Recommendations for working with children with low levels of memory development

Finding the Roots of the Problem

The appearance of memory problems in a child is an alarming call. The cause may be either simple fatigue and absent-mindedness, or functional disorders of brain activity. Constant monitoring on the part of parents of the ability to learn and remember new skills is a guarantee of the correct development of the little person.

Whether a child has memory problems can be determined by noting the following behavioral features:

• Insufficient adequacy of the baby in communicating with friends;
• Difficulties in responding to direct requests;
• Problems in completing new tasks;
• Complete confusion and misunderstanding in complex matters, an attempt to abandon them;
• Problems with attention;
• The child cannot apply skills in the instructions given to him.

Problems with learning may be caused by social, hereditary and acquired conditions of memory impairment. Social reasons include family lifestyle, constant lack of necessary foods and vitamins in the baby’s diet. It has a negative impact on development if the child almost never spends time in the fresh air or is not given much exercise; he is left to his own devices.

Hereditary causes include congenital mental retardation. In the case of acquired memory problems, the cause may be mental illness, the consequences of severe brain injury, conditions after a coma, or intoxication.

Partial memory loss is not uncommon after infectious diseases. In most cases, partial memory loss is possible due to a combination of several circumstances: an unfavorable environment in the children's group and at home, anxiety and fears, lack of vitamins.

How not to become a genius with the help of attention?

According to William Atkinson, who studies and develops memory and attention, if we train our attention, we can develop a certain degree of genius.

And you can develop attention unlimitedly, there are no limits. With focused attention, you can become the most productive and successful person.

You will be surprised to know how many minutes an ordinary person spends on solving problems out of 8 hours of working time - only 120 minutes or 2 hours) What would happen if he spent at least twice as much?

And now for the exercise. With all the previous exercises and games, we also developed attention. Scientists do not have a consensus on whether attention is an independent process or whether it is included in other cognitive processes.

There are arguments for both positions.

We will use games in which attention is trained along with memory, and games aimed at training only attention as an independent mental process.

There are fun exercises for this.

If you want to assess your child’s attention level, then go here: Tests for the development of memory and attention for schoolchildren for your own (will open in a new tab).

And you can evaluate and train your attention here: Tests for memory and attention in adults - the whole truth about the tests and their effectiveness (will open in a new tab).

So the game

Find everyone

Special pictures are taken and hidden images are looked for or the number of objects and animals is counted. At the same time, we also train figurative perception, for which the right hemisphere is responsible.

Find all the chickens (12 pieces) and 30 eggs.

Figurative pictures . Find 15 birds, etc.

"Find and neutralize." Cross out all the C's in the text within 1 minute. To do this, you can take any text from the book. Complication: cross out C, underline A, etc.

Or such a task

Find the desired sequence of letters, numbers, shapes.

Labyrinths. My daughter's favorite activity.

If you want to seriously engage in your child’s attention and yours, as well as attune the child’s brain, then the easiest way to do this is Schulte’s Tables, you will find them at this link (will open in a new tab).

Memory recovery techniques

What to do if a child has poor memory and attention is advised by specialized specialists: a child psychologist and a neurologist. You may have to conduct a full comprehensive examination and prescribe therapeutic treatment. As a rule, the prescription includes a complex of vitamins and medications that improve cerebral circulation - nootropics. It is recommended to undergo a course of treatment with a psychologist; the purpose of such classes is to make the child believe in his own strength and remove anxiety and fears.

At school, after primary school, the workload increases sharply. There are frequent cases of complaints from middle school students about difficulties with memorization, frequent headaches, and fatigue. Children are distracted in class, inattentive, and their performance declines. What to do if a 10-year-old child has poor memory depends on the cause of the problem. Often it lies in the unpreparedness of the brain for new loads.

In such cases, parents are advised to review their child's time management over the course of a few days. Timing will give a picture of the time spent on clubs, sports sections, computer games, and recreation itself. Children, like adults, are required to rest in order to have time to recuperate. With a lack of time for rest and short sleep, the brain does not have time to rest, and as a result, the student cannot concentrate, he is distracted, and memory problems appear.

To correct the situation, parents are obliged to organize the child’s working day and should help with particularly difficult tasks. It is recommended to pay special attention to enhanced nutritious nutrition. Be sure to increase the consumption of fish, meat products, and fruits in your daily diet. If possible, add blueberries, they activate the brain.

