by Sarah Major M.Ed.
Chances are if you are reading this, you have a child who is struggling more than you feel he or she ought to be. In our day and age, it has become normal to identify a child who is struggling and then begin testing to determine exactly what is going on. A really good test might pinpoint for you your child’s learning strengths and weaknesses alike. A really useless test will assign a label but not give you any clues for how to strengthen those weak areas.
Because I am a visual, global thinker myself, I tend to look at things a bit differently. I don’t look at one child at a time and think, “Oh wow, she is just not able to learn her sight words. We need to get her tested to find out what is going on.” Or “We’ve been working on this same math skill for the whole month and he’s just not getting it! I wonder if I should see about getting him tested.”
My perspective is that testing is the last action you take – and only after doing a whole lot of other things first. For the last 14 years I have focused my attention on all children who struggle to learn. My work has been to find solutions or bridges to understanding, hooks for memory, and visual/tactile strategies that make learning possible. In short, my focus has not been on the child and finding out what is wrong with him or her; rather it has been on designing ways to help any learner achieve to their highest potential.
What has resulted from these 14 years of experimentation and design are some general guidelines that when applied, DO help struggling children learn more easily. I often say these designs are for “visual learner” or “right-brained learners” as a way of collecting children who struggle to learn under one umbrella. Just as no two children are alike, so no two visual learners are alike, so I don’t design some products specifically for dyslexic children, totally different ones for autistic children, yet others for active children or children who are visual/spatial learners. I design using as many elements as possible at one time.
Take time to study your child and see if any of these characteristics remind you of your learner:
1. Tends to visualize/daydream
2. Intuitive
3. Reads between the lines and picks up subtle cues
4. Is disorganized with his/her stuff
5. Tends to skip over details
6. Usually wants to make up his/her own steps for solving a problem
7. Needs to see it and handle it
8. Is physically gifted, balanced, sure of his/her own body in space
9. Prefers hands-on
10. Likes to put things together
11. Likes to draw
12. Is forgetful
13. Sometimes seems to have a hard time hearing and following through with verbal directions
14. Has trouble memorizing and remembering it later
15. Can’t sound out words or sounds them out but has no clue what he/she just said
16. When he/she is thinking, some part of the body is moving
17. Sometimes has trouble expressing his/her thoughts verbally, especially when under stress
I am sure there are other characteristics to consider, but for now, if several of those descriptions remind you of your child, read on. Chances are your child could crawl under our umbrella!
Our primary goal in all the activities we do with these children who struggle is to help strengthen communication between various regions in the brain. The reason for this is that if they are struggling with a traditional approach, it is our clue that more of the brain and body needs to be targeted in learning.
Traditional approaches depend very heavily on the left hemisphere of the brain to the exclusion of the right hemisphere and other areas such as the cerebellum – the center for movement.
Here are some suggestions that will help create and strengthen connections for learning:
1. Make sure your child gets daily outside free play. And I don’t mean sitting on the ground playing with little trucks in the dirt. I mean vigorous activity that will create a pattern of alternating left and right sides of the body such as running, skipping climbing, crawling. Anything hand over hand. Vigorous physical activity will mean that the brain is being stimulated left/right, left/right and this will help to strengthen the communication between right and left hemispheres in the brain. This activity will also supply the brain with plenty of oxygen.
2. For every left-brained sort of thing you do, incorporate a right-brained element. For example, when you are teaching your child a new word, you will show him/her the word and say it, but you need to also involve the cerebellum by doing a body motion that mimics the meaning of the word, and you will need to incorporate an image to involve the right hemisphere. So your practice could look like this: Show the child the word and say it. Have the child make up a body motion while saying the word. Next, have the child write the word and then embellish it with colorful images that enhance the meaning of the word. OR if you are teaching a math concept, instead of using pencil and paper and have the child count up to add the problem, give him/her physical objects to show the problem. Play dominoes often so that your child begins to recognize visually the pattern of dots representing each number – without having to count them.
3. Always show and tell what the goal for learning is rather than just starting with your sequential steps. Visual learners will not even be able to process what you are saying as you give instructions until you have shared the point of the lesson. An example of this sort of prompt is when you tell your child before reading a story to be listening for various specific elements in the story. You will have given him a goal this way.
