8 Examples of How to Use Visual Cues with Visual Learners
If you have a child who is a visual learner, you probably already use visual cues, perhaps unconsciously, to help her learn and remember. Many times, learning and remembering are difficult for visual learners because they don't process well what they hear.
Visual cues make all the difference for visual learners
1. A visual cue might be something as simple as a little picture drawn on a white board to remind your child to clean his room.
SnapWords List A Pocket Chart Cards
2. A visual and kinesthetic cue to help your child with directionality when writing or reading could be something as simple as having her “make an L” with her left hand and place it to the left of where she'll write or read or assemble letters to make a word.
Alphabet Teaching Cards
3. A visual cue to remind a child of the sound and shape of a letter:
(This is a hand drawn version of our Alphabet M image.)
Alphabet Teaching Cards
4. A visual cue to remind a child of a word and its meaning:
This image shows a child installing a stake for a tent – the visual instantly shows the word, what it means, and differentiates the steak that you eat from the stake you pound in the ground. For visual learners who need to see the whole, the context, and the meaning before being able to see details, our 306 SnapWords Teaching Cards are so to the point.
6. A visual cue to help children remember which way to turn the letter J. If the letter is written backwards, it will puncture the letter by it! Turned correctly, everyone is happy!
Alphabet Teaching Cards
7. A visual cue to help children remember the words that end in OW and then N such as “clown, brown, town, frown, brow, etc. The OW together form a spelling pattern that make a unique sound, and the N tags along behind.
8. Visual cues demonstrate clearly that the spelling pattern OW is used for two distinct sounds: OH and OW.
Right-Brained Phonics & Spelling Kit
This illustration provides a visual cue, but also becomes a kinesthetic prompt if you have your child actually mimic the motion shown in the visuals. The first child is obviously saying OH! Like in “Oh, I forgot!” while the second child is crying because he got hurt and is yelling “OW!”
Practice creating visual cues
Once we get into the habit of thinking up visual cues, our imaginative muscles become stronger and ideas begin to flow!
Best of all, providing kids with visual and kinesthetic cues for learning makes the process of learning and recalling so painless for these learners; painless for the teacher also!
Learning resources designed with visual cues
Browse our collection of products to help you as you teach your special learners. All our products include the BIG 3:
1. Image
2. Story
3. Body motion
Using Stories and Visual Cues with Visual Learners
Being a visual learner myself, I know how hard it can be for visual learners to remember what is conveyed orally. I can remember what I hear if I take the time to focus intently on what is being said, and then if I connect the fact to a visual reminder of some kind. For instance, when I ask what time we have to be at an appointment, I won’t remember unless I take the time to imagine an image of a clock with hands pointing to the time. If I ask for directions when I am lost, I hear the words, but unless I “draw” a map in my mind as the person tells me the steps to follow, I won't retain the information. Being this visual myself helps me understand clearly what visual learners need to help them remember what you teach them.
As parents and teachers, we recognize that children who are visual learners won’t do as well if the primary form of teaching is oral, but this is still the way we communicate most frequently. We’ve talked about using visual cues with visual learners; stories can take these cues one step further and make learning and remembering even easier for your visual learner.
A Story for Remembering the Difference Between "Foot" and "Inch"
In another blog post, I suggested a visual cue to help children remember concepts for measurement such as “foot” and “inch.”
In the post, I told a really silly story about inchworm farmers in Farmerville who believed everyone should have the same size farm. The problem was, they didn’t know anything about measuring. At a town meeting, they agreed that they would just use their feet to walk the perimeter of their farm and each farmer would have 200 “feet” on each side of their farm.
Problem was, each farmer had a different size foot and those with the biggest feet had the biggest farms! Next, they hit on the idea of using foot long hot dogs to measure. Feeling very brilliant, farmers ran out and each bought a foot long hotdog to use to measure.
Problem was, the hot dogs became stinky and rotten and had to be thrown out! At the next town meeting, a little boy cut into their arguments with the suggestion that they make a wooden foot for each farmer, and thus ended the argument about the size foot to use. So that is what they did.
A Story for What Fractions Means
A little while back I wrote another blog post about how to teach fractions in a way visual learners will remember. Here is the visual I used:
This image shows the fraction 3/7.
The story for this image is that you are going to bake a cake and need to put tool that you will use on the table top. The storage under the orange table shows how many tools you have in all.
A Story for Plural and Possessive Tense
Visuals with mini stories help children remember how to tell the difference between a plural and a possessive tense. Just telling a child that Moms means more than one, while Mom’s means something belongs to Mom will not be enough for a visual learner. Instead, use a visual cue and mini story to cement learning.
This visual shows plurals: more than one boy and more than one Mom.
When talking about this image with your child, you could say, “The boys went to ask their Moms if they could go swimming."
This second visual shows possession: the boy’s dog and the Mom’s baby.
The people’s arms show the location of the apostrophe.
When talking about this image, you might say, “The boy’s dog is brown.” and “The Mom’s baby is smiling.”
Using Stories and Visual Cues is Great for a Laugh
One kindergartner went home and shared with her mother the story of the inchworm farmers who tried using foot long hot dogs to measure and how the hot dogs rotted. Her mom picked up the phone and asked me, “What in the world did you teach my child today!?”
Apparently, her daughter was not able to relate in total brilliance the whole story of the inchworm farmers, but she truly remembered the terms “inch” and “foot” and remembered also their relative sizes! In addition to helping Alex remember the terms, a byproduct of this lesson was that it gave her mother and I a chance to enjoy a good laugh!
Sarah Major
Author