It must be remembered that regular memory development exercises help restore its functions. The brain should be trained regularly from the very cradle; even in adulthood, regular exercises can significantly develop the quality of memory.

Recommendations from psychologists and speech therapists include reading fairy tales to little ones, preferring fairy tales with frequent repetitions, they are easier to remember, and auditory memory develops here. When the child grows up and can repeat poems and short passages himself, the number of texts to memorize should be increased.

A child psychologist will tell you what to do if a child doesn’t remember poetry well. Motivation for success when reading poems and fairy tales learned by heart gives impetus and incentive to the development of semantic and figurative memory. You should devote as much time as possible to the baby, he should not be left alone, only in communication, in play situations, in continuous “why” the brain develops, and the number of connections between neurons increases.

The Montessori method is recommended in games with children: after playing with a certain number of objects, you should quietly pick up one of the objects. The child must determine on his own, without prompting, which item is missing. This game develops observation skills and is very useful.

The game “Where and how it lies” will help develop the child’s thinking and logical memory. For this game, it is recommended to collect small objects from different rooms of the apartment into one box (bag). The child takes out the items one after another and comments on the location of the item in the apartment, then he takes all the items back to their place. Or train with tasks like these:

To develop associative memory, you should pay attention to small details while talking with your child, for example, the smell and bright color of flowers in a flowerbed, details of clothing of passers-by, the shape of clouds before rain. Associative memory helps to remember images of various events and phenomena.

The scary truth about visual memory

Vision is the main channel of perception for most people; we receive 80% of information through the organs of vision. We trust our eyes more than our ears.

This type of memory is developed to perfection in people of creative professions - artists, designers, architects, fashion designers.

The volume of this memory has no limits. An experiment was conducted: subjects were shown photographs, and then new ones were offered. They had to choose the ones they had seen before...

The volume of pictures successfully presented to the subjects reached 11,000, but this was not the limit.

There is another type of this memory - photographic. It is associated with the memory of the right hemisphere. The right hemisphere thinks in images, pictures.

If it is developed, then a child, having read a book once, can retell it all or answer questions by turning it over in his head. Makoto Shichida’s technique develops this ability in children (link will open in a new window).

And by developing photographic memory, we will develop the right hemisphere, which is responsible for imagination and intuition.

All 5 senses are connected to the right figurative hemisphere. By developing all the senses, we also develop our right hemisphere.

Very interesting exercises for developing visual memory

1. Look carefully at an object for 30 seconds, noticing all the important details, and then close your eyes and try to mentally imagine it, and then draw it from memory.

It is important to draw from a mental image, and not from a living object.

2. Take 7 colored pencils or draw 7 geometric shapes of different colors, ask your child to look at them for 30 seconds to remember. Cover the objects and let the child describe all 7 objects from memory.

After he finishes describing, show him these items again if he made a mistake. Let him look at them again and describe them again.

You can play outside. Agree with your child that you will describe the passerby who just passed by.

3. Remembering details. For example, you agreed to remember the face of a person you know. Start memorizing with details. What a nose he has, what eyes.

4. Game "Find the differences"

Take pictures according to the age of the children.

But the most important thing is that you should not look for differences, since isolating is the ability of the left hemisphere, the logical one, but you need to train the perception of the whole picture.

Show one picture for 2 seconds, and then show two and ask the child to say which one he saw first.

5. The fastest exercise “What’s missing?” Scatter whatever items you have on hand on the table. Lotto cards, maps, small toys, cutlery if you are in the kitchen. Start with 7 pieces.

Let the child look at them for a few seconds, then until the child sees, remove one and mix the rest. Let the child say which item is missing.

There are special exercises that develop photographic memory, but I will talk about them later.

6. You can use the Sperling map.

Look at the map for 20 seconds to remember, then write on a piece of paper what you remember, trying to reproduce everything correctly.

If you want to train your visual memory, then this is the place for you, and techniques for developing photographic memory are here (links will open in a new window).

