Love Learning

Teaching strategies and resources that meet the needs of visual learners

A visual-spatial learner is a student who learns holistically (all at once) rather than in a step-by-step fashion. Pictures, whether printed or imagined, play an important role in the learning process. Because the child is processing primarily in pictures rather than words, ideas are interconnected, and the child must not be rushed and should be judged  on how well he/she can put into words what he/she sees.

When you use SnapWords™ for learning high-frequency words, the brain snaps a picture of the word and easily recalls it later when the child no longer sees the image.

Is my child a visual learner?

As a parent, you naturally want to provide the best learning experience for your child. You’ve doubtless heard a lot about the various learning styles and how they might impact how your child learns, but you also might wonder how much of it is relevant to your situation. If your child is sailing through learning reading and math, likely not much of the learning styles discussion would impact you and your family. However, if your child is struggling with learning the basic skills, looking at learning styles might be important. In particular, visual-spatial learners tend to face learning difficulties because traditional curricula are designed for a different type of learner.

Read more.

What are the strengths of the visual learner?

Common Strengths of Gestalt Learners:

• Learns best through movement

• Will focus on whole picture

• Needs emotional relevance to self

• Needs to see and hear the whole image/sound in order to learn

Read more.

What are some good teaching strategies for visual learners?

Many visual learners must see the whole picture before they can make sense out of a single detail. They have to see each detail fitting into the whole and see the relationship between all the parts. Any detail not located within the map – not related to other details – becomes a serious distraction. When presented with details they don’t know how to deal with, visual learners can come to an abrupt, stammering halt. They appear to be absolutely dim and incapable of grasping what seems amazingly simple to their sequential peers. Thinking in whole pictures is actually a wonderful ability – it is just not appreciated in traditional lessons.

Read more.

Are there many children who learn best through pictures?

The same applies to different types of learners. We have come to the point in our society where every child seems to need a label and one that details specifically how he learns or doesn’t learn. We have visual learner, tactile learner, dyslexic learner, autistic, and many many other labels. The implication is that each of those types of learners requires a specific set of directions for how to teach them successfully. In doing research, however, and as I have read the experts in each of the most common areas of disability, one element keeps on showing up: the fact that so many of these non-traditional learners learn best through pictures and hands-on lessons.

Read more.

Helping visual learners with reading comprehension.

One of the constants in classrooms across the country is the sight word list. Every teacher has a list and one of her important tasks is to get her children to learn all the words on the list. I remember paying a lot of attention to sight word acquisition when I was in the classroom; after all, we had testing every quarter and a big component of each test was sight word recognition. The children who had become very fluent in instantly being able to call the words as they flashed before their eyes scored highest on their testing. Those children who preferred to think a bit, to make sure they were saying the right word, or who needed to look for clues to help them remember, well, they scored lower. At any rate, it was something we all focused on quite a bit.

Read more.

Why is a multisensory teaching approach best and what does one look like?

What does it really mean when we say multisensory? The accepted, traditional teaching techniques typically used in the classroom meet the needs of (left-brained) sequential learners. Concepts are introduced in a step by step sequence and are practiced and reviewed using drill and memorization; children must also show evidence of their learning in a particular time frame. This is all very good for children who are left-brained or sequential learners. The problem is, of course, that while the approach to teaching is great for those children who are sequential, every learner is taught this way and this traditional approach is ineffective at best for all the non-sequential learners.

Read more.

Free games and activities for teaching sight words

We have free samples of many of our sight word games and other resources available for download on our website. Try them out with your students before investing in the complete resources!

Try them out.

Try before you buy: FREE SnapWords™ to download

We have free samples of our sight word cards available for download on our website. Try them out with your students before investing in the complete resources!

Try them out.

List of sight words for kindergarten (and up) to download

We’ve created an index of which sight words are in each of our lists so you can compare to which words your child already knows or your district requirements and see which lists would be the best fit for you.

See the index.

