Love Learning

Teaching Picture Thinkers

I’ve been thinking about visual learners for several years now--teaching them, working to understand how they think and learn, and then creating visual helps embedded in left brain material so they can grasp new material with ease. My goal has been to provide a connection between left and right brain processes so that more and more right brained learners will be successful. I’ve been primarily focused on getting material into a child’s understanding and memory.

A few short weeks ago, I began thinking more about not only how people process new ideas and information, but then how they re-articulate that once they've digested it. My focus shifted from thinking primarily about channels into the brain, to how people express the learning. I was doing some research in unfamiliar territory, with the goal of first understanding the content, and then distilling the critical parts of the research so I could share it with others. During the process of research, I drew several pictures and mind maps to help me organize the content. When it came time to share the material with my colleagues, I found myself really struggling. What I had digested was so rich and deep, but I felt completely inadequate when it came to verbalizing the amazing ideas I had gained. It dawned on me that the breakdown occurred somewhere between the hemispheres of my brain. I had spent a week reading words, translating them into pictures and visuals so I could learn the material, and now it was time to take those pictures and change them back into words. I think I understood more fully what it really means to be a visual learner. I realized how frequently I think in pictures rather than words. I thought everyone did that. Pictures I make in my mind or ones I see help me remember.

The problem with thinking in pictures

The trouble comes in that I cannot always form a picture from words I am hearing. In graduate school, I recall sitting in a class and hearing strings of words each of which I had heard before, but being completely unable to extract meaning from them. Particularly painful were the times in which the professor was verbalizing directions for the current class activity, and everyone around me seemed to be totally in tune – except for me. Everyone set to work – except for me. I was too mortified to ask a question and betray my ignorance. Surreptitiously I would peek at what my neighbors were doing, and if I felt ok with the person seated next to me, I would ask him/her to translate for me what we were to do.

In a third type of scenario, I was confronted with problems to solve, which I felt unable to solve until I hit on the plan of drawing sketches of what the problem entailed. When I did this, a solution presented itself.

What if the picture thinker is a child?

At that time when I found myself not understanding the professor, I had grown children. Imagine what I would have felt like had I been a child. If you do a search for terms such as right brained learner, teach visual learners, reading programs dyslexia learners, or a similar phrase, you will access a lot of information about the percentage of children in the world who are suspected to fall into the category of picture thinkers or visual learners. There are quite a few children that can be described this way. So, what happens when you have a high percentage of children who think in pictures, but our primary means of teaching them is verbal or approaches that use symbols rather than images?

Provide images

Certainly it would be advantageous to provide the very young with images as they are learning the critical skills that lead to reading and math. We have written a lot about our products that tie symbols to meaning using embedded visuals. These materials are critically important when you are teaching a young child. Children between the ages of 4 ½ and 7 are highly visual thinkers anyway; that is the time of life in which their right brain is rapidly developing. It makes the most sense to start out right and teach these young learners in a way most compatible with how their brains are working.

We can quite easily provide visual cues as we teach sight words and even explicit phonics concepts. But the great good news is that there are ways to help teach the visual learner to begin to make his own mental pictures. Children are their own best allies when they are helped to understand what they need in order to learn.

Show her an example of what you want

To this day, if I am asked to do something I’ve not done before; failure is pretty much guaranteed unless I can see an example of a finished product that is considered to be successful.  I need to SEE something to understand the expectations for me. If you ask your child to draw a picture to help him solve a math problem, show her an example of you doing just that with a similar problem, modeling for her your thinking process as you do it.

Practice visualization

When young children are working on learning to read, in many cases, they don’t instinctively know that the reason they are learning to read is to extract meaning. There are many, many children who “do not comprehend” what they are reading, but really, did anyone ever tell them to think about what the passage meant? Or did we just tell them the phonics rules, teach them how to recognize high frequency words, or drill them on correct spelling? Did we ever explicitly tell them to visualize what they are reading? As I worked with young children on learning to read, I found it very helpful to prompt them to stop, close their eyes and make a picture in their minds of what they had just read. If they answered, “It’s just dark in here,” I prompted them to open their eyes and read the passage again with the goal in mind this time of making a picture. I have done this with kids as young as kindergarten. It was not an instant process, but it did work better and better over time.

The starting point was to show them a stylized letter from our Alphabet Teaching Cards. We’d explore the details in the picture, then I would have them close their eyes and wait until they could see the picture in their minds. At this point, they would open their eyes and quickly draw on a whiteboard what they saw in their minds.

Using our SnapWords® is a next step. The image that is embedded in each word conveys to the child the fact that the collection of symbols MEANS something. The image makes it impossible to ignore the meaning of the word. But again, if you ask the child to close his eyes and “see” the word in his mind, you can even focus in on details. You can show the child the SnapWord for CLEAN. Talk about the lady with the blue bandana that has not one but two dusting rags. Is she in a hurry to get a lot done? Give the child a chance to study the word, then lay the card down and ask him to close his eyes and see the word again in his mind. Ask him to describe for you what he’s seeing.

Finally, as a child is reading a book, stop him after each thought and ask him to close his eyes and imagine what he read. If you prompt him to do this, visualization will become easier and easier. In addition, he will learn that he needs to focus in this way in order to extract meaning not only out of reading material, but out of people’s words he is listening to.

