Love Learning

How to Help Your Visual Learner with Reading Comprehension

It is not a coincidence that as the current generation of children becomes more and more visual in their learning preference, that difficulty with reading comprehension is also sharply on the rise. It sounds contradictory, doesn’t it? You would suppose that highly visual learners would be the absolute best at comprehending what they read. But this is not the case, quite simply because learning to read is traditionally a very NON-visual task. We teach children to read in very left-brained ways, and children focus so hard on learning those little symbols and what they represent; in the process of learning to sound out words or just plain remember words they have learned, the meaning behind the symbols is lost. Oftentimes, children can rattle off a book and then look blankly at you if you ask them to tell you what they read.

So what can we do about this shift in our children’s learning styles?

Our children spend so much time with technology that by its very design works to rewire their brains in ways that are not compatible with traditional methods of teaching reading. This technology flashes colorful images across the screen in a constant stream while children hear the words spoken. The images they are absorbing are images that their own minds and imaginations did not create. And I don’t think the technology that is reshaping our children’s brains towards the visual side is going away any time soon. The ideal of course would be to get kids outside more, playing with objects rather than technology. Barring that, however, our method for guiding children towards comprehending what they have read needs to change drastically. As our children’s brains are being reshaped, our teaching approaches must follow with alacrity or we will see an increase in the numbers of children who struggling with reading.

What is reading comprehension anyway?

Back in the days when I was administering the John’s Reading Inventory to scads of children, I remember feeling squirmy during the comprehension segment of the test. When children were asked to name the characters in the story and they couldn’t do it, I had to mark them down for those missed names. I don’t remember names I read either; to me that doesn’t mean I did not comprehend what I read. It really means that I don’t remember names I read as I am visualizing and consolidating the action in the story into images in my mind.

Actually, the natural way for me to think about the word “comprehension” is by thinking about  “visualizing.” Visual learners are not detail people. They think in pictures, after all, not in words. So while my left-brained counterparts recall facts, names, and dates with amazing fluency, I remember the feeling of the story, what each character was like personally, and how the story line went.

How can we help our children move from words (symbols) to pictures?

For those children who struggle with knowing and being able to retell what they have read, let’s think in terms of helping them VISUALIZE the meaning the symbols on the page were supposed to convey. (Our SnapWords™ get this point across effortlessly as each one is embedded in a visual that conveys the meaning behind the word.) Children can learn to form images to accompany the words they read if we teach them to do that! We don’t need complicated procedures, expensive technology, fancy organizational charts, or anything other than a very clear focus, humor, and relaxed time with the children. This is a perfect activity for summertime, time spent driving in the car, dinner table time, etc. The key is to make this fun, to work on it incrementally, and to celebrate your children’s visual giftedness.

Start with verbal games

Tell your child you are going to play a game. Say one sentence. The child will repeat what you said, and then he will embellish and add to what you said. For instance, you might say, “I see a green dragon flying in the sky.” Your child would repeat, “I see a green dragon flying in the sky. He has scales on his back, and he is breathing fire out of his mouth!”

Then, let your child have a turn to make up a sentence. You repeat what he says and embellish it. Inject humor and the unexpected into the game to attract his attention and engage him in the process. Humor is a wonderful teacher!

Continue with images

Many visual learners like to draw. Provide your child with paper and coloring or drawing materials. Play a similar game to the first one, only this time have your child draw pictures of what you say. She can draw exactly what you said or she can take it further and embellish. For example, if you say, “I see a green dragon flying in the sky blowing bubbles with his pink bubblegum,” she might draw that and then add a red umbrella the dragon is clutching.

Finish with the written word

I don’t mean to sound like you will do these three exercises once and your child will suddenly be transformed into a reader who practices visualization. However, if you do this sort of thing frequently, it will result in improving your children’s reading abilities.

Using the written word as a starting point for visualization will need to be done from simple to more complex as your children become comfortable with the process.

• To begin, this time, you can write on a 3x5 card or on a sheet of drawing paper, “I see a green dragon flying through the sky.” The child will read the sentence for himself and then draw an illustration for it.