Testimonial:

“I just have to say how thrilled I am with the Snap Word cards! I just figured out my homeschooled 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 Snap Word 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 and then the word appears in her mind. AMAZING! Thank you so much. I am so glad I discovered the Snap Words cards!”
Cindy

How to Help Visual and Other Right-Brained Learners Use Their Best Learning Tools

Frequently when parents call to talk about their child’s learning needs, they tell me that their child is struggling, but then the quickly follow that by telling me how very bright their child is. Often I sense that the parent is expecting me to doubt their word that their child is bright, but that is never my response. I know first-hand how capable and bright visual learners are. It is not their brain or their lack of talent that is to blame for their struggles in school. What I have come to understand is that the culprit is the mismatch between a visual learner’s gifts and the design of the lesson and materials used. Visual learners have specific gifts for learning, and once they understand their own strengths, they will be able to help themselves all through their years in school. Following are some areas of strength for visual learners.

They can see learning concepts in pictures in their heads

This skill/ability of right-brained or visual learners is the most powerful gift they have but also the hardest for adults to accept or utilize with confidence. We, as adults, are habituated toward doling out little tidbits of learning in a prescribed order, in a linear, sequential manner – that is directly opposed to how these children learn. Let me give some examples of what I mean.

• Teaching children the letter sounds and then trying to get them to sound out words based on phonics rules they have been taught. This particular topic is the downfall of so many visual, right-brained learners. They just stumble along and don’t ever get into really reading when they are approached this way.

• Teaching children math facts that they need to memorize. Using flashcards to repeatedly drill with the goal of building fluency with their math facts.

• Giving children a list of spelling words to memorize for a test. Spelling words consist of groups of letters in a particular sequence that the child will have to chant repeatedly in hopes that the sequence of letters will remain in their brains long enough to last through the spelling test.

• Giving children lists of sight words to memorize in order to speed up their reading… and because sight words are supposedly words that are not easy to sound out.

• Teaching children math or phonics rules that they will need to apply to specific situations as they do their seatwork or homework.

None of those topics mentioned above can be translated by a visual learner into pictures she can see, snap a mental picture of, and recall intact later. Not unless the child has been taught specifically how to order their learning material in such a way that their right-brained self can absorb it successfully. It makes a lot of sense for the adult teacher to embed the learning concepts in visuals that will be the means of a child learning the concepts she needs to learn.

When children are lucky enough to be taught using visuals, you can then teach them to strengthen their visualization muscles. Have them study the picture, talk about the learning piece that is embedded in the image, close their eyes and see the picture in their minds, and then use that picture to lead them through solving the problem or writing the word. To be very clear, visual children can learn to spell words correctly, but the most successful way is for them to look carefully at the word, close their eyes and see the word in their minds and then write what they see. It is NOT helpful to have them chant the letter names of the words they need to learn. Our SnapWords are perfectly designed to convey over 600 words via images. These words can be used not only to teach sight words, but also for creating spelling lists.

They remember best when new information is arranged in a meaningful pattern

I have written much in the past about using patterns to teach right-brained and visual learners. For children that struggle with reading in regular schools, the knee-jerk reaction is to make their body of learning much smaller. But this is really the opposite of what works with these students. For instance, in my Title 1 2nd grade classroom, I had a group of non-readers. Each time we met, we had a list of words (about 10) that they were supposed to learn. I would select a list of words that had something in common such as a long vowel spelling. Now, instead of teaching the children to recognize each word (which they obviously could not do) we focused on the common element. The EA spelling in each word allowed the words to be written in a way that the children could detect the pattern in the words. We would highlight the EA so that visually it stood out. These kids would see those words with the EA spelling pattern in common on their papers and it helped them learn and remember how to spell and read those words. So with these children, while I began with their 8-10 words, I would always add more and more words that followed the same pattern to their list. If they could write 8 words using the spelling pattern EA, they could write 20 or 30. So not only were these children using a learning strength they possessed, they were succeeding, and when they saw their list was twice as long as the other kids in their classroom, their confidence enjoyed a large boost!

To give a more example of this, say the students’ spelling list is: nail, fade, back, came, bank, hail, wade, lame, rank, sack. First I would put words in pairs that are similar: Nail/hail, fade/wade, back/sack, bank/rank, came/lame. We have the tiny beginnings of a good right-brained lesson that utilizes patterns. Start with the first pair of words, and rather than say, “This word says NAIL. N, A, I, L. Spell it with me, copy it on your paper, memorize it.” I would say, “The AI in this word says Long A. You can find AI in both NAIL and HAIL. Take your yellow highlighter and color the AI in those words.” Next, I would have created a list of several other words for them to add that also had the same AI spelling: mail, fail, rail, sail, tail, bail. These would be added to the column of AI words and their common spelling pattern would also be highlighted yellow. What you have now is a whole column of words with yellow AIs. What this creates for the child is a whole pattern that they can visually snap into their memories. They are learning the spelling pattern by sight.  The AI in each word is the core or the foundation to which a few other sounds are added. Then I would take the next pair of words and do the same thing, this time highlighting the sound spelling the words have in common.