The importance of proper nutrition

A balanced, nutritious diet increases the chances of recovering temporary memory impairment. It is necessary to normalize the water balance, therefore, the child must drink the required amount of drinks, freshly squeezed juices and water. Basic products for a complete schoolchildren's diet:

• Sea products (shrimp, fish, kelp) - up to 3 times a week;
• Nuts (almonds, hazelnuts, cashews, walnuts) - 3-4 nuts per day;
• Fruits vegetables;
• Berries, especially blueberries, cranberries and black currants;
• Cereals - buckwheat and oatmeal;
• Adding sesame, pumpkin and sunflower seeds to salads and cereals;
• Honey, chocolate, dried fruits;
• Milk - at least 2 glasses per day.

It is necessary to plan the child’s daily menu in such a way that the supply of nutrients from food is complete and of high quality. You should monitor your water balance throughout the day; priorities are freshly squeezed juices, fruit drinks, and herbal infusions.

Age characteristics

In preschoolers

Age: 4-5 years.

Features of the processes of memorization and reproduction in young children:

• the higher the intellectual abilities and the better developed the speech, the stronger the neural connections;
• Mostly involuntary memory works, which is trained during the game, captivating and interesting the child;
• free is still poorly developed: it is undesirable to set a direct goal - learn (memorize) a poem, song, etc.;
• the main storage base is short-term, but with constant training and repetitions, a long-term one begins to form;
• The main causes of violations and problems are psychological trauma, congenital diseases, and pedagogical neglect.

The main task: to simultaneously develop speech, intellectual abilities, attention and memory in preschool children.

Leading types:

• short-term;
• involuntary;
• figurative.

The most winning techniques:

• game (as a leading activity in preschool age);
• finger gymnastics;
• speech exercise.

Other techniques (exercises, mnemonics) are used, but less frequently and not as effectively. In order for the development of memory in preschool children to occur in accordance with the norms, both teachers in kindergarten and parents at home should deal with this issue. If you miss this moment, serious problems with learning will arise in elementary school.

In primary school

First stage

Age: 6-7 years.

Features of the processes of memorization and reproduction in children of primary school age:

• The connection between basic mental processes is becoming more and more clearly revealed: thinking, attention, memory, speech characteristics - the others depend on the level of formation and degree of development of one;
• voluntary memory gradually begins to come into play when the child is given a specific task to learn something through elementary repetitions;
• for this, efforts begin to be made, which requires perseverance;
• the child’s adaptation to school and his academic success directly depend on this;
• the main storage base remains short-term, but at the same time long-term storage is intensively and quickly formed;
• the causes of violations and problems are psychological trauma, pedagogical neglect.

The main task: to develop memory and attention, to prepare the child for new types of activities.

Leading types:

• short-term;
• involuntary;
• figurative, emotional.

The most winning techniques:

• didactic game;
• finger gymnastics;
• speech exercises;
• exercises.

Second phase

Age: 8-9 years.

Features of the processes of memorization and reproduction in younger schoolchildren:

• the connection between mental processes begins to weaken: what was emphasized first develops - a high IQ or literate speech without errors at this age is not a guarantee of a strong and good memory;
• diligent, academically successful children understand how important it is to develop voluntary, selective memory, while for difficult students the leading one remains involuntary;
• repeated repetitions and memorization are required;
• the balance between short-term and long-term memory is quite individual: for some the former remains the leading base for storing information, for others the latter overtakes it;
• The main causes of violations and problems are psychological trauma, infectious diseases, and pedagogical neglect.

The main task: using a variety of techniques to develop different types of memory.

Leading types:

• short-term;
• voluntary and involuntary - the same;
• figurative, emotional, motor.

The most winning techniques:

• didactic game;
• speech exercises;
• exercises;
• logical problems.

First of all, teachers should develop memory in young students in elementary school, and parents and psychologists should actively help them.

In the middle management

Age: 10-12 years.

Features of the processes of memorization and reproduction during the transition period:

• if speech and attention at the previous stages were not sufficiently developed, thinking and memory are also lame, but the latter are more closely related to each other, so they should continue to be developed in parallel;
• despite the fact that involuntary memory remains the most effective and does not cause difficulties, voluntary memory comes to the fore, since it is it that provides the ability to memorize the required amount of educational material;
• repeated repetitions and memorization continue as the basis for development;
• by this age, the long-term one should normally be fully formed;
• The main causes of disorders and problems are psychological trauma, illness, head injury, and the onset of puberty.

