The Visual Learner

I am so glad to finally be delving into this learning style series. I have been talking about it for months with my bloggie friends. Earlier we took a  deeper look into the auditory learning style. Today, we will cover the signs and symptoms of the Visual Learner.

If you are suspicious your child is a visual learner, they should exhibit many of these characteristics:

• Usually learns better when he/she can actually see the person who is talking
• Is observant of details
• Is exceptionally good at completing puzzles, riddles, and mazes and can assemble things with little or no help from picture or print instructions
• Is usually quiet and rarely volunteers an answer
• Loves to put up posters in his/her bedroom
• Being neat looking and color coordinated are typically important to the visual learner
• Has a tendency to be able to locate items that have been misplaced
• Has a VIVID imagination
• Tends to "hold in" his/her feelings, even when emotionally upset
• Has a good understanding of directions and easily remembers places/locations previously visited
• Is drawn to flashy, colorful, visually stimulating objects
• Can remember the visual sequence of objects in games, books, and posters
• Enjoyable activities include reading from various sources (newspapers,books, magazines), and especially enjoys watching television
• Coloring, drawing, and working with maps are enjoyable activities
• Learns easily by watching a video or CD that explains the process
• Enjoys using workbooks, particularly when pictures and vivid colors are included
• When presented with different figures or shapes, can draw these from memory

The visual learner, in most cases, does NOT like:

1. Untidiness, disorder, or clutter
2. Activities that are primarily listening
3. Changes from his/her routine
4. Communal activities or role-playing

General Suggestions for Teaching:

1. Use reasonable structure and consistent routine with your visual learner.
2. "Happy faces", bright stickers, stars, and grades are all excellent reinforcements for the visual learner.
3. Use colored chalk or markers when writing information on a blackboard or whiteboard.
4. Memorization is often enhanced when red ink is used to print material your child/student has written or is working on.
5. Drilling and reviewing information are often helpful to the visual learner.
6. Important information should always be highlighted using a colored highlighter.
7. Encourage your visual learner to take notes or draw pictures or objects from lectures or discussions.
8. Provide multiple ink pens that offer various colors for your child/student to write with and encourage him/her to change colors frequently.
9. Teach concepts by using maps/diagrams/charts.
10. Give your visual learner books that contain brightly colored, stimulating pictures and inserts.

Suggestions for Teaching Math:

1. Write out math facts on brightly colored flash cards.
2. For younger students, write down several problems such as: "Which is less, 11 pennies or 17 pennies; 9 dimes or 5 dimes; 4 quarters or 7 quarters?" Have your student write out and verbalize their answer.
3. Brightly colored numbered charts for teaching "skip-counting"( 2's, 4's, 6's...) will appeal to the visual leaner.
4. Use graph paper to teach how to organize a math lesson-that is, to show how to line up math problems and create graphs.
5. Highlight mathematical signs (+, -, x, /) to help locate them easily.
6. Word problems should be written out or drawn out for clarity.
7. Greater visibility of math problems will be achieved if those problems are highlighted in some way such as using real coins and/or paper money.

Suggestions for Teaching Grammar, Writing, and Spelling

1. Practice writing by keeping a daily journal, which may also include drawings and illustrations with the requirement that they be fully explained in writing.
2. For diversity, provide multi-colored pens, pencils, and paper for writing projects.
3. Diagramming sentences (that is, defining each word in a sentence as it relates to the eight basic parts of speech in the English language) should be taught as an integral part of grammar.
4. Spelling words may be written out on flash cards using bright colors.

Suggestions for Teaching Science, Geography, and History:

1. For science, visual learners often enjoy collecting items such as insects, rocks, various plant-life, and leaves.
2. Access to a variety of colorful science and history books, videos, and puzzles will be helpful to the visual learner.
3. Visual learners can be motivated by collecting pictures of historical events, animals, plants, states, and countries. They also enjoy taking their own photographs.
4. Provide various maps, charts, and graphs to visual learners to be reviewed, colored, and traced.

Suggestions for Teaching Reading: 

1. Key words and directions should always be underlined or highlighted in a bright color.
2. An excellent method for teaching comprehension is through "story mapping".  This is accomplished by having the student draw a circle which may include a main character or event and then writing characteristics of each out of the side and lastly, making diagrams and charts of characters and events.
3. Strong visual learners usually do not have a difficult time learning to read because of their ability to memorize words. Once they are taught phonics concepts, their reading skills often continue to improve.  Phonics rules and words that use these rules should be written in red on flash cards.
4. Visual learners are drawn to brightly colored books and especially those with pictures and drawings.
5. A recommended reading comprehension task that the visual leaner will most often enjoy doing is keeping a journal(s) in which they write, doodle or draw pictures about the books they have read.

So did you confirm that your child is a visual leaner? Let me know.Thanks for taking the time to discover your child's learning process with me. Join me next time as we explore the kinesthetic leaner.You can do that by subscribing to my website on the right hand side of the page so you won't miss another post.

Sourced with the permission of : The LAMB Company
* To order the full test for all three learning styles and/or have a curriculum customized for your child, visit their link above.