Write directions out

One easy help to offer your picture thinker is to write out for him what you want him to do. I know it takes me a few reads sometimes to make sense out of directions for a new task. If there are only auditory directions provided, there is nothing to refer back to. A middle aged graduate student might have the motivation to ask for clarification, but I pretty much can guarantee you that a first grader won’t always feel the burning need to do so. We can save ourselves some frustration if we take a few more steps in helping picture thinkers know what is expected.

Turning pictures into words

Helping visual learners grasp new information by using images and helping them learn to visualize is great. However, my recent struggle to put words to my research made me understand in a very personal way more about the challenges our picture thinkers have in our traditional school setting. Once visual learners have made pictures in their minds, the other half of the issue is helping them learn how to put their mental images into words. I have thought carefully about how I felt when in the middle of trying to verbalize what I’d learned. I’ve relived the frustration, the suspicion I had that I was somehow a bit slow, and the resulting discouragement, and it makes my heart go out to children.

What can be done?

If so many of our population are picture thinkers, we need to spend a lot of effort reevaluating our teaching approach and materials. Much of our traditional system is not kid-friendly. It hurts me that this is so, and that we are calling children disabled when they can’t learn via traditional approaches. Some of our most creative potential problem solvers and designers are kids who think in pictures. Let’s encourage them to use their giftedness by opening the door to alternate ways of learning and new ways of expressing their learning. We can make it so that all our children love learning.

Child1st Publications, www.child-1st.com

So You Find it Hard to Just Memorize?

Just this morning, a mother told me that her son is having increasing difficulty with reading and math. He was tested at his school and diagnosed with something called “specific learning disability.” He was given an IEP (individualized education plan) which allows various helps, but the mother said she feels he is not disabled; rather, he is not learning the way he is being taught. She is not alone. Over and over again I hear from parents who are desperate to find something for children who have been judged unable to learn.

Who should get the label?

I think in many, many cases, the teaching method should be the one labeled rather than the child. If a child cannot memorize strings of information or facts, is there something wrong with her? OR, is there something less than desirable with how she is being taught? Is memorization the best way to teach? Is it effective? How many adults out there find it difficult to just memorize? Is there a more effective way? If so, why are we still relying so heavily on memorization?

Alternatives to memorization

Use visuals that SHOW the information so that the child can look, understand, and remember. Example: understanding the difference between b and d. You can either tell the child, OR you can show the child a visual of the stylized letters. For the kinesthetic learner, you can act out the difference between b and d.

Let the child work out the problem for himself. Instead of asking the child to memorize math facts, give him some manipulatives such as plastic disks and two bowls, or a handful of smooth pebbles and two cups, and let him work out the answers as you pose the problems. Example: “Toby, count out five pebbles. Now, let’s find out how many pairs of numbers will equal five. In order to do this, divide your pebbles into the two cups and write down what you find.” The child would put the pebbles in the two cups and would write 2+3. You would prompt him to divide them up again another way. He might put one pebble in one cup and the remaining four in the second cup. He would then write 1+4. After some thought, he might decide that he can put all the pebbles in the first cup and have none for the second cup to make 5+0. The child will have discovered that there are only three pairs of numbers that will equal five. This is powerful. The child will have thought it through, handled the pebbles, represented the combinations in writing, and he would have been engaged in the activity rather than being passive.

For the visual & tactile learner, use dot cards to practice learning how many each number is. For instance, if you steer a child away from counting up to add, she will begin to rely on her strong  visual sense to understand the “how many” of each number as well as to learn the combinations of numbers that equal each target number. Example: These dot cards show various ways to arrange five dots so that not only will a child have practice just glancing and guessing “how many,” but also a strongly visual learner will begin to absorb that 5 can be made of different combinations of numbers. If you encourage your child to rely on her visual strengths, she will be much farther ahead than if you sit her down to do math the old way, which is to count up, count on her fingers, or just write the answers to problems written on paper. BO-ring!

Get away from memorizing words. How many of you have had children who just struggled to the point of discouragement with trying to learn to recognize words he was supposed to be learning? What is engaging about that? Frankly, it is the quickest way to make reading a chore and something to be avoided. Our colorful SnapWords® have rescued many a child from the drudgery of having to try and memorize (and later recall!) his all important lists of words. If you show your child a word like this one, is it not clear how engaged he will be? What will happen is this: He will put himself right into a pleasurable time when he was in the store with Mom and saw a teddy bear (or something cooler!). He will take a picture of the word in his mind and his recall will be easy. The tall letter was Mom, the U was the buggy holding the bear, and the Y was the front of the buggy. Best of all, the your smart visual learner will attach a positive emotion to this experience of learning how to read “BUY” so that rather than avoiding word work in the future, he will come to look forward to it.

Let’s throw out the labels!

I’d love to suggest something here. Please, can we be a little slower to call a child disabled? Is it not in the perfect design of a child to learn via pictures, images, movement? Is that not how she was beautifully created? What if we promised to react to a struggling child by looking FIRST at what we are doing to see if it might need changing? We could transform the world for many children! There is a better way; there is a more child-friendly way to teach.