4. Teach your child how to create hooks for memory. Never expect your child to be able to just drill and memorize …and retain anything. Unless, that is, you or he have created a strong hook for memory. It is the hook that will cement the concept in memory and will also be what retrieves the concept later. The hook might be an image, a body motion, a pattern, a story…and I always like to ask the child, “How can we remember this?” Many times, a child who needs the hook will be the best at coming up with one. A silly example of a hook that works to help me remember how to spell LAVENDER (I always used to spell it LAVENDAR) is a silly sentence and a mental image: “The gardener has lavender hair.” I can see the little old lady on her knees working around her daisies and her curly hair is lavender. On the other hand I recall that Scholar collar and dollar all end in AR and not in ER because I say, “The scholar bought a collar for a dollar.” The scholar in question happens to be a caterpillar wearing a collar and clutching a dollar (as I see it in my mind’s eye).
5. Provide time for your child to represent what he/she has learned in drawing. When I taught very young children, drawing made up one of the most important times of our day. I might have just taught a sound spelling and used it in several words (in order to show the pattern) and then always, always, the children had 15-20 minutes to draw something. Whatever their minds were busy thinking about following our lesson. Then after making the picture, I encouraged the children to write a caption explaining in words what they drew. They also shared the picture and caption with us, explaining in their own words what they drew. This simple daily activity strengthened the communication between hemispheres in the brain and enhanced learning.
There are many ways you can help your child make vital connections. Rule of thumb is to think about each element and which part of the brain it will stimulate. If in one activity you manage to stimulate several regions in the brain at one time, your lesson will have a very good chance of succeeding!
Chances are if you are reading this, you have a child who is struggling more than you feel he or she ought to be. In our day and age, it has become normal to identify a child who is struggling and then begin testing to determine exactly what is going on. A really good test might pinpoint for you your child’s learning strengths and weaknesses alike. A really useless test will assign a label but not give you any clues for how to strengthen those weak areas.
Because I am a visual, global thinker myself, I tend to look at things a bit differently. I don’t look at one child at a time and think, “Oh wow, she is just not able to learn her sight words. We need to get her tested to find out what is going on.” Or “We’ve been working on this same math skill for the whole month and he’s just not getting it! I wonder if I should see about getting him tested.”
My perspective is that testing is the last action you take – and only after doing a whole lot of other things first. For the last 14 years I have focused my attention on all children who struggle to learn. My work has been to find solutions or bridges to understanding, hooks for memory, and visual/tactile strategies that make learning possible. In short, my focus has not been on the child and finding out what is wrong with him or her; rather it has been on designing ways to help any learner achieve to their highest potential.
What has resulted from these 14 years of experimentation and design are some general guidelines that when applied, DO help struggling children learn more easily. I often say these designs are for “visual learner” or “right-brained learners” as a way of collecting children who struggle to learn under one umbrella. Just as no two children are alike, so no two visual learners are alike, so I don’t design some products specifically for dyslexic children, totally different ones for autistic children, yet others for active children or children who are visual/spatial learners. I design using as many elements as possible at one time.
Take time to study your child and see if any of these characteristics remind you of your learner:
1. Tends to visualize/daydream
2. Intuitive
3. Reads between the lines and picks up subtle cues
4. Is disorganized with his/her stuff
5. Tends to skip over details
6. Usually wants to make up his/her own steps for solving a problem
7. Needs to see it and handle it
8. Is physically gifted, balanced, sure of his/her own body in space
9. Prefers hands-on
10. Likes to put things together
11. Likes to draw
12. Is forgetful
13. Sometimes seems to have a hard time hearing and following through with verbal directions
14. Has trouble memorizing and remembering it later
15. Can’t sound out words or sounds them out but has no clue what he/she just said
16. When he/she is thinking, some part of the body is moving
17. Sometimes has trouble expressing his/her thoughts verbally, especially when under stress
I am sure there are other characteristics to consider, but for now, if several of those descriptions remind you of your child, read on. Chances are your child could crawl under our umbrella!
