Year 6 have realised that their everyday school life requires them to remember many things! Time tables, spellings, punctuation rules, homework, vocabulary, scientific facts…the list goes on and on. It comes as no surprise that our brain oversees these things; and that working memory differs from one person to the next. Indeed, the ways in which individuals can process, retain and recall information is dependent on many factors.
With this in mind, Year 6 set out to investigate how strong their own working memory is. Each student created a memory board based upon a theme of their choice. The range included: foods, drinks, sports, football teams, football payers, landmarks, art styles and more! The memory boards included an array of images and words. With the ground work complete, Year 6 students were ready to experiment.
Working in pairs allowed the students to memorise each other’s boards within a set amount of time. Once time was up they had to note what they had memorised; gaining valuable points in the process for every image and word recalled correctly.
This proved more challenging than originally thought. In our plenary of the lesson, it was interesting to note how different individuals employed different memorisation strategies. Such strategies included: word recognition, picture analysis, working with the positioning of items on the board and so on. More importantly, this was an excellent Science/Mind Up exercise in noting how we memorise; and how we can develop our own memory skills to assist life and work in the future.
