Increasing Learning Foundations | 5 Activities To Train Children’s Verbal Memory

Verbal vs Visual Short Term Memory

Our brains are equipped with various types of memory, each playing a unique role in how we learn and navigate the world. Two key foundations in this arena are short-term verbal memory and short-term visual memory. While they sound similar, their functions and impacts on children’s daily lives are distinctly different.

Short-Term Verbal Memory is like an internal voice recorder which momentarily holds the words and sounds we hear. When we say momentarily, this is important because it’s also a ‘use it or lose it’ ability in that it quickly fades after a few seconds. Anything we remember after this time is usually either being rehearsed (like trying to remember a telephone number before we can write it down) or has moved to our long-term memory (e.g. like remembering what someone said their name was).

On the other hand, short-term visual memory serves as our brain's snapshot feature. It captures and retains images and visual impressions for a brief period. Whether it's trying to draw something we can see, remember a face of someone new we’ve just met, or trying to copy actions when learning a new dance, short-term visual memory helps us navigate and interact with our environment effectively.

The Importance of Verbal Short Term Memory

While we’re not often aware of our Short-Term Verbal Memory, it’s always there in the background, ticking over. Every sentence, note in music, random noise we consciously hear is stored there for at least a few seconds. We only really become aware of this when either it’s stretched (e.g. “can you go and get these five items from another room…”), or we want to ‘replay’ something we just heard (e.g. normally just before we then ask “sorry, what did you say?”).

Short-Term Verbal Memory is especially important to be able to develop language skills, including vocabulary (imagine, even as an adult, trying to learn a new language if you could only keep in mind a single word or part of a word at a time). The more children’s Short-Term Verbal Memory develops and grows, the more language they can keep in mind and make sense of. For some children though, this ability remains limited which can present as a bottle neck to their speech and language development, and see their rate of progress feel like a steep uphill challenge.

Short-Term Verbal Memory is also very important for both vocabulary development and phonological awareness (i.e. being able to hear the sounds in words), and can therefore have a big impact on literacy development. If you feel that a child may be struggling with their Short-Term Verbal Memory, you can get general understanding of their capacity using the ‘quick assessment’ mentioned below (i.e. start by asking them to repeat back 2 numbers, and add one each time).

A Quick Assessment

To gain a general understanding of a child’s Short-Term Verbal Memory capacity, we can ask them to repeat back a series of numbers in the same order we say them. For instance, we can say the numbers “5, 2, 7” and ask them to repeat back “5, 2, 7” exactly how they heard them. We can start with just two numbers, and add one more each time to get a general sense of their capacity. The more numbers they can keep in mind and repeat back, the more Short-Term Verbal Memory capacity they have.

You can try this for yourself, asking a colleague/friend to repeat back numbers you say, before asking them to do the same with you. When doing this, you can sometimes feel that you have to concentrate harder to rehearse and repeat back the numbers when they get longer.

Increasing Children’s Short-Term Verbal Memory Capacity

Encouragingly, it’s not too hard to develop and expand children’s Short-Term Verbal Memory capacity. In the early years, Short-Term Verbal Memory naturally grows through exposure to situations and scenarios which encourage the brain to attend to and prioritise stretching this. Language, because of its repeated patterns, initially sparks this interest in young children’s brains and sprouts the first shoots of Short-Term Verbal Memory’s capacity. As children get a little older, we often encourage Short-Term Verbal Memory’s growth through asking them to repeat words in an attempt to learn them, or to repeat phrases in social contexts.

We can continue to help children grow their Short-Term Verbal Memory in many ways. Firstly, and perhaps most easily, we can prompt children throughout the day to repeat back any instructions ‘word-for-word’ (i.e. not summarising or rewording, but exactly how they hear it). What we’re doing here is actively and explicitly developing children’s ‘verbal rehearsal’ capacity. While this is something which may not naturally begin until the age of 7 years, helping children to achieve this earlier can support the development of their Short-Term Verbal Memory. However, it does also require some modelling from ourselves to verbally rehearse, rather than expecting children to do this spontaneously.

5 Short-Term Verbal Memory Games and Activities To Try

We can also play a series of games that ask children to repeat words over and over to themselves (not using any visual props). It’s best to engage in the following for 5-10 minutes at a time. This is because, if we’re maximising/stretching their capacity during these sessions, then children are likely to feel quite tired after this time (i.e. any longer and we won’t see benefits, and may put them off in the future). While we can do these in small groups, as you’ll see, they’re often best done 1:1 or with a group of 2-3 children at a time:

• Treasure Hunt. Here, we can give children a verbal ‘treasure list’ of items to collect from another classroom, room in the house or other area (e.g. “get me a X and a Y”). Before they go, it is important that we ask them to repeat back the list of items they have to get, and encourage them to keep saying these words as they go. We may find that we even have to walk with them and model this repetition to start with; if so, it shows just how much they need this. See how many they can get in 3-5 minutes (2+ items at a time).
• Picture Hunt. This is similar to the Treasure Hunt game, we can place a wide range of picture cards on a table the other side of the room (e.g. of objects and favourite film characters), and ask children to find 2 or more at a time. If there are enough cards, they child will need to repeat the words over and over to help them to remember while walking over to the table and looking through to find those they want. Using counters, this can be quite fun against the clock (e.g. 3-5 minutes) to see how many they can get in this time. This is also good for vocabulary development if we include words that the child is developing an understanding of in this mix.
• Robot Time. We can also give a series of instructions for the child to move about. For example ‘Robot [name]… move two steps forward, tap your nose, and jump to your left’. Make sure all the instructions have been given before they start, and encourage them to say these instructions back to themselves as they move through the actions.
• I went to the market and I bought… Like many classic games, this is actually really helpful for building Short-Term Verbal Memory capacity. If you’re not familiar with this, you start by saying “I went to the market and I bought… an apple”, the child then adds an item on and says “I went to the market and I bought… an apple, and a car”. Play continues with each of you repeating the list you have just heard and adding one item to the shopping list. Variations are great for keeping interest too e.g. I went to… the moon and took… / the playground and played… / Roblox and built...
• Story – Repeat (Echo Reading). Here, we read a story aloud to the child, pausing after each sentence and ask them to repeat back as much of what they just heard (word for word) as they can. The length of the sentences can be increased over time. As the child is not directly reading, they can choose books of interest above their reading level. This approach is also known as ‘Echo Reading’, and can also help to build reading skills, fluency and comprehension. In practice, this is best to do intermittently when reading e.g. ask the child to repeat back every 3rd/4th sentence to keep momentum. What is important to note is that, it doesn’t matter if the child struggles with repeating the complete sentence, because it is the attempt that they makes which is helping to train/stretch their Short-Term Verbal Memory capacity. That is, if they fumble words or are only able to repeat back the beginning of a sentence, our response can always be “great!” before moving on.

Within each of these, it is the process of trying to repeat the words over and over to themselves (i.e. repeated rehearsal) which is most important. As the child develops this as an explicit skill, we may then see them use this rehearsal in day to day contexts too (especially if engaged in these for a short session daily). When this ‘clicks’ and we see them use this ‘verbal rehearsal’ strategy, children are then essentially starting to train themselves within day to day contexts and we can see much quicker increases in these abilities. If you achieve this, even for just one child, you’ll see that the difference this can have for them over the space of a few months can be incredibly rewarding.