Christian Home School Hub

Sharpen your pencils! Visual Spatial learners learn best through pictures and illustrations. Visual Spatial learners think in pictures. Once they have a picture of the concept, they’ve got it! No need for repetition and drill.

They do not learn sequentially so “traditional” teaching methods and curriculum only lead to frustration and poor academic performance.

Visual Spatial Learners:

• Think in pictures
• Recognize faces, objects, shapes, colors, details, and scenes
• Have a good sense of direction
• Need to understand the big picture before getting into the details
• Do not learn sequentially (step-by-step)
• Learn by seeing and observing
• Use visual images to recall information
• Enjoy doodling, drawing, painting, and sculpting
• Often reverse letters when writing
• Do not learn through repetition and drill
• Discover patterns easily
• Doodle while listening

How To Choose Visual Spatial Homeschool Curriculum

Choose curriculum that can be read aloud, has manipulatives, or is experimental in nature. Look for resources that focus on the big picture of a subject, patterns, and relationships rather than facts and sequential steps. Avoid workbooks and textbooks (in most cases).

HISTORY
Reading (and read alouds) allow visualization of the stories. Use videos, computer programs, lapbooks, notebooking, and hands-on projects.

LANGUAGE ARTS

Visual Spatial learners benefit from visual aids when learning new information and for getting their thoughts on paper. Look for resources that utilize flow charts, concept mapping, graphic organizers, and art.

These learners are brilliant with content yet struggle with the mechanics of writing. Remember, best-selling authors have editors! Avoid curriculum that emphasizes spelling, grammar, and capitalization.

LITERATURE

Reading (and read alouds) allow Spatial learners to visualize the stories in their minds.

MATH

Visual/pictorial aids and manipulatives are a necessity in math. Use illustrations and stories to teach facts and processes. Color code steps for solving math problems. Spatial learners excel with concepts but struggle with details and computations.

PHONICS

Visual Spatial learners often struggle with learning to read. Use a phonics and whole word approach to reading. Since they think in pictures, connect letter sounds with pictures. Give them plenty of time with this.

SCIENCE

Use flow charts and graphic organizers for visualizing information. Use reading (and read alouds), videos, computer programs, lapbooks, notebooking, and plenty of hands-on experiments.

Visual Spatial Learning Activities

Visual Spatial learners think in pictures so use graphical and pictorial methods of working with ideas and presenting information. When planning lessons ask yourself…

1. How can the topic be illustrated?
2. How can my child ‘show’ me what he has learned?

Teach Lessons Using…

• Visuals – “a picture is worth a thousand words”
• Flow charts to teach processes
• Colored pens to distinguish parts (show parts of speech in a sentence, spelling patterns, divisor/dividend, etc.)
• Videos
• Field trips
• Highlighting, underlining, and drawing images while teaching
• Discovery – capitalize on your child’s pattern-finding strengths
• Reading aloud
• Visuals hung up around the room (i.e. Greek & Latin word parts)
• Unit charts to introduce the big picture

Have Your Visual Spatial Learner…

• Draw while listening to lectures
• Use webbing to brainstorm, organize information for writing (pre-writing), or analyze stories and characters
• Use concept mapping to show knowledge of a subject and its relationships
• Map locations of a story setting, historical events, geographical features
• Work with math manipulatives
• Use graphic organizers for just about everything. Introduce or recap a unit, analyze literature, explain cycles and sequences, pre-writing and brainstorming
  are just a few examples.
• Create storyboards for creative writing and literary analysis
• Dramatize or demonstrate the concept
• Draw pictures of events on a timeline
• Research using websites and videos
• Create picture cards for learning spelling words, math facts, etc.
• Create graphs and charts to show the results of research assignments or to answer workbook questions
• Construct models
• Create collages, posters, and murals of a concept or to summarize a unit
• Use computer software such as Eyewitness Encyclopedia

Understanding Reading Difficulties

By Dianne Craft, MA, CNHP
HSLDA Special Needs Coordinator

“My child wants to read so badly, but he struggles so much. He is embarrassed because his brothers and sisters, even the younger ones, can read better than he can. We have tried so many curriculums. They have worked for my other children, but not for him.”

As a reading specialist, and coordinator for HSLDA’s Struggling Learner program, this is a statement I hear on a daily basis from homeschooling moms. What is really hampering this child’s ability to read? Can a mom figure this out at home, or does she always need professional help for this?