The main task: to develop the child’s memory in terms of volume in order to prepare him for the senior level.

Leading types:

• short-term and long-term;
• arbitrary;
• figurative, emotional, motor, verbal-logical.

The most winning techniques:

• didactic game;
• exercises;
• neurobics;
• logical problems.

The development of memory in children in the middle level of school is carried out by subject teachers, parents and, if necessary, psychologists.

In teenagers

First stage

Age: 12-13 years.

Features of the processes of memorization and reproduction in early adolescence:

• the development of various mental processes gradually levels out;
• voluntary memory is fully formed, the child knows how to use it to the fullest;
• the number of repetitions is reduced, memorization is used only for poems and formulas, because the basis becomes personal experience and the complete assimilation of information that needs to be recorded;
• the teenager learns to use the long-term one, but at the same time it is necessary to constantly train the short-term one;
• to broaden your horizons, it is recommended to start attending clubs, sections, and find a hobby;
• The main causes of disorders and problems are psychological trauma, hormonal imbalance as a result of puberty, and past illnesses.

The main task: to improve memory, if some points were missed before, and to develop it in terms of volume and variety of types.

Leading types:

• short-term and long-term;
• arbitrary;
• figurative, emotional, motor, verbal-logical.

The most winning techniques:

• exercises;
• neurobics;
• computer and board games;
• logical problems.

Second phase

Age: 14-17 years.

Features of the processes of memorization and reproduction in older adolescence:

• for the further development of basic mental processes, the school curriculum becomes insufficient; it is necessary to constantly give the teenager additional workload;
• voluntary and involuntary are equalized in degree of significance and frequency of use;
• to remember information with well-developed thinking, understanding it and personal interest in it is enough;
• in terms of their functioning, long-term and short-term are aligned;
• development is as close as possible to the state of memory in an adult;
• The main causes of disorders and problems are psychological trauma, lifestyle (poor diet, smoking, alcohol), puberty.

The main task: to switch to more complex techniques, as close as possible to exercises and tasks for adults.

Leading types:

• short-term and long-term;
• arbitrary;
• figurative, emotional, motor, verbal-logical.

The most winning techniques:

• exercises;
• computer games;
• quests;
• mnemonics;
• neurobics;
• logical problems.

Subject teachers in high school continue to select tasks for students to develop memory and other mental functions. The role of parents in this matter is gradually disappearing, as teenagers themselves begin to become interested in exercises, tests, tasks and mnemonics for individual training.

Recommendations for parents

Parents are often at a loss if their baby shows signs of poor memory and cannot remember anything. But we must not give in to panic and know what to do in such situations, how to restore lost memory skills to a small family member, and how to prevent breakdowns in the future.

The brain, as one of the important organs, constantly needs training. More time should be devoted to training and consolidation of the material covered. Game moments are important; you should unobtrusively invite the child to play a game with the key question: “What did we learn (watch, read) yesterday (the day before yesterday, three days ago)?”

The child must calmly talk about events at school, about a conversation in a store; it is necessary to develop memory skills using such everyday examples. Memorizing poems, jokes, and sayings has a beneficial effect on the development of memory. It is recommended to go back several days on the material you have learned. To help your child memorize poems, it is recommended to learn the poem from color pictures. Logical memory enhances the memorization of the material covered.

If a child has a poor memory, and he does not look away from his tablet or smartphone and spends all his free time with “electronic friends,” parents are obliged to distract him in various ways, offer to go to the zoo, to an exhibition, to a museum. The baby must receive new information from the external environment.

An easy way to develop auditory memory

Does it happen that someone is talking nearby, but you don’t hear? Or the child is in class, but hears only his name from the entire stream of information, when the teacher has already noticed that he is flying and is addressing him.

This happens because attention is not directed to this information. Or it may be that the child is listening, but the information goes into one ear and out the other)

Training sound memory is, fortunately, also training attention and interest. There are many exercises to develop auditory memory.

Try repeating or 10 words.

We say the sequence of words out loud, and then ask the child to repeat these words. You can start with a sequence of 5 words.

Summer, winter, ship, table, door. Then lengthen the sequence of words.

How can you help your child remember words? And you can perform amazing tricks with them: enlarge, reduce, attach ears, nose, so that they become funny, then memorizing will be a joy and more effective.

