Skills for Kids

Information processing

Overview

We teach many skills to children who have a difficulty with learning by using an information processing approach. There are numerous theories thought to be the cause for a difficulty with learning. Since the 1970’s information processing theory has been one of the major cognitive theories which explains the way individuals learn. Research has suggested that information processing strategies can make a difference for children who experience a difficulty with learning. At Skills for Kids we use an information processing model developed by Dr Christine Chapparo and Judy Ranka at Sydney University. This model has 4 factors - attention; recall; planning and motor execution which we assess to find out the breakdown points for a child’s difficulty with learning and participation. We use specific strategies for each of the breakdown points.

We define

• Attention (or concentration) as a child being in an alert state of focused readiness for learning.
• Recall (or memory) as the child’s ability to build a functional reference or ‘filing’ system for recognising, storing and retrieving information from memory stores. A child is then able to remember when, where and what to do for performance.
• Planning (or organisation) as a child’s ability to use and apply strategies in new experiences so that the child can organise how to do a task.
• Motor execution (or doing) as a child’s ability to coordinate movement or behaviours.

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