My experience, after working with thousands of homeschooling families in my clinic, is that homeschooling parents are very capable of tackling this job successfully at home, once they have the correct information to work with. In this brief article, we will discuss the process that I teach parents to determine where their child’s reading problem lies, and what to do about it.

Why is reading easier for the other children in the family? We are going to look at the Four Reading Components. If all of the four components are present and functioning, then reading is easy. That is what is happening with your other children. For this child, one or more of the components is missing.

It is important for parents to have the tools to determine where their child’s reading difficulty lies, so that they can wisely spend their time and money on the targeted areas, rather than just doing more reading, with comprehension questions.

The Four Reading Components

1. Eye Tracking Ability

One very basic component to smooth, easy reading, is the ability of the eyes to work together as a team while moving from left to right without any stops, wanderings, (saccades), or reversals. For an easy checklist that you can use to determine if an eye tracking issue is affecting your child’s ability to read, please use the handy checklist we have on our website. Scroll down on the first page to the Four Learning Gates, and look under Visual Processing Dysfunction.

If you determine that your child is struggling with eye tracking issues, then you can have him or her assessed by a developmental optometrist. If the optometrist finds evidence of poor eye tracking skills, then he may prescribe corrective lenses, or a series of vision therapy sessions.

Other home-based methods of improving a child’s eye tracking skills for reading would be to use the very effective midline exercises found in books such as The Brain Integration Therapy Manual by Dianne Craft, Brain Gym by Paul Dennison, or NILD training. All of these resources are listed on the HSLDA Struggling Learner website for your convenience.

Just a note: If your child is two or more years behind in reading, he or she may have components missing in addition to a visual tracking problem. That is usually indicative of a child who has an auditory processing problem as well, and would benefit greatly from intensive phonics training.

2. Word Decoding Skills

Many struggling readers are “word guessers,” because they have not mastered the basics of the decoding units in a word. You have taught them phonics, but they have never “stuck.” When this component is missing, it is difficult to make much progress. The child finds that he or she needs to memorize all new words. After a while, the brain goes into overload. There are just too many words to memorize. They need to be able to break the “code” for reading.

Now this is where it gets tricky for a parent. There are many good phonics and phonemic awareness programs available. You may have used many of them. Yet, progress is at snail’s pace, and your child is getting increasingly frustrated and avoiding reading at all costs. That is because these struggling learners need very specialized programs. They need phonics (or phonemic awareness) programs that give them a technique to help these sound units of reading stick. Using workbooks, worksheets, and even songs and music have not seemed to be as effective for these learners as we want them to be.

While there are many good reading programs, we reading and dyslexia specialists have found, through parent report and regular testing, that there are about six intensive phonics programs that seem to give parents the best and fastest results for their struggling reader. There is not room in this article to list the programs, but if you would like to receive a list of these intensive phonics programs, please email us at specialneeds@hslda.org. No need for a message. Just type in, “Intensive Phonics Programs List,” in the subject line, and we will email the list and descriptions to you. This is by far the most common reading component that is missing in a struggling learner. You can effectively correct this at home, with the proper tools.

3. Sight Word Memorization Skills

The left brain stores the names of words, while the right brain stores the picture of what the word looks like. Because of the lack of good hemispheric integration in these bright but struggling children, they often cannot bring the name from the left brain to the right brain picture of the word. Thus, they attempt to sound out all words, such as “would, many, laugh, neighbor.”

In spite of the fact that you are using a good, targeted phonics program with this child, he is still reading so laboriously because he is attempting to sound out ALL words. It seems that a word never “sticks” in his right brain long-term memory.

Most reading programs for children with dyslexia approach the problem of difficulty memorizing sight words by having a child read a list of these “outlaw” words over and over. As you know, this can be a slow, frustrating process for many struggling readers. There is a technique that you can use with any reading program that will make these sight words stick so much faster—and the child will even find that he can spell these words! It is called the Right Brain Sight Word method. This uses the child’s strong photographic memory to store these words.

Parents often say that their children using this method learned 15 words in a week—words they had been working on all year! The best thing about this method is that it does not involve any expense. To learn how to use this strategy with your struggling learner, if he needs this, visit DianneCraft.org and look at the cards called “sight words.” As you look at the samples that are on the site, you will see how to make these yourself at home. This method is particularly needed for our readers who are very “brittle,” which refers to those who are struggling the most. Not all students need this step.