Location, Location, Location

It is so amazing to me how a brain associate places with either good or bad experiences - or how returning to a particular place instantly throws one into a particular state of mind. When I was little, we lived overseas and Mom taught us school. While I was able to learn to read without many hiccups, math and I were not friends! Under my mom’s regime, if I missed problems, I had to fix them all. Most days it took as long for me to get my arithmetic paper done correctly as it did to do all the other subjects combined.

Given my early non-expertise in math, it was pretty interesting that when we returned to the States just as I was to begin eighth grade, I was so far ahead of my classmates that I was seated with another girl in the back of the classroom to work through a “special book.” I was enrolled in a boarding school for high school. 9th grade Algebra I didn’t cause me any problems. I was still far enough ahead that I was able to daydream through most of class, and skated by, making B’s pretty consistently.

Imagine my chagrin the following year when I had Algebra II in the same classroom with the same teacher, and I discovered that the moment I entered the room, I slipped into the familiar daydreaming mode that had come to be associated in my brain with that location. Reality set in. I had to work hard to kick the daydreaming habit; I was not going to pass Algebra II unless I stayed in complete focus during class.

Fast forward

In the past several years, I have had occasion to think about location and how it impacts a brain’s performance. While teaching Title 1 groups, I had the chance to talk quite a bit with individual students about their own habits, and what contributed to their success or failures in the regular classroom.

My room was located in a corner of the school building where two hallways intersected. There were big windows to the outside with a view of field and trees, a cozy kidney table, and two walls of whiteboards with a great supply of colored markers for the kids to use. Bulletin boards held student work, and we kept charts with stars for each group that came into my room. It was a cozy, safe place, and students did great.

In that particular room, students felt safe to venture out and take risks because they had an ample safety net. We raised the bar for achievement to 100% on quizzes, but we also had an agreement that if a student did not make 100% on the first try, he or she could elect to study a bit more and come back during lunch for a retake. Surprisingly enough, every student in 3rd grade and up who did not make a 100% on their first tries asked to come back. There were even times when a child made a 100% first time, but asked to retake the quiz anyway, just to prove they could do it again!

Venturing back out

One thing that worked so well in our room was engaging each student in conversation about what  was going on in his/her thinking when doing school work. The children learned to pay attention to how they were feeling or to what they were thinking when they did particularly well or when they failed again. Kids can be their own best allies when they learn to pay attention to their thoughts and feelings.

While the classroom teachers were satisfied that their students were learning while in my room, some grumbled a bit over the fact that the kids were still coming to me for their quizzes. “If they can do the work, they should be able to do it in my classroom” was the feeling. There was also an idea circulating that if the student failed in their room, likely we were giving too much help in my room. By mid-year, one 4th grade teacher requested that her students stay in her classroom to take their next quiz. Of course I agreed. At lunch, however, I four distressed boys rushed into my room, extremely upset that they had failed their quiz in class.

I knew the boys were prepared, knew they should have scored a 100%, but also suspected what had gone wrong. I wanted them to think through what had happened. First I asked the boys to sit down at the kidney table and I gave them the quiz again. They each scored 100%. They were gratified, but still upset. So I asked, “What were you thinking about when you were taking the quiz in your classroom?”

Three of the boys just shrugged their shoulders, but the fourth one articulated very succinctly what had happened. “I got my paper. Then I looked around and thought, ‘I’m going to have to pass my paper up the row when I am done and everyone is going to see how awful I did.' Then suddenly my brain got fuzzy and jumbled and I couldn’t remember anything.” This explanation illustrates so clearly how our emotions can hijack our thinking ability. I explained to the boys what was going on. They associated being in the regular classroom with past failures and their fear of failing was self-fulfilling. Armed with this new understanding, what remained was to work on thinking new thoughts.

What can we do to help?

 One thing we can do to help children overcome negative emotions around learning is to change the environment as much as possible. Even if the location is in the same room as before, you can make the environment new and safe by moving the children’s desks or letting them sit on bright pillows on the floor with clipboards to write on. Provide a lot of security, warmth, and scaffolding as they begin to relearn. Rather than viewing the extra support as “cheating,” let’s view it as supporting children while they learn to overcome their fear of failure. If we can take the time to remove any possibility of threat, the children will once again be able to focus on thinking about the work at hand. I read somewhere that for every negative comment a person hears, they have to hear 50 positive ones to counter the power of that one negative comment. If this is true, only imagine how much positive support a child needs who has been labeled with a disability!

Child1st Publications: www.child-1st.com

Follow the Fingers: Tips for Teaching Children with Short Attention Spans

A small study of children with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder last year found that walks outdoors appeared to improve scores on tests of attention and concentration. Notably, children who took walks in natural settings did better than those who walked in urban areas, according to the report, published online in August in The Journal of Attention Disorders. The researchers found that a dose of nature worked as well as a dose of medication to improve concentration, or even better.

(Taken from a NY Times article by Tara Parker-Pope)

I was very happy to read about this study.  I think the topic cannot be emphasized enough. At some point, however, you have to bring the child back into a formal classroom, and there will still be difficulties around focus.

