A Memory Strategy; Chunking, Processing, and Paraphrasing

Many students with learning disabilities struggle with memory deficit issues. Primarily, they forget information they need to do well on tests or to do the higher-level thinking required for problem solving, analysis, and synthesis. For example, students who struggle to remember the details of a story can’t draw inferences from those details because they don’t remember the sequence of events or what happened at various points in the story. Remembering the details and foundation of what is being taught is critical to comprehending, applying, and analyzing what is being taught. A Tier Two intervention strategy to differentiate instruction for students struggling to remember information in the classroom is to use the memory strategy; Chunking, Processing, and Paraphrasing.

Limit (Chunk) Information

The brain can only hold about seven pieces of information at a time in short-term memory. What this means is that, if we teach for 20 minutes and we’ve given students more than seven things to remember, it’s too much. The only way we might (sometimes) get away with more than seven facts is if they are written in a very large font, or if we ‘chunk’ related information by color.

The brain can process information quickly off an overhead or from a PowerPoint presentation if we’ve chunked it with color. For example, five facts about short-term memory might be green, five facts about working memory could be brown, and five facts about long-term memory could be black. We chunk related information by color.

Paraphrase Immediately

Another strategy to enhance short-term memory so information isn’t “gone” in two seconds is to have a student paraphrase what we just taught. For example, after you’ve taught something important, ask a volunteer to paraphrase that information for the class. Most likely, your students will not relate the information in the same words you used, which will be novel to the brain. This strategy takes only seconds to do, yet it lets your students hear the information again, in a different way, with a different voice. The brain likes novelty and will remember the information better.

Paraphrase One Hour Later

Ask your students to paraphrase information that was shared earlier in the day. When they take something that you taught an hour ago and bring it back into “play,” it returns to short-term memory and is then pushed into working memory. Using this paraphrasing strategy in your classrooms will help students to remember what you are teaching. Memory Tricks: Feed the Brain Small Chunks at a Time.