They remember well when new information is tied to something known (story, skit, metaphor)

There are several tricks that fall under this category. Metaphor is powerful. In teaching numbers, for instance, we create a visual, a jingle, but the jingle consists of metaphor. “1 is a thin man standing up straight.” “8 is a snowman, makes me laugh.” “M is mountains.” “S is a snake.”

Stories are powerful links to learning. When teaching contractions, I told my students that the ’ is really a boot that kicked out a letter or letters from a word. The explanation is silly, but the little story provides a reminder of the function of the apostrophe. Explain that the final “silent” E in words such as wade, made, lake, and snake is actually not just a silent E. He is Pinchy E that is reaching around the consonant to pinch the vowel and make her say her name. With this explanation, you are creating a reason for everything that is happening, the sillier the better. Children remember novelty. When I teach digraphs SH, TH, PH, WH, CH, I don’t just say, “CH says ch like in chop.” I tell a story and the kids act it out. For instance, I might say the following story. The handsome Mr. H walked into town one day. He walked up to a nice yellow house where Miss S lived. He rang her doorbell and when she came to the door, he invited her to come out and walk with him. Well, Miss S was so excited that instead of being able to say her normal sound, she got all flustered and she and Mr. H together made a brand new sound: “SHHHH.”

Children will learn to help themselves

The first thing to do to help your struggling visual learners is to assure them that they have giftedness that many people don’t have, but we haven’t been using it. They need to have their confidence restored first or no matter what we do, we will be trying to walk uphill. If they have even a spark of hope it will go a long way! If they believe they are broken or incapable, they will have a much more difficult time learning. The second thing to do is to use vastly different materials so that the lessons you do with them are totally and utterly different from what they used before. Finally, just come out and tell them the strengths they have because over time they will learn to transform left-brained content into a format that they can absorb more easily. Please be sure to check out the resources we have already transformed for you on our site. Click the buttons in the right column of this blog to see resources by category.

Beyond Memorization: How to teach math concepts memorably

I did horribly in arithmetic when I was very young. For many years I thought it was because I just had no math ability, but a decade or so ago, I realized the issue was not with my brain, but rather with the fact that math is usually taught in a way that requires a lot of memorization. And while I historically have done okay with short-term memorization, for long term recall and actual use of the math concepts, memorization just doesn’t work for me. I have learned in the interim that if I truly want to save a lot of time and frustration, rather than trying to just remember something, I need to make myself a hook of some kind (most of the time a visual hook) so that recall is automatic.

Two effective teaching tools:

Using hooks in teaching is incredibly important when teaching right-brain-dominant children, or what we might call visual or kinesthetic learners, or even children who have been labeled with a disability of some kind. Another very important concept that makes learning more meaningful is to teach a concept in context and apply it to as many different scenarios as possible.

For instance, let’s take the concepts of “whole,” “half,” and “quarter.” When I hear those terms I immediately think of their relationship to fractions. But rather than just teach fraction concepts, let’s see how we can use those terms across the board.

Teach the concept of “whole”:

Park on this concept until you are positive your child grasps the meaning behind the word. Use the term in conversation, not just when you are teaching math. You might say something like, “I see you ate the whole thing!” Or “I don’t think we need to slice the whole loaf of bread for dinner.” Or “I will bet the four of you can eat the whole pizza.” Or “I will give you a whole dollar for your allowance after you rake the leaves.” Or while looking at an analog clock face, “It takes the minute hand a whole hour to go all the way around the face of the clock – starting at 12:00 and ending back at 12:00.”

Teach the concept of “half”:

Along with helping your child get a rough idea of what “half” means, also introduce the idea that “half” means EQUAL parts. Half can be a really fun concept to teach in or out of the classroom! Give your child a paper clock face and help him or her divide it in half by folding carefully at 12:00 and 6:00. Draw a line on the fold, and then ask him or her to color HALF of the clock face. Say that this is half an hour.

Another idea is to select a pair of socks and identify one sock as half of the pair.