Flickering Attention

I remember one fifth grader I was working with in my office who I will call Ralph. His classroom teacher had requested that we meet so we could try and design some strategies that would help him in his reading. Ralph was sitting across the table from me and was reading while I made notes of what was going on. I immediately noted that he read about half of the words incorrectly. If I’d been looking down at my sheet where I was recording words missed, I would have missed a powerful clue as to what was going on. What I noted was that each time the Ralph misread a word, his eyes flickered as though there was a short in his “attentional circuit.” It reminded me of a light bulb that is loose in its socket so that the lights flicker on and then off again.

When I drew Ralph’s attention to words he’d missed, he could read them. It did take a couple of verbal cues to get him to focus on the word I was pointing to, but the important thing we learned was that it was not an inability to accurately read words Ralph was struggling with; it was an inability to maintain a steady focus long enough to read a handful of words in sequence. Of course Ralph’s inability to read accurately also prevented him from comprehending the passage, and for a fifth grader who needed to use his reading in other subjects, this was a serious problem indeed.

Wandering Attention

Mallory was the sweetest kindergartner. During a lesson, she sat quietly absorbing what she heard. The moment came, however, when the group was to start working on a task. Mallory would begin, but then she spent the rest of the time watching what the other children were doing. Any movement, however small, drew her eye and captured her entire focus making it impossible for Mallory to complete her own tasks.

Attentional Gymnastics

I tutored a second grader we will call Frank. Frank took my breath away and left me dizzy because his body simply could NOT remain seated on a chair. I knew better than to try and make him keep seated, but it meant that I had to squat down to talk to him as he was hanging upside-down from the table. He would stay there for only a few moments, then he was on the floor, then he was sitting backwards or sideways in his chair. It was nearly impossible for ME to maintain a train of thought much less tutor Frank.

Gain an Ally

One thing I found was that if I could teach the child how to help himself or herself, they became their own best helpers. It was empowering for each child to learn exactly where the difficulty lay. For Ralph, Mallory and Frank, the over arching problem was attention, but the specific problems were different. My experience has been that once the child and I discussed what was going on and we strategized ways he or she could help themselves, confidence rose and so did performance.

Strategies

Mallory and I brainstormed some ideas (remember, she’s in kindergarten) and she immediately began to put them into practice. Once she understood that the movements or activities of others sapped her own focus, she became a master at helping herself. Here are some things we came up with:

When Mallory had a sheet of math problems to solve, she learned to use her left pointer finger to direct her attention to the very problem she was to focus on. Her left pointer finger remained in place until the problem was solved. Then it moved immediately to the next problem in the row.

We covered all but the first row with a blank paper so that the presence of many other problems did not distract.

Mallory decided that she would not look up from her paper until she had reached the end of the row. When she did the last problem on the row, she would move the paper down to expose the second row, she would glance around the room to see what was going on, then she would once again point to the problem at hand.

After we spoke about how distracting her fellow kindergartners were to her, Mallory decided that when she had work to focus on, she would move a little desk around so that she could work without being able to see what others were doing.

Ralph, the fifth grader, learned that if he would track with his finger, and keep his finger by each word until he had read it, it helped his focus.

Frank couldn’t stay in one place long enough to collaborate on focus strategies, but here’s what I did:

Play Hand Magnets: When learning sight words (in order to prevent the need for me to crawl under the desk with him), I grabbed two sets of sight word cards. One set was my stylized version, while the other set were the same words handwritten with a magic marker on 3x5” cards. I spread the words out on the floor randomly (which Frank loved!) and said we were going to play a game. Frank was to pick up any stylized card he wanted, read the word out loud, and then find the match. He would pick up the second card in his other hand so that both hands were engaged in the task. When he’d made a pair, he owned those cards. The goal was to see if he could eventually own all the cards. It was magical to watch Ralph. He stayed at the task until he’d proudly read and matched all his words. Then like a flash, Frank perched on the window sill.

Focus Follows Fingers

I think the biggest lesson I learned when working with children who lacked focus and attention was that if I could engage the child’s fingers or hands in their learning, their focus would go wherever their fingers went. Follow the Fingers became my motto!

A Customer Asks About Stylizing Words

Hi Sarah-

I am working with a child who has a very high IQ and is also very visual. She isn’t great with long term memory, however. The words on your SnapWords® cards are mostly short sight words. What about longer words such as “outlandish?" Do you recommend stylizing larger classroom words also for strongly visual learners?

Different ways of learning and remembering

I have noted that children who are highly visual usually struggle to remember anything they learned in non-visual ways; thus the seemingly poor long-term memory. Visual children learn most readily and most effortlessly from either seeing an image along with learning, or by making their own mental image.

An example of making a visual for oneself is a person who imagines a drawn map when listening to someone giving them directions to a new place. Seeing a map of the route is much easier, but it is possible for strongly visual people to visualize a route in their heads. I know this because it is what I have to do if I ask for directions and don’t happen to have a pen handy!

When it comes to reading new words, it would be nearly impossible to undertake the task of stylizing every word a child will encounter in school. Nor is it necessary, really. Once children understand what they need for learning and remembering, they can learn to help themselves, whether it be through mental maps etc. I've seen this happen with children even as young as kindergarten. How empowering for the child!

