and remember what to say when their turn to talk (in class, conversation).

· Organise themselves

· Problem solve

· Carry out reading comprehensions

· Carry out mental mathematics.

What can you do to help at home?

· Play games that use visual memory: Matching games are great for visual memory (e.g. Memory, Snap, Pairs, Bingo).

· Get your child to teach you: Encourage them to explain how to do a new skill they are learning and teach you how to do it. By working on their explanation it will support them to make sense of what they have learned and file it away in their memory.

· Play card games: This can support working memory through both remembering the rules of the game and remembering which cards they have in their hand and which ones have been played already (e.g. Go Fish, Uno, Crazy 8’s).

· Games that involve repeating sequences of information, forwards and backwards: Using colours, shapes, food items, days of the week, clothes, animals, numbers, friends’ names.

· Word list games: such as “I went to the shop/zoo/beach and I saw….”. · The game ‘Guess Who?’: The child has to eliminate characters by asking questions about what their character looks like using memory of the facial features.

· “Simon Says” and other instructional games: Give the child more than one instruction at a time and see if they can remember them all (e.g. “sit down, put your hands on your head then blink three times”)