• Go from a sentence to a short paragraph for him to read and illustrate.

• Next, use his own books for the activities. Tell him you will have him read a sentence or two and then he will close his eyes and see in his imagination in the form of pictures what he just read. For example if he reads, “Once there was a man and his wife that lived in a little house by a big lake,” have him stop and picture the scene in his mind. If you start small (not waiting until the whole story is finished to ask for a visualization) your child will gain the practice of seeing what he’s reading in his head, not in words, but in their translation into pictures.

• Finally, have him read a paragraph or a short page to you and then either tell you in his own words what he read, or draw a picture of it, a page at a time to begin with. Let him know that the hardest part is starting to see the story in his mind when he’s not really sure what is coming. As soon as he can imagine that first image, what he reads next can be added to his mental image just like you would add characters to a play.

Aim for the sky

One of the smartest tools you can use with a child who has been failing at something is to show confidence in her and share your belief in her giftedness. Those who can visualize are in so much demand in so many industries. What you can imagine in your mind and heart, you can also create. Find out if the idea of writing and illustrating a whole story would appeal to your child. This could be the ultimate reward for work well done--to showcase her progress in getting a book she writes and illustrates bound for her.

How SnapWords (sight word picture cards) help with reading comprehension, reading, and spelling

Very often when children are learning to read, they focus so much on naming words that they don’t absorb the meaning of the words they are reading. Poor reading comprehension is a problem that plagues thousands of children. So I'd like to suggest some tools and strategies that will go a long way toward helping children improve their reading comprehension over time.

Basically when we read, we need to create a mental scene that shows the action or the content of the material we read. For me, and for other right-brained or visual learners, this mental scene is a global picture that is formed when we read. We actually see pictures in our minds and when action occurs, we see what might be called mental movies. I cannot speak for how dominant left-brained people react to print. I have heard that they think in words and I am not sure what that means nor what that looks like (please feel free to comment if you can shed light on this question).

Images help children improve reading comprehension

So, when teaching children who struggle with comprehension, it is really helpful to have images accompany words and sentences. The image is like a stepping-stone to creating mental images for themselves. In fact, during early learning when children are just beginning to learn words, it is critical to embed images into the words because so many young children believe their goal is to learn to say the words they see, or to sound them out. Often, no one tells them the words carry meaning! So to embed a picture from day one will help them avoid reading comprehension problems. As these children are learning their first words, talk to them about making mental images for themselves and how important this skill is.

How to teach visualization

The first step toward creating mental images is to use stylized picture words such as SnapWords™, where the images are already embedded. Have the child study the image and notice details. Next, have the child close his eyes and “see” the image with word embedded in his own imagination. The more you do this, the stronger the imagination/visualization muscle will become. And if you share with the child that visualization is a powerful learning tool, they will come to habitually practice visualization without being prompted to.

Try it yourself. Here is a word to study and then to visualize with eyes closed. How long do  you think you will remember this word and the picture? I designed this stylized word a long time ago; yet any time I think of the word “enough,” I picture these characters and I believe sincerely that they just had Thanksgiving dinner and ate too much and that the little girl is managing to vocalize the fact that she had more than enough to eat! The character playing the part of the G is content to let her speak for him, while the H character is gazing off into space in a sated euphoria.

Word pictures also help with spelling

The meaning behind this word is very clear. Point out that the two L’s are guys who are  helping the first guy pull on the rope for their team. Then, talk about the size of the first guy… the big muscley chest. Next have the child close her eyes and see the word in her imagination; doubtless she will be able to read, comprehend and know how to spell the word after doing all that.

In fact, try this. Have the child, still with her eyes closed, describe the image she sees in her mind. How many boys are pulling on the rope? Which one has a big muscle-bound chest? How many are tall and thin? When she is finished describing what she sees, have her open her eyes and write the word she saw in her mind on paper.

(Two weeks from now, check your own memory of this image, and then check the child’s memory.)