Taking Words Apart

My experience with the SnapWords® is that they are necessary only for getting a child up to speed (or for initial teaching of reading). Once a child masters the stylized words and we’ve “dissected” them along the way, she truly does not need them for more advanced reading. So, for your very visual student, I would go through all the SnapWords®, pointing out word chunks or sound spellings so that when she comes to a more complicated word, you can show how the larger word has pieces that are similar to much smaller words she already knows. The brain loves making connections, and discovering the patterns in words is a great place for this brain exercise!

For instance, for the word “outlandish” I would have her practice taking it apart, maybe writing on a whiteboard so that it looks like this:

OUT – LAND – ISH

Finding Patterns in Words

You can point out that OUT is a sight word, as is AND. You can generate other OUT words so the child can enjoy how many words have that same sound spelling: OUT, SHOUT, ABOUT, STOUT, GOUT, CROUT, etc. The AND in LAND belongs with all sorts of other words: BAND, HAND, STAND, COMMAND, ABANDON, etc.

When Visual Learners Rely on Their Ears

I found over the years that all of my children who struggled with reading greatly improved when they began to rely primarily on their ability to hear sound chunks in words. Odd to think that my visual learners relied on their auditory abilities for help! But it worked wonders for them because it simplified words for them, and kept them from having to memorize loads of words and their spellings. A child can HEAR every sound and all that remains is learning how to represent them with letters/symbols.

For instance, he can learn that /O/ (short vowel sound) is spelled several different ways:

·         O as in pot

·         Aw as in law

·         A as in water

·         Ou as in cough

·         Ough as in fought

·         Augh as in taught

·         Al as in walk

My visual learners LOVED it that they could make sense out of all the spellings. We would generate a list for each spelling and then practice writing them on white boards.

Their boards would look something like this:

Visual learners greatly benefit from seeing a different color for the target sound – in this case, of course, it is short O. I always told my students that they didn’t have to remember how to spell ANY word; they just needed to listen to the sounds. When the target sound is written in another color or highlighted or underlined, the child just needs to say /O/ every time she gets to a red section in the words.

We enjoyed making lists of words, posting them in groups by sound, and after some time, those words became friends and the space on the bulletin board or wall was ready for new sound spelling postings.

Children do not have to memorize which words go together. Having done the work/play of putting the words into like groups and writing them, talking about them goes a long way towards helping the child remember how to spell the sounds in each word – and most importantly, how to read words he encounters with these sound spellings in them. It's very powerful for global learners (and often, visual learners also learn globally) to know how many sound spellings there are and that there is not an infinite number. That way, the children feel that any word they come to can be taken apart and mastered. This is also very empowering!

Easiest of All

We did add one element that cemented sound spellings for the children. We’d make up sentences using the words in each column. For instance: “What I want is water, Father, I was not going to wander!” “The fawn on the lawn was in awe at the awful straw.” “I caught and taught my naughty daughter.”

Stylized words such as our SnapWords® play a very crucial role in jump-starting children into reading, but the images on the words are bridges that are used for a time and for a purpose. Other strategies need to also come into play to carry the learners into far more advanced language.

Shouting Into His Good Ear

Several years ago, we had Spanish-speaking friends visiting in our home. While we chatted, my husband, who doesn’t speak Spanish, started making friends with their six-year-old son. I looked over and saw Jaime say something in Spanish, which of course, my husband did not understand. Jaime looked expectantly for a second, then leaned in close to my husband’s OTHER ear and repeated his statement very loudly, not realizing that what he was facing was a language barrier, not a hearing impairment.

I’ve recalled that moment so often throughout the years. Each time a child is re-taught a concept when he didn’t get it the first time, I think of Jaime shouting in my husband’s other ear thinking that this time, with a new ear and louder volume, he would be heard. When we teach a failing child in the same way we taught when first she failed, we are in essence shouting in the child’s “good ear.”

If the child fails a second time, he will inevitably experience a sense of inadequacy which will contribute greatly to yet another failure. The spiral of failure will deepen because of the huge impact a negative emotional state has on a child’s ability to think, learn, and remember.

What I have seen happen after repeated failure is that the child will begin to do things that will only make for more problems. She might act out, mouth off, quit, slump, glaze over, rebel, or any number of other tactics to avoid having to feel the pain of failure.

Articles in The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal cited falling SAT reading scores this year, in spite of the efforts of No Child Left Behind. Shortly after reading those articles, the phone rang. A mother of a 7 year old was calling to discuss our Easy-For-Me® Reading Program. She has a 7 year old who is struggling with dyslexia, who, because of repeated failure, had gone from loving to hating books. This mother had searched endlessly for a program that would approach teaching of reading in a way that was different from traditional approaches. She found many, many programs available, but all the ones she looked at were basically the same…until she found the Easy-For-Me® program through an online search.

What sets the Easy-For-Me® approach apart (and in fact, all the Child1st learning resources) is that we are NOT traditional. We teach phonics explicitly, similar to the Orton Gillingham approach, but we embed visuals and movement in every part of the learning. We get the child reading words almost immediately. We use multiple modalities so that there are multiple regions of the brain being stimulated. We combine right and left brain approaches to activate both hemispheres of the brain. As a result, children who have been experiencing a voice shouting loudly in their good ear will finally encounter something which they can understand and which will bring them out of the spiral of failure and discouragement in which they have been lost.