You might also share a bowl of grapes between you, using two smaller bowls, one for each of you, and meticulously divide the whole bowl of grapes evenly  in half by saying, “One for you and one for me…” until all the grapes are divided into the two smaller bowls in equal number.

Another idea is to show your child how to get half a sheet of paper by folding it carefully in half, creasing the fold, and then carefully cutting on the crease. He or she could finish the activity by drawing a picture of a daytime activity on one half of the sheet, representing the daylight half of a day, and a nighttime activity on the other half sheet of paper to represent the dark half of a whole day.

You might also take your child shopping and tell him or her that you have a whole dollar that you are going to share with him or her. Each of you will have half a dollar. Take the time to find two half dollar coins to exchange for the dollar bill.

Teach the concept of “quarter”:

Go back to your paper clock face and this time after you fold it on the 12:00 to 6:00 line, fold it again so that you now have a quarter of a clock face. Unfold the clock face and point out the fold lines. Say, “The clock has four quarters!” Ask your child to color each quarter a different color. With the clock face to one side, lay a dollar bill on the table. Put two half dollars under it, and then take four quarters and show that while the 50 cent pieces are half of a dollar, 2 quarters make up two halves of a 50 cent coin and a quarter of a whole dollar.

Relate the quarters to the clock face your child colored by placing one quarter of a dollar on each quarter of an hour.

This concept of quarters can carry over to the activity of dividing a whole bowl of grapes into quarters – by counting equal numbers into four small bowls.

Show a quarter of a pizza next time you have one, or cut a pancake or a pie into quarters. The options are unlimited.

Another fun idea would be to carry these ideas into measurement using rice or water and measuring cups. If you have access to a sand box, take the measuring cups and bowls out there to practice whole, half, and quarter.

Most of all, have fun! This will ensure your child loves learning!

Why the Easy-for-Me™ Reading Program works so well with both new and struggling readers

I just had a long conversation with a new customer this morning – let’s call her Margaret. She works with special education students in her county and she was in the market for something new in hopes that this new thing would make for success in teaching reading this year.

Margaret recounted some of the challenges she has encountered when using new programs; the last program she used required three months of grueling training and she said that program currently lurks in the trash can in her office. Training for this program was difficult; the program was difficult for the kids. Basically, what teachers and parents want when they begin a search for a new program is one simple thing: something that will work because what they used before did not work!

Margaret asked me to describe our Easy-for-Me™ Reading Program, which started a nice conversation about approaches to teaching children who have trouble learning to read. Margaret definitely knew already what wouldn’t work with her students!

Here are some of the hallmarks of the Easy-for-Me™ (note the name!) Reading Program:

1.    The Easy-for-Me™ Reading Program is simple. The lessons are spelled out so there is no need for teacher training. Teacher reads the lesson prior to teaching it, locates the supplied materials and resources needed for the lesson, and then follows the elements of the lesson.

2.    Elements in the lessons include specific practices that help various types of learners learn to read successfully. For visual learners, we include all symbols embedded in images. For tactile/kinesthetic learners, there is body motion. For those who are primarily auditory, we include elements in the lesson in which the child(ren) hear themselves speaking or sounding out words. The best thing is that all these approaches are combined so that they offer multiple pathways to the brain at one time. This provides a much stronger learning experience for brand new learners as well as for children who have struggled to learn to read.

3.    The Easy-for-Me™ Reading Program is free of any activities or details that could be construed as busy work or as not directly advancing the child’s progress in learning to read. Nothing is included that is unrelated to learning to read. Follow-up activities are designed for either one child being taught at home, or by a handful of children working in an independent station/center that allows for quiet time to deepen learning concepts and allow them to be stored in long term memory. Follow up to many of the reading skills involves art in some form. This is perfect because while children are creating, their minds have time to store away the ideas they learned. Little children can paint the letters and sounds they just learned, or they can recreate the SnapWord™ they just learned. Anyway, the follow-up activities are provided for the adult/teacher.