Images are worth a thousand words

It is difficult for me to when I'm learning a new concept to only have someone’s words as they speak to me. For me, images make all the difference. A confession here. I am middle aged and truly did not understand the difference between a sea and an ocean. I always assumed (because I never really thought about the difference) that they were used interchangeably and that “sea” was used in more romantic, sentimental, poetic occasions. For instance, it's used in a lullaby I heard my mother sing when I was really little, which I had the pleasure and delight of singing to my new grandson this winter.

Sweet and Low

By Alfred, Lord Tennyson

Sweet and low, sweet and low,

         Wind of the western sea,

Low, low, breathe and blow,

         Wind of the western sea!

Over the rolling waters go,

Come from the dying moon, and blow,

         Blow him again to me;

While my little one, while my pretty one, sleeps.

 

Sleep and rest, sleep and rest,

         Father will come to thee soon;

Rest, rest, on mother's breast,

         Father will come to thee soon;

Father will come to his babe in the nest,

Silver sails all out of the west

         Under the silver moon:

Sleep, my little one, sleep, my pretty one, sleep.

 

This song has always captured me, and it is what I associate “sea” with… a poetic, evocative scene illustrated with vivid images in my mind.

However, I abandoned my right brained-ness long enough to consult an expert about the difference between sea and ocean, and this is what I found:

“Many people use the terms "ocean" and "sea" interchangeably when speaking about the ocean, but there is a difference between the two terms when speaking of geography (the study of the Earth's surface). Seas are smaller than oceans and are usually located where the land and ocean meet. Typically, seas are partially enclosed by land.”
Office of Coast Survey
A History of Charting America's Waters, NOAA 200th
Anniversary Web Site

This was great to learn about. So here are two stylized sight words: “ocean” and “sea.” The image for ocean conveys more the depth and vastness of the body of water, while the image for sea allows the child to see where seas might be located: on the edges of the ocean, but partially surrounded by land. In the stylized sight word for “sea,” there are three seas and each has a sailboat. In the picture, the whales will help lead into a discussion about the ocean and the huge body of water where the whales are swimming, but the seas are actually somewhat protected by land in a side or more.

After staring at this word for a few seconds, I can see how permanently the word, complete with meaning and spelling, is branded on my mind. I can image standing on the island (e) and watching the whales and feeling the salt air blowing me around a bit. I can hear sea gulls and the waves lapping.

This is a complete learning experience —far different from showing a child the word SEA and telling them a sea is a body of water on the edge of an ocean that is partially surrounded by land. That learning experience may or may not stick!

Lets band together to help our children love learning!

 

The Importance of Context when Teaching a Right Brained Learner to Read

A customer recently wrote:

“I just have to say how thrilled I am with the SnapWords™ cards! I just figured out my 6-year-old daughter is a right-brained and visual learner. We have been using sight word flash cards for about a year with the curriculum we are using and she was just 'not getting it.' The words were not soaking in. We would drill the flashcards over and over and she'd memorize a few of them, but when I would show her the same words in the context of a reader, she would act like she had never seen the words. I was starting to get so frustrated and then I happened upon your website and saw the SnapWords™ cards. I  ordered all of them and I just can't believe how quickly my daughter is now 'getting it'! It's as if a light bulb has been turned on in her head! We are already almost through the first set and usually I just have to show her the side with the drawing only once and she has it! I am AMAZED! And now, she is picking those words out in the books we read together. It's as if her mind takes a snapshot of the drawing side and then it's easy! Even later in the evening when we're reading books and she sees one of those words, she will actually say the little saying on the back of the card and I can tell she is visualizing the card and then the word appears in her mind. AMAZING! Thank you so much. I am so glad I discovered the SnapWords™ cards!”
--Cindy

We were thrilled to get this email because it bears witness to what we believe about how right brained learners (including visual learners) take in information and how they process and use that information. We have known for a lot of years that teaching details in isolation is not best practice, but for right brained learners or visual learners, details to memorize in isolation should be taboo. It just doesn’t produce results for them.

