difficult child 1 had this issue at that age (yes, he's gotten much better). In his IEP we made sure that
1) he was able to use his notes on tests & quizzes and in his hardest classes he was allowed to do open-book. The reasoning was that it was more important to learn the life skill of "finding" the information he couldn't remember.
2) all test & quizzes were multiple choice or fill in the blank with a word bank. The reasoning is that sometimes when they "saw" the correct answer on the page, it might trigger a glimpse of "memory". These worked very well for difficult child 1. Their theory held true for him. He recognized the answer when he saw it.
3) he was given extra time to complete assignments and his assignments in math were made shorter. The reasoning was that it was difficult enough for him to remember what he needed to do for them that redundancy was limited.
Hope this helps. As I said, difficult child 1's working memory in 3rd grade was 13%. School was soooo hard for him until that was put in writing in a psychological and they FINALLY made some accommodations. As of last month (and last spring), two different evaluations have shown that he is now in the "normal range" for working memory. If the right interventions and teaching tools can be implemented, it CAN definitely get better. At least in our case it did.