4.    In Easy-for-Me™ and with SnapWords™, SnapLetters™, and in fact, all Child1st materials, one of the magic bullets for learning is that we are strengthening each child’s visual capacities and minimizing the need for plain old memorization. Look at the image above for “hour” and notice that each element in the word is a part of the story/picture. The H is the tall man holding the soup ladle. The O is the lid to the soup pot, the U is the pot itself, and the R provides a surface on which to eat. The clock and watch provide a visual also for what an hour would look like on a timepiece. If you want to extend learning of this word, cover up the H-man and point out that what is left is the word “our” which sounds exactly the same as “hour.” You can use this sentence to reinforce the difference between the two words: “OUR soup will be ready in an HOUR.” After you have talked over the image and analyzed the letters used, ask the child to close her eyes and SEE the word in her mind. Ask her to describe what she sees. Finally with eyes open, see if she would like to replicate the word and image on paper. What is happening here is you are teaching the child to rely on her very special visual sense and are bypassing the need to memorize how a word is spelled. As the frosting on the cake, the child has learned also how to spell HOUR without trying to memorize it!

5.    The Easy-for-Me™ Reading Program is unhurried, but super-effective. Because it is skill-based, the goal is all about acquiring skills, NOT about hurrying through lesson after lesson whether or not ALL the kids have truly acquired the skills. Each lesson specifies exactly what the child will need to learn in that lesson. Then, conveniently, there is a skills tracking chart for each child with all the skills detailed on it, with spaces for you to add dates for each skill assessed. The nice thing about the skills based program and the tracking charts is that you can simply keep a notebook or clipboard with all the students’ tracking charts on them, and then when it is time to report to parents on their children’s progress, you can photocopy (ie: take a still shot of where the child is at that moment) and give the parents the report. Easy-pacheesy.

6.    Finally, while we have simplified the process of learning to read (and teaching children to read), the goals we put in place that we want children to reach are not lowered at all! They are, in fact, reflective of raising the bar for learning. We are so confident that children will learn to read more easily because of the teaching approach, that we have raised the bar much higher for what we believe children can learn! This brings to mind a slogan that hung over my door when I worked with Title 1 children: “Work Smarter, not Harder!” Easy-for-Me™ is just that; easy for the teacher, and easy for the student.

Why should I use visual cues or picture prompts when teaching a visual or right brained learner?

I am one of those right brained thinkers / visual learners, so I can personally attest to the value of using images or pictures to help me remember important facts. Let me tell a story that will illustrate my point.

True Story

I really love tuna. I love it doctored up with olives, cumin, horseradish, some vinegar and oil and nestled inside a cut-up fresh, juicy tomato. I also love it tucked into a bed of lettuce leaves rolled up inside a flour tortilla. In that case I might add diced jalapenos. I even like tuna spread on a slice of grainy bread, topped with a slice of fresh tomato, another of jalapeno cheddar and broiled lightly.

One thing I hate is opening a can of tuna only to find what looks like cat food bits floating blandly in murky water. This has happened to me more than once, so for a while I quit buying tuna. But one day I discovered that Chicken of the Sea has a tuna that I truly can eat. It is their solid white albacore version. So once I made up my mind to buy only Chicken of the Sea brand, I was happy buying tuna again.

But, last week when I went to the store for tuna, I drew a complete blank. I stared dazedly at the shelf at cans of Bumblebee, Star Kist, Chicken of the Sea, and some miscellaneous store brands. I just couldn’t remember for the life of me which one was the good one! I did remember that the Good Brand had more than one word, so that eliminated Bumblebee. I closed my eyes and grabbed some cans…and came away with Star Kist.

I called my husband to ask him what the preferred brand of tuna is. He is used to my mental vagaries though he never suffers from them himself, so he was not surprised by my question. “Chicken of the Sea,” he replied promptly. Ah, I had guessed wrong. I knew I had to do something to help myself.

What I bought:

What I Wanted:

I’ve talked endlessly about how pictures help visual learners remember all sorts of things, so I decided to take my own advice. Closed my eyes and imagined a chicken of the sea. Like this:

And I will never forget my tuna brand again.

It works just as beautifully when you are teaching a visual learner to read or teaching spelling to a right brained learner, or math to an active child who gobbles up learning in lightning-quick bites. Images are magical in helping convey and permanently fix in memory all the miscellaneous things we tell our kids and expect them to remember. So let’s use pictures next time we want our visual, right brained learners to remember something important… or not so important.

So, to answer the title question, “Why should I use visual cues or picture prompts when teaching a visual or right brained learner?” Because if you do, they will remember.

(And by the way, for which types of learners fall into this category, please refer to other posts that discuss this in more detail.)

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.

True multisensory teaching… what does it look like?