Cindy makes several significant points:

• They had been using flashcards printed with plain words for learning sight words. The problem with teaching sight words in this fashion is that details are being taught in isolation and without a context. So learning depends solely on the child’s ability to memorize isolated details. In essence we are saying to the child, “Look at this word. It says GROW.” Then we show another word and tell the child what it says and ask him to remember it. The focus is on the child looking at the combination of letter symbols and remembering what the word is. There is no depth to this type of study. No meaning is conveyed. And when the focus is on the recognition of the word only, the child will focus her attention on how the word looks and not be thinking about what it means.

• They drilled with the cards over and over again. This is standard practice. The assumption is that repetition will eventually produce results. We as teachers are delighted when learning comes easily and rapidly to our students. Some children find it easy to just remember what a word says. Others benefit from repetition for a time. But for many, many children, repetition is just not effective. Right brained learners learn all at once like snapping a picture with their minds. If the camera didn’t flash the first time, it won’t on the 10^th or 25^th time either, and all it produces is exhaustion and discouragement for both teacher and child.

• “It's as if a light bulb has been turned on in her head!" Drill is not the answer to a struggling right brained learner. When we find a way to deliver learning in the way a child can receive it, the lights DO go on! In teaching and learning the old saying “If at first you don’t succeed, try, try again” should never become the motto. If we teach a concept a certain way and it does not penetrate the child’s understanding, let’s not just teach it the same way in a little more detail, a little more slowly, and a little more loudly. If it did not work the first time, it will not work the next 5 times either.  If the first pass through the lesson doesn’t produce good results, we need to reevaluate what is going on. Then we need to utilize a vastly different approach.

• I LOVE the part of the email that talks about how after one pass through the stylized words her daughter usually knew the words. SnapWords™ cards have a visual embedded in each word that conveys what the word says, but more than that, the visual shows what the word means at a glance, taking the child far beyond simple word recognition and into comprehension and usage of words. The sentence on the reverse puts the word in a context that adds depth of meaning to the word.

• It is also significant that in the process of recalling a word, Cindy's child would reach into her memory and recall not just the word, but also the context. That is what reading is really all about – the meaning the words convey. This right brained learner was using her ability to remember pictures to recall the words that were embedded in those visuals.

So many of us have believed at one time or another that children who learn more slowly with traditional approaches to teaching are just not as quick or capable as their peers. But in reality, the difficulty doesn’t lie with the learner but rather with how we deliver the concepts we want children to learn. Details in isolation, conveyed only through symbols (such as letters and numbers) will never be as effective as material that is rich in visuals that communicate the meaning and context of the lesson.

If you'd like to try the cards with your own students/children, download and print free sample SnapWords™ cards.

New Edition: Easy-for-Me™ Decodable Readers

We're excited to share the new editions of the Easy-for-Me™ Decodable Readers, now in a larger format with full-color illustrations.  

The 22 titles in each level (A and B) are grouped by target sound spelling into 8 perfect-bound books with 2-3 stories in each. For instance, in Level B, the stories Soup in a Group, New Blue Boot, and A Moose Is Loose, are all in the same reader since they all cover the Long U, OO spelling. Your child could think of it like reading stories out of a chapter book.

The text in the new edition is still carefully leveled, and the mini lesson before each title ensures you cover everything the child needs to know in order to successfully read the story. For instance, in the lesson for A Cat, the first story in the A books series, the teacher/parent is directed to teach the child 8 sounds (A, T, F, C, S, O, P, M) and then practice blending the sounds into the words she'll need to know in order to read the book. Follow-up activity ideas are provided to deepen learning.  

The set of Easy-for-Me™ A Books covers: 

• all 26 letters of the alphabet   

• all sight words in SnapWords™ List A

The set of Easy-for-Me™ B Books covers: 

• all sight words in SnapWords™ List B

• long vowel spellings

• digraphs

• past tense

• -ing endings 

• diphthongs

• and much more...