Our primary goal in all the activities we do with these children who struggle is to help strengthen communication between various regions in the brain. The reason for this is that if they are struggling with a traditional approach, it is our clue that more of the brain and body needs to be targeted in learning.
Traditional approaches depend very heavily on the left hemisphere of the brain to the exclusion of the right hemisphere and other areas such as the cerebellum – the center for movement.
Here are some suggestions that will help create and strengthen connections for learning:
1. Make sure your child gets daily outside free play. And I don’t mean sitting on the ground playing with little trucks in the dirt. I mean vigorous activity that will create a pattern of alternating left and right sides of the body such as running, skipping climbing, crawling. Anything hand over hand. Vigorous physical activity will mean that the brain is being stimulated left/right, left/right and this will help to strengthen the communication between right and left hemispheres in the brain. This activity will also supply the brain with plenty of oxygen.
2. For every left-brained sort of thing you do, incorporate a right-brained element. For example, when you are teaching your child a new word, you will show him/her the word and say it, but you need to also involve the cerebellum by doing a body motion that mimics the meaning of the word, and you will need to incorporate an image to involve the right hemisphere. So your practice could look like this: Show the child the word and say it. Have the child make up a body motion while saying the word. Next, have the child write the word and then embellish it with colorful images that enhance the meaning of the word. OR if you are teaching a math concept, instead of using pencil and paper and have the child count up to add the problem, give him/her physical objects to show the problem. Play dominoes often so that your child begins to recognize visually the pattern of dots representing each number – without having to count them.
3. Always show and tell what the goal for learning is rather than just starting with your sequential steps. Visual learners will not even be able to process what you are saying as you give instructions until you have shared the point of the lesson. An example of this sort of prompt is when you tell your child before reading a story to be listening for various specific elements in the story. You will have given him a goal this way.
4. Teach your child how to create hooks for memory. Never expect your child to be able to just drill and memorize …and retain anything. Unless, that is, you or he have created a strong hook for memory. It is the hook that will cement the concept in memory and will also be what retrieves the concept later. The hook might be an image, a body motion, a pattern, a story…and I always like to ask the child, “How can we remember this?” Many times, a child who needs the hook will be the best at coming up with one. A silly example of a hook that works to help me remember how to spell LAVENDER (I always used to spell it LAVENDAR) is a silly sentence and a mental image: “The gardener has lavender hair.” I can see the little old lady on her knees working around her daisies and her curly hair is lavender. On the other hand I recall that Scholar collar and dollar all end in AR and not in ER because I say, “The scholar bought a collar for a dollar.” The scholar in question happens to be a caterpillar wearing a collar and clutching a dollar (as I see it in my mind’s eye).
5. Provide time for your child to represent what he/she has learned in drawing. When I taught very young children, drawing made up one of the most important times of our day. I might have just taught a sound spelling and used it in several words (in order to show the pattern) and then always, always, the children had 15-20 minutes to draw something. Whatever their minds were busy thinking about following our lesson. Then after making the picture, I encouraged the children to write a caption explaining in words what they drew. They also shared the picture and caption with us, explaining in their own words what they drew. This simple daily activity strengthened the communication between hemispheres in the brain and enhanced learning.
There are many ways you can help your child make vital connections. Rule of thumb is to think about each element and which part of the brain it will stimulate. If in one activity you manage to stimulate several regions in the brain at one time, your lesson will have a very good chance of succeeding!
Sarah Major, CEO of Child1st Publications, grew up on the mission field with her four siblings, all of whom her mother homeschooled. As an adult, Sarah has homeschooled a small group of children in collaboration with their parents, and has taught from preschool age to adult. Sarah has been the Title 1 director and program developer for grades K-7, an ESOL teacher, and a classroom teacher. As an undergraduate student, Sarah attended Wheaton College in Wheaton, Ill. and then received her M.Ed. from Aquinas College in Grand Rapids, MI. In 2006 Sarah resigned from fulltime teaching in order to devote more time to Child1st, publisher of the best-selling SnapWords™ stylized sight word cards. In her spare time Sarah enjoys gardening, cooking, pottery, quilting, and spending time with her family.
Child1st Publications, LLC
800-881-0912
PO Box 150226
Grand Rapids, MI 49515
