Our educational system takes a linear, analytical approach to teaching children to read. Those children who are linear and analytical do well within that system, as do children who have a good support system at home and at school. But right-brained kids need an approach that honors their brain's wiring and an approach that offers them equity in learning.
What we are doing is actually enlisting the aid of the right-brained talents and putting them to use to help left-brained concepts come to life. BOTH hemispheres are working at the same time.
There are specific characteristics that define the right-brain learner and set them apart from their left-brained counterparts. Right-brained learners are identified by how they take in information, how they process it, and how they most easily remember what they learn. When we speak of right-brained learning, then, we are referring to what is most natural for them in terms of how they process information.
A picture is worth 1,000 words and yet even those 1,000 words cannot adequately convey the images the child is seeing in her head. The attempts to translate that colorful image into a sequence of words to convey to another person what she is seeing often causes a huge amount of discouragement!
Flash cards are NOT created equal. Where they get a bad rap is when they are used for trying to drill and cram for a test, using stark, boring memorization. The outcome of this sort of study varies wildly from child to child.