On the Easy-for-Me™ Decodable Books web page, you can see pages inside the books and read more details about the titles before purchasing.

One last thing. Since we're so excited about these books, we're offering a limited time introductory special:  get 15% off the Easy-for-Me™ A and B Books through March 31st with coupon code POTOFGOLD.

Use SnapWords Cards in Sentences to Strengthen Reading Comprehension

“We LOVE the SnapWords™ cards! My 6 year old has dyslexia. Before we started neurofeedback and using the SnapWords™ cards, she knew 11 sight words. Now she knows all of set A! Thank you for making such great products!!” ~Jessica Rowe Harris

I really like how Jessica is using the SnapWords™ in short sentences in order to add to the meaning/comprehension as she teaches her child to recognize the words. SnapWords™ go much further than just word calling! Thanks for sharing, Jessica!

Reading Comprehension: Stress, Technology and Helping Students Help Themselves

The other night I collapsed on the couch with a book to read. Ahhhh, I really needed to de-stress! It had been a series of heavy-duty days filled with too much to do, too many obstacles, and many hurdles over which to leap. I’d borrowed what looked like a really great book from my dad and I so looked forward to losing myself in it. I read the first paragraph…and….nothing. My mind was absolutely blank. It shows the extent of my determination to really lose myself in this great book that after reading through the same paragraph multiple times I remained determined to read.

I shook myself figuratively, and then read one sentence silently, very slowly, and force myself to make a mental picture of the words. Even that was hard to do because of how ultra-busy my mind was! But a sentence at a time, I purposely formed images in my head of what I was reading and this time I was able to go on and read the book.

Children, Stress, and Reading Comprehension

I couldn’t help but think of all the times I’ve heard people talk about the great numbers of children who read but cannot comprehend what they read. My own recent experience drove the point home about what happens when your mind is hijacked by life and its stresses. If a child is tired, worried, or stressed out over anything from an upcoming game to worries about not doing well in school, he will experience a drop in his ability to mentally process what his eyes are physically seeing. During my years of teaching school, I frequently saw children enter the classroom in the morning looking like they’d hardly slept, looking upset, nervous, or annoyed; already the day had taken a chunk out of them and class hadn’t even started yet! In many cases, it was impossible to get much out of them until they had had a chance to sit and relax quietly for a few minutes.

Reading Comprehension and Technology

Something else I’ve thought about a lot in the past few months is that our kids spend hours and hours a week with their attention gobbled up by images provided for them by the various forms of technology they are engrossed in. Yes, they are hearing the words, but they don’t have to make mental images – the images are provided for them. Can you only image, then, how difficult it would be for these technology-absorbed children to then turn to a book with printed words and maybe no pictures at all! They may be able to read the words, but if their brains are not forming images of what they are reading, they will come away with nothing. Someone I read recently said that the prevalence of technology is making our generation of children into visual learners. That is not alarming until you begin to think of the role of books as vehicles for learning. Schools are going rapidly in the direction of providing more and more technology for kids, but what about when they graduate and go into the work force? They will have to read and make meaning for themselves.

Helping Children Learn to Help Themselves

Children can learn to make images for themselves as they read, but just telling them to do so will not do the trick. You will need to guide them into the practice of turning words into pictures for themselves. You can start small by playing a game. Make it light and funny. Make up a short sentence with descriptions in it, and have your child close her eyes and be very calm until she can “see” what you said in her mind. For example, say, “I see a hairy monkey holding a red balloon that is floating up in the air.” When she says she can “see” it, ask her to describe what she sees. Another great activity to do with a child who loves to draw is to play the same game, but instead of asking him to picture what you've said and then tell you about it, let him draw what he “saw” in his head.

Children need to practice purposefully making mental images as they read, but the more often they do it, the more practiced they will become, and the great outcome is that their reading comprehension will improve! The best news about strengthening reading comprehension by encouraging your child to visualize is that you can do this in little bits of time-- riding in the car, going through the aisles of the grocery store--just about anywhere, you can help your child with reading comprehension!

