Three Strategies To Support a Student Who Forgets

I once had a student who followed a very predictable routine during writing feedback. We would sit down and begin reading his writing together, as he nervously anticipated a response. I would point out the great choices he had made and we would talk about the next steps in his writing. Like Groundhog Day, at some point I would briefly remind him “Remember to use a capital letter for the word ‘I’”. Often he would use comedy to deflect, immediately diving for the nearest pencil in a flurry to edit, as if it had never happened, or throwing his hands up in mock frustration to giggles from his classmates. But sometimes, he just deflated in his chair and bashfully muttered “I forgot”.

This statement, “I forgot”, was so difficult to hear. And I heard it from him often. It confirmed what I suspected; this student understood, he knew these things so well that in hindsight they seemed obvious to him. He didn’t question or show confusion, he knew immediately because of course he had been reminded a thousand times before. When I heard “I forgot” from him, what he was really saying was “I didn’t think about that until now”. I could see how confused and let down he was by this fact. How could he overlook something that seems so simple now? Why didn’t it cross his mind before?

How do we help this student who knows, but forgets?

1. Support Metacognition
As adults, we remember to think about what is important while we do a task. We do this by formulating questions and monitoring ourselves. If we have forgotten to attach a document to an email, we learn to ask ourselves “Did I attach that?” before pressing send. If we have left the house without our wallet, we learn to ask ourselves “Do I have my wallet?” while patting down our pockets before walking out the door.

Students need support to learn this same metacognitive questioning. We can’t assume that the questions they need to ask are obvious, or that they know when to ask them. Every time I reminded my student about something he had forgotten, I was taking on a lot of this cognitive load for him. I was the one practising questioning, monitoring and checking. Instead, we can support him to formulate the question himself and set some points during the task to pause and check. Using this strategy supports his current focus or task, while at the same time strengthening monitoring and questioning skills that he could apply to any learning.

2. Clue Students In To Repetition
When developing routines and skills in the classroom, teachers naturally utilise repetition to ensure students get a chance to embed their learning. The students who learn and adapt quickly are often the ones leveraging this repetition. They may concentrate hard on the first question or task, but can then lighten their concentration as they see and utilise patterns.

I would analyse tasks for this student beforehand, planning the perfect visuals and explanations to support his learning. And mistakenly I would assume that the repetition in the task was obvious; that if he just knew how to do this part, he could apply that to all the others. Shortly after, I would observe and see mistakes on the learning that I had just explained in detail for his benefit. How could he have forgotten, when I only just showed him? My student sometimes didn’t notice repetition, and ended up concentrating on every part as if it is was the first time he had experienced it. Every problem the same mountain to climb. When expending this sort of effort over and over again, it was no wonder my instructions and reminders had gone by the wayside.

Instead, taking the time to show a student how a task repeats the same skill, or how we repeat the same routine for some learning can help to reduce their cognitive load. Prompting with questions like “Have you done something like this before?” and “What do you remember from last time?” can help solidify these connections and allow them to use the pattern.

3. Analyse the Process
When we think about a student processing information, we could simplify processing to input, cognition and output. Input being the information a student receives, cognition their thoughts and mental processes, and output their response. We know that the output I would sometimes hear from my student was “I forgot”.

As a teacher these types of responses can feel overwhelming and frustrating. To chunk this into a challenge that is more manageable for us, we can analyse each part of the process;
- Did the student understand the input?
- Were there any blockers to thinking about and processing the learning?
- Was the mode of output suitable and achievable?

Some days I could observe my student, and see a blank page on the desk. “I forgot” in these circumstances meant different things. I would find out that today “I forgot” meant “I don’t understand” — I needed to adjust or support the input for the learning. At other times, “I forgot” meant “I don’t know how to write these words” — he understood and thought about the learning, but I needed to support the output. Seeking which part of the process needed support clarified “I forgot” into something I could understand and take action towards.

The “I forgot” response felt like sticky tape that I couldn’t unwind, so simple but impossible to solve until I could find a starting point. These three strategies continue to give me somewhere to start when I feel like I’m going in circles.

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