There is some confusion about visual learners and what that means. Being a visual learner doesn’t mean you learn optimally when you can see (read) something. What they see has to be organized in a way that they can make sense of.
When visual learners begin school, they likely won't be prepared to help themselves succeed in an educational system that is not designed for their type of brain and how it processes. Because they are children, they will trust their adults to understand them and know how to teach them! It is our desire to share all we can about how visual learners process and how we can best meet their learning needs.
Here are just a few of the strengths of visual learners. Let's celebrate these bright, creative children!
Artists and marketers alike understand the power of images to communicate, to convince, and to sway. Images are powerful because meaning is conveyed in one instant, the image is stored in the brain, and when the image evokes emotion in the viewer, the message becomes unforgettable.
We teach children to read in very left-brained ways and they focus intensely on learning those little symbols and what they represent. In the process of learning to sound out words or just plain remember words they have learned, the meaning behind the symbols is lost.
A visual learner learns holistically (all at once) rather than in a step-by-step fashion. They see the big picture, need to see the whole in order to understand where details fit. Visual learners think in pictures. So pictures, whether printed or imagined, play an important role in the learning process.
