sequential memory

I don’t know why this is so hard for them, but my 11 year old son is the same way.

He also can’t tell time on an analog clock. And I’m the “Mom from h***” who would never buy her kids a digital watch until they learned to tell time on an analog clock. :-) I finally gave up with my 11 year old son.

Does this impact your son’s spelling and math calculation, too?

I’m looking forward to the replies you get!

Lil

You may be surprised about Audiblox. :) Audiblox is great for sequential memory, both visual and auditory.

My students will occasionally complain about it, but they each love when they break their personal record on one of the skills.

The time spent on it goes quickly as there are many different exercises to do.

On another note - I do not know of any program where results will be attained if hard work is not put into it. Sure this takes time and work, but you need to focus on the bigger picture. What will be the results of hard work in 6 months? 1 year? If learning becomes much easier, it will have been worth it.

I’m looking forward to reading other responses.

Lil-he can do the analog clock but spelling is a nightmare. Im homeschooling this year for the first time and we are doing Sequential Spelling which I have heard rave reviews about. So far, not much progress.

Of course, considering the name…LOL…I never made that connection before(sequential??)

Math varies. He picked up addition and subtraction easily-actually won class competitions back in 1/2 grade. Multiplication/division has been much more difficult. Ive allowed him to use a chart all this year thinking simple constant use would make it stick. No luck-I told him March 1st, no chart! Hes been dying the past two weeks!!

Guest-yes, you are absolutely correct! I have it in my mind that this was designed for very young children and that coupled with some of the hours and hours a day stories…well, its not a pretty picture

How much time do your students spend on the activities per day?

I know having a variety of activities will help-THAT is one of the biggest “aha” moments Ive had with homeschooling. Anything is more palatable in small chunks.

But can you do Audiblox in small chunks?

We spend about 35 minutes of class time a day in my regular ed. classroom.

Audiblox is appropriate for all age levels.

I think the recommended time for a child with difficulties is 1 hour per day. Typically during a one hour time, 10-11 exercises would be done. Some of those are repeats, but you would do a different exercise in between.

For a time, I would focus on the Audiblox and not feel like you have to get all the other subjects in. Other subjects will come along more quickly if the underlying deficits are remediated.

Audiblox has a CD out now that comes with their home program. It is called Compublox. In some cases I know this is used in place of doing some of the exercises with the tutor (you.) This might ease things up with you then.

I agree that Audiblox is likely to help sequential memory considerably. Most children need about 40 hours of training before you start to see significant improvements in everyday life, although some children show benefits much earlier and some don’t seem to break through until 60 hours or so.

You might want to add in 10 minutes per day of Quarter Mile Math software (http://www.thequartermile.com ) for math facts. As long as he is not a “guesser”, QMM is likely to help with math facts. You could precede QMM with the “Multiplication Facts the Fun Way” (just the book would be enough, since he is good at remembering stories) to give him a peg to “hang” a multiplication fact on. QMM then would help him speed up and automate the facts.

With this type of child, my best guess is that things like the alphabet and multiplication have no intrinsic meaning. Something like “Multiplication Facts the Fun Way” works because the child can easily remember a story and it invests the meaningless fact with some emotionality and meaningfulness. Website for MFFW is http://www.citycreek.com

Nancy

I and my daughter are otherwise excellent students but have a heck of a time with sequencing, also directionality. My daughter in particulr could not read an analog clock effectively until her late teens, and now over twenty she still has to stop, look carefully at each hand, and calculate — like the usual seven or eight year old.

Things that work for us:
— chanting memorization tasks to a rhythm — this is best for us
However, *no* cutesy tunes or dances etc. which add another distractor which is the problem, not the solution.
— extreme repetition and overlearning of memorization tasks — do the repetition *before* the forgetting and failure
— practicing physical tasks such as writing in the same way you practice a sport, repeated physical practice with emphasis on effective muscular control, position, etc. (this is good for almost everyone).
— pointing a finger or using other (small, almost unnoticeable) motions to get oriented with a task — my daughter still does this with a clock, and I half-close my eyes and do this for 3D graphs — and I *teach* 3D calculus!

Anecdote — taking a graduate school class in higher mathematics, there were some questions which involved 3D geometry and rotations of objects in space and sines and cosines of angles, just for starters. It happens that a 30-60-90 triangle gives you the info for both 30 degrees and 60 degrees, depending on which end is up, so you look at it to see if you are dealing with the tall way or the short way. One way to do this is to make a triangle with your two hands. So, I sat there in the exam making a couple of triangles to get oriented. Looked up into space to do the next visualisation, and there was a young man in the next row making triangles with his hands … we both managed to avoid breaking up laughing, but it was a close call. The point is that these simple methods are exactly the opposite of dumb — it is smart people who work out ways to simplify the memory load.