When Normal Doesn't Work

I believe that there are no bad brains, no broken children who must be fixed in order to fit in with their peers or to perform the way we adults believe they should perform.  I also believe that there are ineffective teaching strategies that engage a limited number of children and leave gaps in understanding for many others who learn from a different point of strength. 

If your child is struggling or simply not enjoying school, instead of teaching in traditional ways, try a multisensory teaching method, which simultaneously engages all of the senses.  By incorporating specific elements in your teaching approach, you can ensure that each child will learn and that you can successfully teach multiple children at once.  Multisensory teaching also creates a richer learning experience, benefiting even those who can learn in more traditionally accepted ways. 

These are key elements in a multisensory approach when teaching new material:

Hands on.  Children who best learn this way need to physically interact with materials; it will not be enough to simply hear something in order to remember it.  They may physically build an item, or come up with their own way to find a solution to a problem. After they have worked out their learning, asking them to talk about what they did will deepen their understanding and their ability to remember the lesson.

Visual.  Showing the learning in a picture (chart, graph, word map, etc) will enable children who learn visually to have a way to remember it.  They may take a mental picture of the image you give them and then mentally see this when they encounter the idea in the future. (Research tells us that children from ages 4-7 will learn most effectively through these key elements).

Movement.  Children who best learn through movement need to use motions that mimic the shape of learning.  For example, children who are learning their alphabet may be helped by making the shape of the letters with their whole bodies while saying the sound of the letter.

Patterns.  These occur both in math and in reading.  Children who learn by patterns need to have information presented in groups and these patterns pointed out.  For example, when working with spelling lists, it may help to group words like play, say, may etc. together. An effective math pattern is 0+7=7, 1+6=7, 2+5=7, 3+4=7.

Stories.  By embedding rhyme and rhythm into stories which give a reason for why something is the way it is, children who best learn through stories will have a way to remember.  When later asked to recall the piece of information, they may remember the story complete with the characters. An example is the letter A. We can say it is like an anthill (which has the same shape) and that a bug got tired while trying to climb up the side so tunneled straight through instead, forming the cross bar on the A.

Emotions.  Humor and attractive visuals are two of the ways to engage a child in the learning process.  Telling a funny story about what they are learning will make the child want to learn.

After completing a multisensory lesson, ask your children “How did you remember that?” Talking about it will help you to better understand your children and know how to tailor future teaching. Realize that each child may learn in a combination of ways.  Making children verbalize the way they remember also helps them understand themselves, allowing for future success in learning while boosting their confidence. 

Lesson plans using the multisensory approach are available in the Easy-For-Me® reading curriculum, available by visiting www.child-1st.com.

To Sit or to Stand?

Learning:

I grew up in a time when we were supposed to sit in our desks and face forward and pay attention, so when I started to teach, I arranged my desks in rows, and expected my well behaved students to sit, face forward, and pay attention.

One of my first graders taught me that while this arrangement might be convenient for the teacher, it was not workable for him. My new first grade class was a real challenge - lots of learning issues, behavior issues, and more. One boy I will call Z seemed pretty defiant to me. He was constantly out of his seat, and the more I insisted that he SIT DOWN, the more unmanageable and contrary he became.

I negotiated with Z one day. I told him I would let him stand up all day if he wanted to, but the conditions for this freedom were that he was to get his work done, and he was to not disturb anyone else. He was good with these stipulations, so I moved Z's stuff to an outside seat so that as he stood he would not be in anyone's line of vision.

Eureka! I had a totally different child! For the rest of the year, and during his second grade when I looped up with my class, Z was a pretty cooperative child, and best of all his learning skyrocketed.

The Cookie-Cutter Approach:

Recently a story made national news about a teacher who had special desks crafted that would allow her children to stand if needed. The desks were really cool! They had foot rests that allow a child to swing his foot while working, calculated to meet the need for motion some children have.

One thing that occurred to me was that most of us cannot find the funds to have special desks made.

 The next thing I noted was that the room was full of these special desks. Every child had one.

We tend to use a cookie-cutter, one-size-fits-all approach when it comes to our kids and their learning. We try something new, and then try to apply it to all our learners. Children learn in many different ways; they have greatly varying needs when it comes to how they perform best in the classroom. While some of the students in that classroom might have truly been helped by these special desks, I suspect that others in the room found it distracting to have the variables to deal with. Some children actually learn BETTER and focus BETTER when sitting at a normal desk on a hard chair.

While Z was able to focus when I gave him the freedom to stand and lean over his desk to do his work, my other students, A through Y, would have considered standing during class a punishment and would NOT have been able to focus.

With Increased Focus As The Goal:

It doesn't have to cost a lot of money to meet the learning needs of our children. We can find out by observation if they do better sitting in a desk on a hard chair, or sitting on a soft surface, or standing, or lying on their tummies. Children, even very young ones, have the ability to become their own best friends by learning what helps them the most - by asking themselves the question: "What helps me focus the best?"