A couple of days ago I had a phone call from a first grade teacher who wanted to discuss a child in her class she is concerned about. Let’s call him Oliver. She shared with me various observations she had made as she puzzled through how best to help Oliver learn.

• He benefits from hearing himself talk through the concept he’s learning, which signals an auditory learner. So she fashioned an auditory amplification tool for him out of a PVC joint, to which Oliver responded happily. If you want an auditory amplification device and don’t feel like using PVC, we do carry two versions of this product. It will not only amplify the child’s voice, but will increase focus by helping the child hear his own voice more clearly than background noise.

• This teacher uses SnapWords™ sight word picture cards (and SMART files) in her classroom, and she noticed that when Oliver read her the plain words during assessments, he was doing the body motions he’d learned from the backs of the SnapWords™ cards. Because so many children benefit from the multisensory elements of the SnapWords™ we have designed more words and now we have 607 SnapWords™ encompassing 220 Dolch, 500 Fountas & Pinnell, and 300 Fry words and more. This product is a valuable and irreplaceable tool to add to your arsenal! 

• Oliver also seemed to be helped by having a visual embedded in the symbols, which is a mark of a visual learner. In addition, his teacher said that when he took traditional spelling tests, he was unable to succeed unless she chose words that had a sound spelling in common, at which point he was able to pass the spelling test. She said he seems to need to be able to find a pattern in learning in order to succeed. Again, a global, visual child.

I found the conversation very interesting because of the particular combinations of strengths/needs this child displays. It is pretty common to find children who enjoy both the body movement and the visual elements, but rarely have I come across a child that also required the auditory piece as well as visual and kinesthetic elements in learning.

My discussion with Oliver's teacher then went to our resource The Illustrated Book of Sounds & Their Spelling Patterns and how this approach to teaching spelling, phonics, comprehension, etc., is very multisensory as well. The approach is simple and frankly entertaining, but the power behind the simplicity of the approach lies in the multisensory aspects of the lessons. Here are just some of the multisensory elements:

• Pattern-seeking. Each lesson focuses on one sound spelling, and every target word in the lesson contains that letter combination so the child can naturally see that element in every word with one glance at the sheet.

• Color-coding. The child uses a yellow highlighter or crayon to color only the letters that use the sound spelling (for instance “OW” or “AI”) and when they have finished coloring the target spelling, you can tell them, “Each time you see yellow, just say ‘OU’ (or ‘AI’). The color makes the sound spellings pop from the page visually.

• Hooks. The words are arranged in sentences to tie them together in a way that is easy for the child to remember. Imagine handing your child 10 puzzle pieces that have no connection to each other. Will it be easy for him to remember what each one looks like? Or what if you handed him 10 puzzle pieces that when joined together showed the image of a river? Which would it be easier for him to remember? The sentence is the glue that connects all the words that use the same sound spelling. Example of a group of words hooked together: “Say, I may play in the spray all day.”

• Visuals. Each sentence is illustrated with a cartoon that shows the meaning of the sentence which contains the words with the spellings we are teaching. The visual draws in the visual learner, provides yet another means for embedding the learning in the child’s mind (but in a different region of the brain from the auditory).

• Auditory. The child reads the sentence to you or with you.

• Tactile. The child writes the words as you dictate them.

• Multisensory – it happens all at one time. The child sees the color-coding, the illustration, and the global collection of words containing the sound spelling. He hears himself reading the words and sounding out the words as he writes them. He writes, watching himself write, hearing himself speak and sound, all of it a combination of pathways to the brain and to learning that is occurring at one time.

While no one child is a purist, we can generalize that some children are strongly visual, others are strongly auditory, while still others are predominantly kinesthetic learners. It is good practice, however, when teaching any young child to use as many pathways to the brain as possible. This is true multisensory teaching/learning. What will happen if you do this is that the child will have a richer learning experience. There will be fewer chances for something to slip by him, or for him to not understand a concept. If you are teaching a class full of children, it makes no sense to try and teach specifically to one type of learner. You cannot teach the same lesson in multiple ways; you just won’t have time to do that! So it makes perfect sense to teach to the modalities and have the child’s experience be multisensory as well.

Child1st has done so much for you by the very design of our products. We combine visual, kinesthetic, and auditory elements in our product design, and the process of learning becomes more effortless for so many children. Children can enjoy the color, the activity, the humor, the sense of accomplishment and competence that they need to fuel even more success in learning!