Fun game "Snowball"

At least two people play together. The first one says a word, and the second one repeats the word and adds his own. Each player repeats the words already spoken in the same sequence and adds new words, and so on.

At first you can limit yourself to 10 words. The addition can be any noun, adjective, verb.

The most effective exercise

The most amazing and useful exercise. It develops not only auditory memory and increases its volume, but also gives pleasure. I am interested in games and exercises that provide a lot of benefits in all areas.

This is a very important activity and very, very useful. It's like drinking clean water for the body. It is also necessary to do this exercise, namely, learn it by heart!

We can say that it is enough for a child not to learn, but to understand. However, we have two ways to remember: to create a trail (path) through repetition and to connect it with something by association.

Let's say the child understands the definition. And what will he connect him with, with the teacher? This is also an option)

But a child’s understanding hangs in the air, if he does not have a base on which to rest, his understanding of the subject becomes attached.

But learning by heart provides this basis. Therefore, learning by heart is important! This was said by our scientist Natalya Bekhtereva, who studied the brain for 40 years. She lamented that we had abandoned the most effective way to develop memory.

Nowadays, students have empty-head syndrome, because parents have become very ambivalent about this action; at school they rarely ask to learn by heart.

It’s good that we are also asked to learn poems and multiplication tables by heart.

How to remember correctly for a long time is outlined here (will open in a new tab).

How to train a child's memory? You need to do the most useful and simple exercise

It’s better to take poetry, poems. Choose a poem for your child or together with him and teach one line a day. You need to repeat the line until you remember it.

Teach until he can repeat the line from the beginning or from the end so that he knows where each word goes.

It is necessary that every word be understandable and its image seems to stand before your eyes. Let him think about the word itself, about its meaning; you can mentally draw pictures of what he remembers.

Then learn the next line with the same effect, etc. And the most important thing is that you repeat the learned previous terms. One line every day. When you have learned the entire poem, you can move on to the next one.

Then you will discover that a child can memorize not just one line, but two, three, and then you will be surprised.

The effect of this exercise is not only developed auditory memory, but also an increase in the volume of memorization, memory capacity, development of attention, and most importantly, interest in words.

Another effective exercise is musical

Nowadays, children listen to music. So, turn on a simple melody, listen to it with your child, and then try to repeat the melody together, sing it or whistle it.

This greatly develops hearing, as well as attention and interest in sounds. And, of course, auditory memory.

If you haven’t read about music that can help you memorize faster, then read the article How to use music to develop your brain and memory - personal experience. 5 best songs (opens in a new tab).

This is not just music, but music that helps you remember a lot and quickly!

How to train your memory

Preschool children perceive the learning process best in a playful way. To develop logical thinking and imagination, games of invented stories and associations are suitable. Classes on the topic “what is common” develop associative thinking and attention.

Adults should read to children as much as possible and ask them to retell what they read; they should also ask questions: how did the child understand the text, what conclusions did he draw? Drawing, visualizing images and learning new words has a beneficial effect on memory.

Middle group project “My Family”: GCD lesson plan

Classes for children 8 years old

At the age of eight, a child’s erudition expands and his intelligence grows, but each student perceives and remembers the information received differently. As a rule, girls “get involved” in lessons faster than boys, and if an important topic was discussed at the beginning of the lesson, not all children remember the material received. The best exercise for memory is repeated repetition and practice with pictograms. The ability to reproduce poems or stories using pictograms forms thought processes and logic.

Exercises for visual-object memory

The “Photographs with the Eyes” exercise will help you develop skills, create and maintain a visual image; the child looks at the image of a picture full of details for a minute, then describes what he saw, adults ask leading questions. Copying a pattern from geometric shapes, recreating colors, and simple designs from cubes also help to remember what you see.

Memory development

Improving visual memory

Methods to improve the memorization of images will help develop attentiveness, teach you to concentrate and retain whole pictures with small details in memory. The “verbal portrait” exercise is carried out after meeting a new person; the child is asked to describe his appearance in detail. To improve visual memory, memories are suitable; children reproduce the events of the past day, describing small details.

Method for improving auditory memory

Auditory memory helps you remember, retain and reproduce what you hear. The best way to improve would be to read poems, sayings, proverbs slowly and expressively; you can also use audiobooks.