An academic task that would pose difficulty for a child with low working memory would be subtraction with regrouping or addition with regrouping. The many steps that the children have to remember to do, while doing computation make this task difficult.
When teaching this concept, we always begin at the concrete level with just using the place value blocks and slowly move into the written task. Still many children, low working memory or not, struggle with remembering what to do first.
To help the children remember the steps I attempted to create a song that would help them remember what to do when they needed to regroup to get more ones. I used the song "Ballin the Jack" as a melody. This is what we sang...
First we cross the tens out and we write one less
Then add ten to the ones place and your ready to subtract
When the kids sang these two lines it seemed to help them remember the first two steps and then they could continue with the algorithm. I have found that whenever I add a rhythm or song to a memory task, we seem to remember it better.
2 comments:
Cindy I love your idea and the song. I think it is a great way to help the kids remember the steps. This year I used rap songs to teach the kids the states and capitals and they loved it. Nice job making up your own song...I am not that creative!
Cindy, I remember the song you introduced to me last year. It was on the water cycle. It proved to be so very beneficial. The students sang it each day throughout the unit. They memorized the process while having lots of fun. Most important, they understood the cycle! Singing and chanting is whole class involvement, and to be honest, kids want to have fun while learning! Nice Job!!
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