Let’s help our children love learning!

How to design units that access each student’s giftedness…

…and turn on their excitement for learning

It would be amazing to take a protracted field trip and visit the schools across the nation, walk the hallways, and peek in the classroom doors to see what we can see. Doubtless what we would witness would be incredibly varied. We would see everything from classrooms in which students are engaged, participating, and energized, to classrooms in which children are passive, indifferent, and checked out. In some of these latter classrooms, behaviors are out of control, while in others, students are silent.

What makes the difference in classrooms?

I have a theory: if we access each child’s area of giftedness, we will turn them on to learning. In reality, the brain is already wired to learn. What remains is for us to figure out how to create a learning environment in which brains can learn, want to learn, and do so without a ton of effort on our part as teachers.

How can we do this?

Some ideas need to be in place before successfully designing units of instruction that engage students and access their best abilities. We should assume that:

• All children are gifted in varying ways.

• Students don’t all learn the same way.

• The ultimate best means of conveying what they have learned will vary from student to student.

• Lecture/verbal instruction is the least effective way to teach.

• Listening to verbal instruction is the least effective way for students to learn.

• It IS possible to teach one lesson and reach all the students in a classroom.

• Children can perform far beyond what we view as their ability level.

• Children rise to the occasion when they are given control over their own learning.

• Children don’t always learn concepts in the order we view as “the correct order,” be it sight words or math facts.

• Most children learn by sorting through a wealth of ideas and making order out of them in their own minds.

Planning a unit

As an example, let’s use the topic of European influences on the settlement of North America – 6th grade level.  The unit includes the history of the first European visitors and settlers to America as well as what animals and plants were introduced from Europe. I actually prepared this unit back in 2001 and taught it to two sixth grade classrooms in a rural, at-risk population of students with marginal home support. Suffice it to say, the topic was not on the list of “burning issues I need to know about” for my students. Decide ahead of time exactly what you want all the students to come away knowing and understanding, and be prepared to share this with the students.

Prepare your unit in ways that speak to the modalities of the students. It is not the time to say “read pages 225-228 and answer the questions at the end of the unit.” Speaking to the modalities of the students means that you will show more than you will tell. As you are sharing the food stuffs that originated in Europe, create a huge map (on the whiteboard or smartboard) showing images of the various foods/animals; use arrows or put the items in little ships that are headed towards the new world. Use rhyme and color-coding. Encourage the students to use their hands to reflect the lessons you are presenting, even if it is to draw the map in their notebook and draw or cut out images of the influences from Europe.

At the end of the unit, share that you want to find out what they each understand. There will not be a test to study for; there won’t be a certain way for them to show you what they know. Each of the students will be able to choose a way to share what they have learned with you and the class.

Give them the list of concepts or questions you want them to be able to respond to. At the same time, give them some ideas for options they can choose from just to prime the pump.

1. Verbally gifted students could choose to do a TV news report or write an article. 

 

2. Interpersonally gifted students could do a TV or radio interview, do a game show where the host asks questions and the contestants answer the questions, etc.

 

3. Intrapersonally gifted students might choose to create a diary from the point of view of a young person traveling over to the colonies for the first time, recounting their experiences. Or, they might choose to make a scrapbook with cut outs illustrating their entries.

 

4. Visually gifted students might choose to collaborate on a mural/map complete with key, illustrations, etc. They might elect to create a product using color-coding to show source countries of different plants and animals or customs.

 

5. Rhythmically gifted students might make up a song or chant or  poem or ditty about various aspects of the lesson.

 

6. Kinesthetically gifted students might create a choreographed play and act out the content of the unit.

 

7. Logically/Mathematically gifted students might recount the events, focusing on the challenges of the expansion into the Americas and the way these challenges were overcome. They might be interested in the data and numbers surrounding this period in our history. They might create graphs and other numerical charts as a way of sharing data.

The rubric

The teacher’s rubric must focus not on the means of conveying learning but on whether the substance of the unit was understood and communicated. Did each student show they understood the unit? Did they convey the concepts that were central to the unit?

Consider having a simple rubric for students to use to rate each presentation, prepping them ahead of time to focus on content more than on the means of presentation.