My computer is acting a little hyperactive since its memory wipe; it erases things sometimes without my wanting to, jumps around in programs, and posts without my clicking on “post”. If the beginning of this was posted above, sorry, this is the complete version.

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I and my daughter are otherwise excellent students but have a heck of a time with sequencing, also directionality. My daughter in particulr could not read an analog clock effectively until her late teens, and now over twenty she still has to stop, look carefully at each hand, and calculate — like the usual seven or eight year old.

Things that work for us:
— chanting memorization tasks to a rhythm — this is best for us
However, *no* cutesy tunes or dances etc. which add another distractor which is the problem, not the solution.
— extreme repetition and overlearning of memorization tasks — do the repetition *before* the forgetting and failure
— practicing physical tasks such as writing in the same way you practice a sport, repeated physical practice with emphasis on effective muscular control, position, etc. (this is good for almost everyone).
— pointing a finger or using other (small, almost unnoticeable) motions to get oriented with a task — my daughter still does this with a clock, and I half-close my eyes and do this for 3D graphs — and I *teach* 3D calculus!

Anecdote — taking a graduate school class in higher mathematics, there were some questions which involved 3D geometry and rotations of objects in space and sines and cosines of angles, just for starters. It happens that a 30-60-90 triangle gives you the info for both 30 degrees and 60 degrees, depending on which end is up, so you look at it to see if you are dealing with the tall way or the short way. One way to do this is to make a triangle with your two hands. So, I sat there in the exam making a couple of triangles to get oriented. Looked up into space to do the next visualisation, and there was a young man in the next row making triangles with his hands … we both managed to avoid breaking up laughing, but it was a close call. The point is that these simple methods are exactly the opposite of dumb — it is smart people who work out ways to simplify the memory load.[i][/i]

We’ve managed to pretty much remediate sequential memory without doing Audioblox so maybe some ideas I have will help. First, I think that IM did help my son–made it easier to learn.

Most of what we’ve done has been through our Neuronet program. One simple exercise that comes to mind is to bounce on a oversized exercise ball while clapping your knees in rhythm. You then say your name Be..th a..a, Be..th b..ee, two beats for each. Do every day until automatic—which took my son a week or two. Then you can make it harder by using a two syllable word like apple. You do a different two syllable word every week or two. Then switch to a different one every day. Then move to a three syllable word. Then you use a new three syllable word each day.

We also did things like counting by twos while stepping up on a stool and down. You can write out the counting in large print until he starts to get it.
We then did threes. We did this to a metronome.

Math Facts the Fun Way was a disaster for us (which Nancy recommended). My son never internalized the facts so when he forgot the pictures, we were back to square one. In other words, he did fine in third grade but didn’t retain a thing for fourth grade. So we then did skip counting on a ball and then all sorts of drills in the type that Victoria describes. We spent all of last year working on multiplication but he has retained it.

PACE also works on sequential memory but the exercises were too hard for my son so it never helped. I think a child like yours who cannot retain the alphabet also would find it too hard.

Beth

It has taken me a LONG time to get my son to memorize his multiplication tables and I’m expecting that we’ll need to continue working on them for years (even non-ld kids who *know* their tables forget them). He still isn’t completely automatic with some of them, but he’s getting better.

What I do is have him work on them at least a little bit every day using many of the techniques described here. I also try to vary approaches and another thing is that we’ll practice in the car while driving around town.

Is your son’s problem primarily sequencing, or are there langauge/word memory issues?

Guest

yes, many language/word memory issues.

Math can be such a strength for him but dividend, perimeter, quotient???? Yikes-he simply cannot keep the words straight even though he easily comprehends the concepts involved

His speech is very simple;his writing is as well. He knows what ‘enormous’ means but he would never speak it or write it

He has been in speech since 22 months of age

.

As a person who has a VERY HARD time learning new vocabulary- the only way I can do such task is by association with either yet another word that sounds similar or with a picture et.c.. This is however something that you may need to come up with ideas what he can associate the new word with.

My son’s teacher for example thought them that Denominator is “Down” when you write a division as a fraction. I do not have more ideas about math vocabulary since I had never learned it…

But when my son was learning about Calcium needed for bones and being in milk, I had pointed to him that all of these are white, so we drink white milk to get white calcium (salts of calcium are white) to built strong white bones; similarly, iron is red and it is found in red meat to helps us with our red blood.

There are many more ideas in a book “memory book” (? Do not remember the title but somebody recommended it here). Some of which I saw my son’s current school to teach them (like making a sentence in which words start in sequence with the same letter as a sequence of names they need to learn- when they were learning about solar system he memorized the sequence of planets this way- I do not remember his sentence though…but each child has made their own sentence).

And I agree with Victoria- overlearning is a key. I also found somewhere that a quick repetition every day for a few weeks is much better than long repetitions but only on some days.

Ewa