Raising Smarter Children

I have since discovered that the secret to their success is exactly what current brain research now confirms.  These methods helped my students learn how to visualize or make pictures of what they read or heard.

Students who made mental pictures and associations recalled large amounts of material with excellent comprehension.  they did this more quickly and accurately than other students and also got higher grades and test scores.

Neither my traditional teacher training nor reading specialist certificate programs actually taught me how to show my students to visualize.  I learned many visual-memory and visualization activities to do with my students, but none were consistently successful.

This was because I did not know the how of teaching my students to create and retrieve visual memories.  Early on, I made lots of mistakes by telling my students to visualize what we were talking about, but did not show them how to do this.  I was inadvertently creating a mis-match for many of them between how they learned best and how I communicated to them.

Figuring out how to show my students to make mental images was an exciting journey.  I observed other teachers, took lots of extra classes, read several phychology and medical information books on mental imagery, and interviewed various educational experts.  Only then did the answers I need finally show up.

At the time, I had many students who made letter and word reversals when they read.  To help them, I used a multi-modality approach known as the Slingerland method.  My students would look up, write their letters or words in the air, and say the words aloud.  I also had them create their letters in a larger size and imagine them in different colors.

When it came time to write (or read), I noticed that the students would look back up as if seeing the letters or words in the air.  In other words, they were checking to see if the their actual work matched the visual image of what they had practiced previously.  This worked very well and they no longer made letter or word reversals when they read or wrote.

Although this visual-memory method worked well with my special reading students, I wasn’t clear whether it would work for all my students.  So I interviewed and observed my highly visual students – these were the studetns who made the highest grades in the class.

Long before the current brain research could support the answers they gave, I discovered that they all used the same strategy, both when learning and remembering things for their tests.  I learned that when they read, the looked up and naturally made images or pictures of what they were reading.  These students seemed to know instinctively how to visualize.

They told me it was as if they were creating their own movie, as they converted everything to images in their mind.  As I observed them during the act ot learning and testing, the students read a bit and then looked in an upward direction as they processed the information.  Some students closed their eyes as they processed, but still looked up.  They told me this meant they were converting what they read into pictures.

Check back this week for part 2 and 3 of our mini-series on visual strategies for test taking success.

If you want strategies to cut learning time in half, Learning vs. Testing is availale at a savings of $12.00 at http://www.howtolearn.com/learningvstesting1.html

Remember, every child is smart!

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