Working memory is the mental workspace where a child holds information while doing something with it. It's where you keep the first half of a maths problem while working out the second half, where you track the plot of a paragraph while decoding the sentence in front of you.
It's a fixed budget
The average working memory span for a 12-year-old is 5-6 items. A 15-year-old, maybe 7. It doesn't expand much with age — but the efficiency of how a kid uses it does.
Three things that eat working memory quietly
- Handwriting. If a child hasn't automated handwriting, every letter costs working memory.
- Vocabulary gaps. A word they have to decode eats working memory they needed for the sentence.
- Low fluency in a language. Reading in their weaker language costs 2-3x more working memory than reading in their stronger one.
Three exercises that help
- Chunking: teach kids to break big tasks into 3-step bites. Each bite fits in working memory.
- External offload: write the plan on paper, not in head. Free the budget.
- Rehearsal spacing: review yesterday's topic, not just today's. Frees working memory for new material.