by Sarah Major M.Ed.
One thing that is true: visual learners don’t excel at memorization. The reason this is good to know is because so much of what we teach children, we just ask them to study, review, and just remember. And when they don’t it is frustrating to both parent and child.
Two big ideas
Two big ideas I want to talk about in this little article are that visual learners need HOOKS and they need IMAGES. The lovely thing is that the two big ideas can be consolidated into one big idea if you make images that act as hooks for learning and remembering.
I’ve written at length in the past about how important it is to anchor a factoid in an image to help young children learn and remember their letters, their words, the meaning of numbers, and math facts. But how about when your child is older and is having to learn and remember history facts, social studies facts, science facts? What then?
Because visual learners think in pictures, and because images are captured instantly in the brain, it is going to be of tremendous help to encourage your child to create visual prompts for every new piece of learning they are presented with.
Because we can’t include images in articles for HERD, (smile) I am going to have the challenge of telling you in words what my mind is seeing in images – something hard for a visual person. But here goes.
Start small and do this with your child
Take a textbook of his/hers and read a paragraph out loud. Then stop and draw at least stick figures with labels to show as thoroughly as possible the content of that chapter. If it is a history book, you might have a county and a person, so roughly outline the shape of the country and write its name, then draw a stick figure with his/her name as a label. If that person is famous for a particular action, draw something to show what that action was.
This will work best if your child can be excited to do the sketching for himself or herself. The content will stick in memory more permanently.
Embellish
Continue in this fashion until you have some cards that represent the reading for the day. Now have your child look at the first card and verbally tell you everything he/she can remember about what that card represents.
Continue on through the cards in that fashion. If your child tends to exclude details you feel are important, encourage him or her to go back and add more detail to the card so that all the information you want to include is represented on the card.
Test out the practice
Several days after you have finished working on the chapter in question, sit down with your child and ask questions about the chapter. It will be interesting not only to see 1. What you child remembers, but 2. How much detail he/she remembers, and 3. What his/her answer will be when you ask, “How did you remember that?”
I’d love very much to hear your comments about how this goes for you!
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.
One thing that is true: visual learners don’t excel at memorization. The reason this is good to know is because so much of what we teach children, we just ask them to study, review, and just remember. And when they don’t it is frustrating to both parent and child.
Two big ideas
Two big ideas I want to talk about in this little article are that visual learners need HOOKS and they need IMAGES. The lovely thing is that the two big ideas can be consolidated into one big idea if you make images that act as hooks for learning and remembering.
I’ve written at length in the past about how important it is to anchor a factoid in an image to help young children learn and remember their letters, their words, the meaning of numbers, and math facts. But how about when your child is older and is having to learn and remember history facts, social studies facts, science facts? What then?
Because visual learners think in pictures, and because images are captured instantly in the brain, it is going to be of tremendous help to encourage your child to create visual prompts for every new piece of learning they are presented with.
Because we can’t include images in articles for HERD, (smile) I am going to have the challenge of telling you in words what my mind is seeing in images – something hard for a visual person. But here goes.
Start small and do this with your child
Take a textbook of his/hers and read a paragraph out loud. Then stop and draw at least stick figures with labels to show as thoroughly as possible the content of that chapter. If it is a history book, you might have a county and a person, so roughly outline the shape of the country and write its name, then draw a stick figure with his/her name as a label. If that person is famous for a particular action, draw something to show what that action was.
This will work best if your child can be excited to do the sketching for himself or herself. The content will stick in memory more permanently.
Embellish
Continue in this fashion until you have some cards that represent the reading for the day. Now have your child look at the first card and verbally tell you everything he/she can remember about what that card represents.
Continue on through the cards in that fashion. If your child tends to exclude details you feel are important, encourage him or her to go back and add more detail to the card so that all the information you want to include is represented on the card.
Test out the practice
Several days after you have finished working on the chapter in question, sit down with your child and ask questions about the chapter. It will be interesting not only to see 1. What you child remembers, but 2. How much detail he/she remembers, and 3. What his/her answer will be when you ask, “How did you remember that?”
I’d love very much to hear your comments about how this goes for you!
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
www.child1st.com
800-881-0912
PO Box 150226
Grand Rapids, MI 49515
