Spot the overload: a five-item working memory checklist for the classroom

The gist. A two-year study of 524 six- to nine-year-olds found that five everyday classroom behaviours, not the original twenty-item checklist, reliably flagged working memory struggles still linked to weaker reading and maths eighteen months later.

What the study found

Teachers in Southern Ontario rated 524 six- to nine-year-olds on the Working Memory Rating Scale, a 20-item checklist first built and validated in England. Tested independently, on its own, for the first time, the original 20-item structure did not hold up.

A shorter list of five behaviours did, consistently, for both boys and girls, across two separate school years. Those five ratings, taken at the start of Year 1, were still linked to weaker reading and maths fluency scores six and eighteen months later.

What it might mean for your classroom

This is a screening checklist, not a tested classroom intervention. It tells you which behaviours to notice, not what to do about them. The five behaviours that held up sit close to cognitive load theory and executive function, the wider territory working memory sits inside.

• Move. Break extended writing into a plan, an opening line and one paragraph at a time, so a multi-step instruction is never held in mind all at once. This is close to what scaffolding in the classroom already does.
• Move. In maths, ask the learner to say the plan back before they start writing, so a multi-step word problem does not outrun what they can hold in mind.
• Move. For any practical method with several ordered steps, put a numbered step card in front of the learner, so the sequence lives on the desk rather than in their head.

Treat it as an experiment, not a recipe: start with one behaviour, "follows only some steps of an instruction" is usually the easiest to notice, and watch for a fortnight before changing anything else.

How solid is this?

Promising. This rates the evidence's firmness, not our endorsement of the checklist. It is the first independent test of the original 20-item tool on its own, and it found real problems with that version, which is a good sign, though one independent replication is not the last word. The study tracked six- to nine-year-olds for two years in Canadian schools, and did not test whether noticing, or any teaching response, actually helps them. If the pattern worries you for a particular learner, talk to your SENCO rather than relying on a checklist alone.

The source

Normand, S., & Tannock, R. (2012). 'Screening for Working Memory Deficits in the Classroom: The Psychometric Properties of the Working Memory Rating Scale in a Longitudinal School-Based Study.' Journal of Attention Disorders, 18(4), 294-304.

Read the original study