The Visual Learner

If your child needs to ‘see’ what he’s learning, chances are he’s a visual learner. The spoken word may seem to just ‘go in one ear and out the other’, but if books, charts, films, colours, drawings, posters and maps – in short, anything visual – get the message across, then your child is probably a visual learner. If so, you can take advantage of many materials and methods that will help him absorb information effectively.

Here are a few ideas:-

• Help your child organise material he is learning into charts, graphs, or diagrams. Show examples first to provide models for this activity.
• Encourage your child to use coloured markers to organise information. For example, when he’s putting ideas or facts into categories, your child can use colours to delineate each grouping.
• Find picture books in the library to illustrate concepts being presented in school texts.
• Have your child prepare large posters to summarise the content she’s learning. Hang the posters in her room for frequent review and reinforcement.
• Organise tasks into charts or lists and make these easily accessible. Provide opportunities for your child to mark off the items he has completed and keep a visual record of accomplishements.
• When faced with auditory tasks, encourage your child to take notes; while he listens, he should also make some kind of visual record of the material.
• For in-class presentations, promote the idea of using visual aids. For example, have your child prepare overhead transparencies, posters or charts to support the material he’s presenting.
• Encourage your child to use mind-mapping to organise large amounts of material. Mind-mapping is a strategy that requires summarising information into key ideas and representing them visually in an organised way on one sheet of paper. For instance, the main idea of a textbook chapter might be placed in the centre of a wheel, with spokes emerging from it to represent supporting concepts; a diagram in the style of a family tree shows the main ideas at the top with subordinate ideas in the branches underneath. After creating a mind map, your child can use it to review and reinforce information without relying heavily on memorising by rote.
• Visual learners profit from being well-organised. Your child can organise material in different-coloured folders or binders for each subject. Within each folder or binder, coloured tabs can further define categories within each subject. Sometimes adding pictures cut out from magazines and pasted into the folders can help reinforce ideas.
• Look for DVDs or television programmes that relate to the material your child is learning.

This article is an excerpt from ‘The Secret Life of the Dyslexic Child’ by Robert Frank with Kathryn E Livingston, published by The Philip Lief Group. Dr Frank is an Educational Psychologist and Family Therapist whose own dyslexia was undiagnosed until graduate school. Kathryn E Livingston is a respected author who has been writing on parenting issues for more than 17 years.