Visualization Aids Comprehension

Lots and lots of children have “comprehension” troubles. Even if they can read fluently, many struggle with being able to tell you afterwards what they read. I suspect that one culprit is the multiplicity of image-rich technologies with which many kids are saturated. They don’t HAVE to make images in their minds because scores of images are flashing before their eyes any time they are playing or relaxing. Compared to this bombardment of visuals, words in black ink on white paper are terribly sterile.

Another culprit in my students’ struggle for comprehension was ME. I had the biggest heart for my students, but in the mad dash to get them reading, I frequently neglected making time to have them practice visualizing what they read. But it is not at all too late to remedy the situation. Start small, start fun, and practice often. Thanks to our plastic brains, we can grow and change depending on the experiences we have.

From Words to Images

Use the Sight Word Strip Book for practice with visualization. Instead of just having the child read the sentences as practice for fluency, have him choose one page and turn it into a mini story complete with illustration. If the child is really young, let her just pick a sentence to write and then illustrate. Here are some examples. In the first, the sentence is a question and the illustration shows the ladybug on the ground verifying that the larger ladybug is indeed in the big blue flower.

The next, rather cryptic sentence is simply “He has a yellow one.” It is left totally up to the child’s imagination to determine what “one” is. In this case, there appears to be a lollipop or a rather fuzzy balloon!

An older child might want to elaborate in writing before drawing the picture. At any rate, when he or she is ready to share the art with you, ask questions to encourage him to elaborate orally about what he was thinking as he drew.

These two sentences were taken from the green pages in the Strip Book, meaning the first level of sight words were used to make them. There are five levels in all, so the language will vary greatly depending on the reading level the child is on.

Start with Picture Cues

You could also use SnapWords™ sight word cards as picture cues. These words are great for encouraging a child to think of words in terms of their context in a story and as vehicles for conveying meaning.

Have your child select a word that catches her fancy and then elaborate on it. An example:

And here’s another:

Doing these comprehension-building activities is a really fun thing for you to do with your child. Although it is more efficient to send them off alone to do the work of building their visualization skills, oh my! how great it would be for the child to hear your thoughts as you choose a sentence or SnapWords™ card and talk about what are you are drawing as you illustrate, or what you are writing as you look at the SnapWords™ card.

The Reading Teacher’s Encyclopedia

You’ll reach for it again and again…

Brand new to Child1st’s product lineup is the 439-page The Reading Teacher’s Encyclopedia. Don’t let the name fool you; you don’t have to be a reading teacher by profession to enjoy this book! If you work with children from kindergarten and up, you will find yourself reaching for the Encyclopedia over and over again in order to access the many games and activities in this comprehensive teaching resource.

The book addresses five critical areas in reading as identified by The National Reading Panel: phonics, phonemic awareness, vocabulary, fluency, and comprehension. Usually, parents and teachers would have to accumulate several resources to use in teaching all five areas of reading to their children or students. But we’ve designed one resource that contains teaching and practice in all five areas, and best of all, we’ve rounded out the resource by also included writing activities.

The format of this Encyclopedia is simple: we have taken the 306 SnapWords™ and have divided them into 5 lists of words. Then, we divided each of the five lists into five groups of 10-12 words each. For each of those 25 groups of words we have designed activities in the six areas we talked about above.  Of course, in the process of learning the 306 high-frequency words, your children will learn many other related words which will jump-start them into reading fluency.

Activities for each group of words include:

• ABC Order – alphabetic principle

• Assessment for fluency and accuracy in reading

• Bingo for vocabulary recognition

• Crossword puzzle for vocabulary recognition and comprehension

• Fill-in-the-blank for comprehension of vocabulary

• Go Fish for vocabulary recognition practice

• Illustrate the sentence, to show comprehension in reading

• Making Phrases – using vocabulary in meaningful phrases

• Making Sentences – using vocabulary in meaningful sentences

• Making Words – creating vocabulary words from individual letters (practice and problem-solving)