4. Reading Comprehension Skills

If you have a child who can read on grade level, but consistently does not remember what he or she reads, then it would be good to work for 15 minutes a day on reading comprehension training. In the classroom of bright, hard-working struggling readers, I used this daily memory training strategy. It is so easy for you to do it at home. We need to help this child convert words into pictures. The technique is simple. While the child is looking up with his eyes (to stimulate the right brain), you read an interesting passage to the child. Stop after each sentence or two and ask the child about his mental picture, or “movie.” If the child has none, then describe your own picture until this becomes easier. As you do this practice daily, your child will soon learn to convert words to pictures while he or she is reading silently.

You will find many more ideas on working with a struggling reader at home on our website. You also can access the monthly newsletters that have been written on this subject on the website. The HSLDA Special Needs/Struggling Learner coordinators are always here to help you in the important work of teaching your child at home. You can be your child’s best teacher, no matter what the struggle is. Let us come along side and help you with this work.

“Homeschooling a Struggling Learner” is a newsletter of the Home School Legal Defense Association. All rights reserved. For more information on Homeschooling a Struggling Learner or the Home School Legal Defense Association please contact us at:

HSLDA • P.O. Box 3000 • Purcellville, Virginia 20134-9000
Phone: (540) 338-5600• Fax: (540) 338-2733 • Email: info@hslda.org
Web: http://www.hslda.org/strugglinglearner

“Brer Rabbit keep on axin im en de Tar-Baby, she keep on sayin nothin, twel presenty Brer Rabbit draw back wid his fis, he did, en blip he tuck er side er de head.”

Tell me, does Uncle Remus need speech therapy or does he just need to study his spelling words!  Maybe your child speaks and writes just like Uncle Remus, and you’re not sure if he will become a famous writer with a unique linguistic perspective, or that this (dis)ability is really his educational stumbling block! Maybe he has a speech problem.

Correct speech patterns are so important in your child’s education. If you cannot speak correctly you will have a difficult time learning to read and spell, because the words on the written page will not correspond with the words in your mind.  Its almost like trying to read a foreign language.

The majority (75% or more) of school age children’s speech problems are classified as functional articulation problems.  These children have the physical ability to correctly reproduce the sounds but misarticulate speech sounds.  They may omit sounds (un for sun), substitute one sound for another  (wed for red), distort sounds, or even add unnecessary sounds.

This is good news for homeschool moms because with a little bit of effort, speech improvement can be mixed right in with our daily routines.

Be careful of your own speech habits.  Most of a child’s speech is acquired from his parents especially his mother.

All children need help in developing and improving their oral communication skills.  We repeat the same sounds over and over to babies and toddlers, “ba,ba,ba,ba” helping them to acquire language.  Nursery rhymes are a good way for children to participate and also hear many correct repetitions of a sound.

All children do not have speech defects. Many of them merely develop their language skills at a different rate or in a different way.

You may wonder if your child is learning to speak clearly and form sounds correctly. A very simple speech survey can be made by asking your child to count to fifteen, name the different colors, say the nursery rhyme “Jack and Jill”, and identify pictures whose name contain the “ch” and “sh” speech sounds.  Make a note of each incorrect sound.  Next, consider your child’s age. Many speech books have charts that indicate the age that a child should be able to form each sound. For instance the “hard r” will often develop at a later age than “m” sound.

Not many children need a speech pathologist. If your child has speech difficulties, you may be able to help him yourself.  Below are a few excellent items for use with four year olds and older.

LinguiSystems Catalog.  This catalog specializes in language items. (800)776-4332

Read and Spell by Sound – by: Lorna Shogren Werner, Computer Press, 2911 8th Avenue., W.,  Bradenton, Fl 34205, phone 813-748-4237.  ISBN:1-882183-12-6.  This workbook provides multisensory instruction and may be used as initial reading instruction.  The student may use a mirror to learn the correct phonetic formation for pronouncing standard American English sounds.

Sounds and Letters for Readers and Spellers – by:Jane Fell Greene, Sopris West,http://www.sopriswest.com, (303)651-2829, ISBN#1-57035-126-0.  This 18 unit series of phoneme awareness drills can be used with young children, middle schoolers through adults who are delayed in development of phonemic awareness, reading and spelling. Awareness of phonemes and the ability to reproduce them provides the critical jump start to reading and spelling. This is a book that will grow with your child.

If your child had trouble learning to speak clearly, often he will also have trouble with phonemic awareness. Begin your reading instruction using these books and you will have eliminated potential problems later on.