Why children need Memory Booster

In today's increasingly complex world there are so many situations and occasions when children need to remember things - information, instructions, learning things for tests and exams, lists of things to do during the day. Many children find this task overwhelming and frequently forget things, to the annoyance of their parents and teachers. Some children - especially those with dyslexia or specific learning difficulties - have exceptionally poor memory skills, and these can result in them underperforming in school. Parents and teachers of these children often report that although they understand the work nevertheless they do badly in tests and examinations because they forget the material.

Memory Booster is a NEW and exciting approach to helping children improve their memory skills, requiring very little teacher or parental guidance.

Training children to use memory strategies

Towards the latter part of the primary school stage some - but by no means all - children begin spontaneously to use simple memory strategies that will help them remember things. It is not normally until well into secondary school that children spontaneously discover the more complex memory strategies that are necessary for effective learning.

However, psychological and educational research has shown that children of primary school age can be trained to use memory strategies, and can benefit from them in their learning on an everyday basis. By enabling children to acquire effective memory strategies the teacher or parent is helping to equip them with skills that will enhance their attainment in school both in the primary stage and beyond. With practice, these strategies should become automatic, so that in time learning and remembering requires less effort and more can be accomplished in the time available.

A big advantage of Memory Booster is that it does not require teacher or parent input to be effective, because the program teaches the memory strategies, provides structured practice in applying those strategies and gives a print-out of the child's progress that the teacher or parent can review at leisure. The program can automatically adapt to the individual child's needs and provide prompts where necessary, so that learning is maximised.

Children with dyslexia

Children who have dyslexia typically have memory difficulties. Usually these difficulties are in auditory working memory, so they tend to forget instructions, have problems learning multiplication tables, and easily lose track of what they are doing (e.g. when reading, writing, or doing arithmetic). Working memory also affects children's acquisition of phonics (i.e. learning the relationships between letters and sounds).

Some children with dyslexia have problems with visual memory, so they find it hard to recognise words by sight (e.g. using 'flash cards'), and also cannot find their way around using visual cues (e.g. in an unfamiliar place). Visual memory is also very important in spelling, because a great many English words are irregular and their spelling does not follow phonic rules. The only way to learn to spell irregular words is by using visual memory.

Whether they experience problems in auditory working memory or visual memory, or both, children with dyslexia should find Memory Booster especially helpful, because it teaches them strategies to learn more effectively and remember more easily. Memory Booster contains both visual and auditory/verbal features and has a beneficial effect on all types of memory problems.

Click on a link below for more information:

More information about dyslexia
British Dyslexia Association