We can provide a few lost cost pillows (four or so), some inexpensive whiteboards to use as mobile desks, and give the class the option during classwork to choose the situation that will allow them to focus the best.

Simple Ground Rules:

1- The spot you choose for working must allow you to work BETTER.

2- Once you are there, you will not have the option of moving somewhere else.

3- You must not distract or disturb fellow classmates.

4- If we note that you are LESS able to get your work done where you have chosen to do your work, you will return to your desk.

I taught a boy (named M) in Kindergarten who found it nearly impossible to focus on his own work for watching any movement that occured within the range of his vision. In discussing our goal for focus together, we determined that M needed to sit and work in a place where he would not be able to see the movements the other children made while learning. M bought in to this decision enthusiastically.

Fast forward to his 1st grade year. M's father went to M's first grade classroom to volunteer. When he entered the classroom, he saw M sitting at a lone desk facing the wall. Naturally, Dad assumed M had been placed there by the teacher possibly for being naughty. When he questioned the teacher about why M was sitting alone facing the wall, the puzzled teacher shared with M's father that M himself had requested to sit there, telling the teacher he needed to focus.

The Big Switch

Really, it was an about-face.

Back in the day when I engaged in teaching, I did everything very traditionally. For circle time, we sat in a circle. We sang the ABCs, counted to a particular number we chose, and we eventually started "learning our letter sounds." That exercise sounded like this: "Ay says a, a, a, for apple. Be says buh, buh, buh for ball." Etc. Like I said yesterday, I noted after some time that some of the kids were not getting much out of this practice, and I started to wonder why. This was a traditionally-accepted way to teach and review those all important basic skills. It was about at this time that I began to ponder the notion of some brains being defective or not.

Fast forward a couple of years.

Reading all sorts of research was great. Research prompted a myriad questions in my mind. I began really observing my preschoolers. It was amazing what I saw in them. What follows is an activity I did with a small group I taught every day.

THE EXPERIENCE:

Reading and planning time: 5 hours. Book: Seven Pathways of Learning by David Lazear. Engaged time, 1.5 hours.

Goal: was to set up a thematic "experience" for the children, incorporating the seven pathways of learning. I would then record in great detail their reactions to the activity.

Children: Peter, Phillip, Mitch, Shelly - all 4 years old.

Preparation: I made a simple poster for each child depicting land, water, and air. I cut out pictures of vehicles and gave a small stack to each child.

Activity: Sitting on the floor, we spread the pictures out and discussed "going places" and what vehicles we could use to get to each place. Next I asked the children to classify the vehicles based on where they operate: on land, water, or air. They glued their pictures in place as they wished. In addition, they had markers and crayons with which to embellish their posters.

Taking it Further: Next, I told little stories to engage their imaginations and juice up their problem solving motors.  

First Scenario: "Mr. Green decided to go out for a ride in his boat. It was a beautiful day and before you know it, he was in the very middle of Lake Michigan. Suddenly, however, he ran out of gas!" [Greatly abbreviated. In real life, the story drew them in so they were almost a part of the adventure. We lived in Michigan, so they were familiar with the lake]. "If you were going to help Mr. Green, what would you do?"

Actual Student Responses:

Phillip: "I'd use a helicopter. I'd fly out there and throw down a rope ladder."

Me: "Why wouldn't you use an airplane?"

Mitch: "I think it goes too fast."

Peter: "The helicopter can hover."

Mitch: "But we can't leave the boat out there."

Me: "What should we do?"

Mitch: "We can get a box and put gas in it."

Me: "How would you get it to the boat?"

Shelly: "I don't like to ride in a boat! It makes me scared!" (soon she is humming)

Phillip: "We could take it to him in another boat. Then we could tow Mr. Green's boat to land."

Next Scenario:

Me: "If you want to go to China, what vehicle would get you there best?"

Shelly: "I like my red wagon. Sometimes Daddy pulls Chris and me in the wagon. I take my dolly."

Phillip: "In an airplane."

Peter: "I'd get this big shovel and I would dig a hole straight down until I got to China." (Big grin) He remained totally silent after his comment, but fully attentive to our conversation. After a few minutes, he took out a green marker and drew the most amazing submarine, complete with periscope, in his lake.

Wrap-up: I encouraged the children to decorate their posters any way they wanted to.

Observations: This was my first formal observation of my students. My initial impressions of them were as follows:

Shelly is intrapersonal and musical/rhythmic. Her comments had a lot to do with what she likes or doesn't like. She hummed or sang to herself now and then.

Mitch is interpersonal, I believe. He is more interested in caring for the person in the situation than he is in the mechanics of "the rescue." Most of the rest of the time, Mitch had his marker cap off, letting it dry out, totally engrossed in watching the others work. He asked Peter a lot of questions about what he was drawing. Mitch did draw a lot of earthworms in the ground on his poster.

Phillip is logical/mathematical all the way! He very carefully organized all his earth vehicles in regular intervals on the top curve of his land. His poster was boring but organized. He was involved in his project, but was not "lost" in his work like Peter was. I sensed he felt he had a problem to solve, and that meant classifying, pasting, and coloring, and so that is what he did. Before he finished, he drew a stilted row of flowers at the bottom of his picture: all the same size and all brown. This last activity fulfilled the directive "You may decorate your posters however you want to."