• Sentence Unscramble for practice with reading and reading comprehension

• Sound Manipulation – phonemic awareness activities

• Word Search for practice identifying vocabulary words

• Word Sort for structural analysis of words – group like words together

• Word Wall Games – color coded word wall included and three games to use with learning word wall words

• Write About It – pictorial writing prompts help your students get started with writing

Format

In order to save on printed paper and pass the savings on to you, we have made the Encyclopedia available on DVD. This way you can identify the activity you want to use and print off a master sheet. The beauty of this Encyclopedia is that you might be a teacher with varying levels of reading ability in your classroom – if you are teaching in a small group, use the activities for each particular level rather than choosing one for the whole class. In this way, you will be able to teach to the ability levels of each group of children.

Reading Comprehension and the Visual Learner

Learning to read can be a difficult process if you are a visual learner. The way we teach reading is so beautifully tailored to left brain dominant learners. Those children can be tossed into a bag with some good books, shaken up, and when they are tumbled back out onto the rug, voila! They come out clutching a book reading, “Once upon a time…”. I hear about children from time to time that “just started reading” when they were four.

When you are a visual and right brain dominant learner, however, in order for the process of reading to happen, you have to actively engage the right hemisphere of the brain in a wholly left brain process. We’ve discussed this until we’re all blue in the face. The fact of the matter is that we all know that the gestalt hemisphere needs to be engaged in learning. What remains to be seen is HOW we can accomplish this in the process of learning to read, particularly as it relates to reading comprehension.

The task we face is how to marry the words on the page with the capacity for rich imagery the visual-spatial child naturally possesses. I think the answer lies in the fact that children have to be purposefully taught to attach mental imagery to what they are hearing or reading, and they need practice a lot until seeing what they are reading becomes second nature.

It’s Just Dark in Here

Back in the day when I was teaching kindergarteners, I would teach a new concept, and then prompt the kids to close their eyes and see in their minds what we’d just talked about (usually a letter or a word). Many children could “see” an image in their heads, but there were always two or three who said, “It’s just dark in here.” I suspect that those children were logic dominant learners who didn’t naturally think in images.

Fast forward to teaching second grade. The emphasis was strongly on fluency, sight word recognition, sound symbol connection, and accuracy in reading; some of my most fluent readers could finish a page beautifully but not be able to answer the simplest question about what they’d read. I believe it was totally my fault because in the mad rush of getting them to “read” words quickly and accurately I neglected to simultaneously exercise their visualization muscles!

Where to Start

Like any other skill to be acquired, start small, start young, and don’t stop until you’ve reached your goal. Play a "picture this" game with your very young child. Begin by saying a phrase or sentence, and then ask your child to close her eyes and see it in her mind. Example: Say “I am thinking of an orange cat holding a blue umbrella. Can you close your eyes and see him?” Wait until she says, “Yes! I can see him!” Then ask her to think of something to ask you to visualize. More ideas:

• I am thinking of a hippo roller skating

• I am thinking of a monkey flying a red kite

• I am thinking of you in the top of a pine tree wearing your orange t-shirt

• I am thinking of grandma playing baseball. She just hit a home run!

• I am thinking of a volcano erupting in puffs of cotton candy

If you start this game before your child is reading and do it regularly, increase the complexity and detail of what you can “see” so that the habit of listening and making pictures is deepened. Vary the game by having your child draw pictures of what you are saying.

Subsequent Activities in Reading

Have your child read aloud to you, making sure that you verbalize the goal of reading before he starts to read: we are reading to get pictures in our mind of what is happening in the book. At first, stop the child after every thought to ask if he can see the story in his head. Ask him to describe what he sees. If he can’t tell you anything, go back to the sentence and have him read it again. Have him tell you in his own words what he’s gotten from the sentence or passage. The ultimate goal is getting him away from just calling words and into visualizing the story. It is for this reason we have added sentences on the backs of our SnapWords™ cards--so that children will learn to see words as conveyers of meaning as they use the cards to learn high frequency words.

Coming up next – more ideas to help your visual learner with reading comprehension.