The structure of the rubric should include the major concepts and have a place for rating maybe from 1-4 the excellence of communicating each concept. The student rubric should be simpler and focus on the main elements and the extent to which they were communicated.

Taking it further

As you teach more and more frequently using this model, encourage your students to learn all they can from each other about what each child finds easiest to do. Encourage collaboration, not by teacher-led grouping, but instead by giving the students the liberty of planning future presentations drawing on the skills and gifts of students who are different from themselves. For instance, a visual spatial student could team with a verbally gifted child to create a presentation that showcased both of their abilities. The mathematically gifted child might team with a body/kinesthetically gifted child. The resulting projects would be so diverse and amazing for the class to enjoy as their learning and their understanding expands with each new presentation.

The result?

Your students will love learning. I can guarantee it! 

Q: How do I help a child who is bright but has poor retention?

A: Many, many visual learners and right-brained learners are very bright. They come across as not bright when they are asked to do things that are very hard for them, such as work with symbols (1,2,3, A, B,C) and formulas and rules--in short, anything that involves a symbol or that requires memorization. The good news is that these children learn very quickly and efficiently when the materials they're using have elements that tie (left-brained) symbols to (right-brained) other elements such as pictures, body movement, story, metaphor, humor, color and more.

Read about how hemispheric dominance affects a child's ability to learn to read.

Check out our SnapWords™ cards that tie left-brained symbols to right-brained images and body movement.

How to Choose the Best Educational Environment for Your Child

Recently I heard from a parent on the other side of the world about concerns she had with her daughter’s difficulties in some areas of school. She expressed that her daughter is primarily a right-brained learner and that she struggles with subjects such as writing when she needs to translate information from mental ideas or images into a sequence of words, or in math class when ideas utilizing symbols are called for. All of these present challenges to be overcome.

Subsequent discussions with this parent led to her question, “What is the best educational setting for my child?” She was doubtless considering whether or not she would be able to support her daughter sufficiently from home. This is a huge question, however, and one only parents can answer for themselves and their own children. But I asked this particular parent to describe in more detail what is easy and what is hard for her daughter in the school setting. Here are some of the ideas she expressed about her daughter:

What is hard for her: 

• Spelling. She is able to learn her spelling words for her spelling tests, however the spelling words are not used correctly in her writing thereafter.

• Mathematics. Simple addition, subtraction, division and multiplication take a long time to work out and sometimes when she gets the correct answer, she will write the wrong answer on the sheet.  If she cannot see the picture of the problem at hand, she cannot understand what is being asked of her.

• She is very tough on herself and wants to get everything right.  I cannot reason with her that mistakes are a part of learning.

• Often daydreams in class. She says that she uses the time to process information, however her teacher believes she is not on task.

• Moves, rocks, fidgets all the time; this helps her focus on the task at hand.

• Cannot follow verbal instructions.

• If she verbalizes before writing, her thought process is much clearer and she can write in a sequential manner.

What is easy for her:

• Reading - her reading level and comprehension are at grade level.

• Art - is very creative and thinks outside the box.

• Dance - very expressive in her dance, always getting acknowledged at school.

• Intuition - picks up people’s moods very easily.

• Writing - if helped, she can write some very imaginative and entertaining pieces of work.

• Science - loves science and is very excited to discuss science concepts.

As I read through these bullet points, what struck me was that this lady's daughter truly does sound like a visual/tactile child! [For more information about visual-spatial learners, see this blog post and this one.]

Another idea that struck me is how thoroughly this mother had gotten to know her child. This knowledge of our children is fundamental to truly being able to guide and help them. Once we’ve identified their gifts as well as their areas of challenge, we can choose wisely for them because we will have the information needed.

So how do I choose?

While I cannot answer this question, I will say this: Once you have determined your child’s learning needs and strengths, the next step is to find out what your options are. Is there a school your child could attend where consideration is given in coursework for right-brained or visual learners? If you have various options open to you, take the time to interview and ask specific questions about how your child would be helped through her areas of need.

If you feel there are few options for your child, one idea to consider is to supplement her education at home by using materials that are designed especially for visual or other right-brained learners. Visual learners learn very quickly when the setting is right. If the materials you are using have images and body movement incorporated into them, working with her at home might be all you need to do.

Please don’t hesitate to call (1-800-881-0912) or email (info@child-1st.com) if you would like to chat about your own child and what might help him/her out the most. Or, use the comments section below.