Peter is so visual/spatial! As I watched his responses to this experience, I felt he showed his feelings for the project by how involved he bacame in his drawing. The more interesting the discussion to him, the more engrossed and detailed his drawings became.

What I get out of this? In most classrooms, Phillip would have been greatly rewarded for his responses. He is super left brained, logical, verbal, and we do so love that! I think that Mitch would have gotten low marks for his responses in most classrooms, as would have Peter and Shelly. However, these four children represent a pretty accurate cross-section of the children found in real classrooms everywhere.

What this means to me:

We get really nervous as teachers if we don't have something in front of us to put a grade on. We feel the most comfortable with our Phillips...these kids produce a product, the product usually contains the elements required in the lesson. These products get an A. We expect verbal communication, participation, a demonstration of comprehension of our lesson. Which brings me to the bottom line. What was my POINT in this activity? Was it to make a poster so I could grade them and send them home so the parents would know we were "learning something"? Was it to teach classification? Was it an art project? In this instance, I think I learned more than the kids did. I wanted to engage them in a discussion, wanted to learn how they respond to learning experiences, wanted to let them "produce" from out of their own particular giftedness. I learned far more than they did, for sure.

The Big Switch in my teaching style had begun! Rather than teaching the material the kids needed to know, I was going to learn to teach CHILDREN the way they learn best. I was going to try and engage their brains every chance I got!

What do you think about this?

Thinking About Learning Differences

Just realized: I must have always liked teaching. My parents crack up when they recall the times I corralled a group of neighborhood kids to teach them Bible stories in our backyard. I was a very earnest 8 or 10, and the setting was Honduras in the early 60's. I am not sure I should say LIKED teaching; I didn't ever think about it. I think I just engaged in teaching automatically from time to time.

In 9th grade, I remember being fascinated with minds and fancied myself a brain surgeon. In the fullness of time I registered for Chemistry class, then had to get special permission (groveling) from the headmaster to drop the class when I chickened out before day one. Abandoning Chemistry, of course, meant abandoning my medical aspirations. My interest in minds went underground as I went on to college and majored in art. (Big segway!) I did consider a double major in education and art, but the intro to ed class was so mind-numbing that I dropped out almost immediately, thus eliminating that whole career path as an option for me. Frankly I could not imagine subjecting future generations to that level of boredom.

Many years, many "jobs" and two semi-grown children later, my interest in minds resurfaced when I started a child care facility. My teaching habit also resurfaced and I began to do circle time, chant the ABC's, teach letter sounds...you know, the "basic skills." I soon noticed that I could teach something (in some cases repeating it many times) and not every child would "get it." "Hmmm," I said to myself.

Later, while teaching kindergarten to these same kids, I decided to go to grad school and study about differences in learning. I tentatively believed that all children could learn, but I wanted some expert proof of this suspicion. Everything I read and everything I wrote went through this filter of "every child can learn" and "there is no such thing as a bad brain." So I worked with my kids during the day and studied at night. I was really paying attention to the differences in learners and trying very hard to change my practices so that they could be successful. It was when I started telling stories, drawing pictures, letting the kids lead in their learning so that I could learn from them how they learned.

My point?

What I have learned over a lifetime is that there are so many learning differences! (so many kinds of minds) While in grad school, I did prove to my own satisfaction that the brain is good - that what needs to change is how we approach a child's brain. I've been practicing with that notion ever since.

Listen to an expert: Mel Levine. Everyone's heard of him!

"Planet earth is inhabited by all kinds of people who have all kinds of minds. [From A Mind at a Time, Simon and Schuster...you can get it anywhere...picture included for visual learners among us]. The brain of each human is unique. Some minds are wired to create symphonies and sonnets, while others are fitted out to build bridges, highways, and computers; design airplanes and road systems; drive trucks and taxicabs; or seek cures for breast cancer and hypertension. The growth of our society and the progress of the world are dependent on our commitment to fostering in our children, and among ourselves, the coexistence and mutual respect of these many different kinds of minds." (page 13)

Main point here is that our brains are as they are by design.

One more quote:

On page 23: "It's taken for granted in adult society that we cannot all be generalists skilled in every area of learning and mastery. Nevertheless, we apply tremendous pressure on our children to be good at everything. Every day they are expected to shine in math, reading, writing, speaking, spelling, memorization, comprehension, problem solving, socialization, athletics, and following verbal directions. Few if any children can master all of these "trades." And none of us adults can. In one way or another, all minds have their specialties and their frailties."

Wow. You just need to read the book several times if you have not already. There are so many implications here, and all are so on target.

One more thing I have to say for now is this:

We have so much knowledge of minds. We know every child is gifted with a specialty. But we do not behave that way in the classroom with them when we are teaching them. We expect every child to perform exactly the same. If they don't, we assume they are faulty or broken, or learning disabled. It just doesn't make sense to me. Most of the time we teach to one specialty. The others lose out. The challenge for us as teachers and parents is to teach in such a way that we reach all kinds of learners.