5 Activities Improve Auditory Memory

Auditory memory is one area of auditory processing that directly impacts reading, spelling, writing, and math skills.

One of the areas of auditory processing that kids often struggle with is auditory memory. Auditory memory is your ability to remember, organize, and act on information you have heard, such as following a multi-step verbal direction, take notes, comprehend what you read, and spell new words.

Kids hear all kinds of verbal information when they are out in the world, e.g., when going to a museum, grocery store, or the hardware store. The problem is, they don’t always retain the information they hear/learn. This is when information isn’t stored in long term memory. Auditory memory can be improved, through exercises and activities that focus on auditory skills.

Common symptoms of auditory memory difficulties

Do your/did your child:

• Have trouble following instructions or directions?
• Have difficulty rhyming words?
• Have trouble learning their numbers, alphabet, days of the week, colors, and shapes?
• Have poor reading comprehension?
• Have trouble spelling?

A quick way to help those with auditory memory problems is to read aloud to your child and then ask them questions about the story selection. Then, a day or two later ask them to draw a picture of something they remember from the story and ask them a few more questions about the story. It’s not enough to have immediate recall. We also need to build long-term memory skills to efficiently build overall factual knowledge.

Questions can be:

• Who was the story about?
• Where did the story take place?
• When did the story take place?
• Why do you think ______ happened?
• What do you think will happen next?
• What was their favorite part?
• What was the part they liked least?

Other ways to build auditory memory skills are built into our Scholar Within Spelling Program and our Scholar Within Reading and Spelling Program.