Raising Smarter Children

        How To Use The Visual Eye-Brain Connection For Written Test Success

If you’ve been following this mini series, excerpted from the best seller, Learning vs. Testing,  on test taking success strategies, today is THE Day to find out HOW to help your child or student add that visual learning style strategy for the ultimate boost in test taking scores! 

  Eye-Brain Connection For Test Taking Success

The best way to teach your child or students to add visual learning style and visual memory strategies as they learn and recall new information is to use the eye brain connection we talked about yesterday.

Here’s the how:

First, ask questions which require your child or student to get a picture in their mind to answer.  For example, ask your child what a picture looks like in their room.  Or ask what their favorite character in a movie ‘looks’ like.

Caution:  Don’t use ‘hear’ or ‘feeling’ type questions or you’ll be asking your child to access another learning style.  You have to use the word ‘look’ in your question.

The Eyes Have It

When you ask picture type questions, watch your child’s eyes.  Ask enough “picture” questions until you notice a pattern with your child’s eyes.

You want to notice whether they look up to their left, or up to their right (or sometimes straight up) to recall a picture.

The important thing is that you don’t tell your child what you are looking for at first, but you need to know where your child’s eyes go when they recall a picture.

Generally,  people’s eyes go up, above the eye level, when they remember a picture – or get into the visual learning style.

If your child’s or student’s eyes don’t go up in the beginning, just wait until another time, and ask picture type questions until their eyes go either up to the left or up to the right to answer.

This means that when they recall a picture, their eyes move up to that location.

This is so important because you can then tell your child to use those eye movements and their up left or up right location when making pictures of what they study, AND when they recall what they’ve studied for the test.

You may want to share this information with your child’s teacher as well, simply because your child will start looking up during a test to remember their mental movie and the teacher might not be used to seeing this.

You can also refer to the Learning vs. Testing book for more information on how to use the eye-brain connection with specific subject areas like math facts in half the time, spelling, study skills for every subject, vocabulary, learning a second language, etc.

Be sure to tell your child or student to look up, to their left or right side, (the one they looked up to when you asked those picture questions), as they make mental movies when they study, turn what they read into a movie, AND when they want to remember those mental movies during the test!

Voila – eye brain connection for terrific grades on regular and standardized tests.  There is no child left behind with this eye brain connection, because every child knows how to learn and how to remember!

Remember, every child is smart!

Warmly,

Pat Wyman and Erin Mavredakis, M.D.

Visit our sister site at http://www.howtolearn.com for free Instant Learning tips and articles on how to solve reading problems, use colored overlays and get better grades in everything.

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