What is Visual Learning?
Visual learning is, essentially, absorbing information more easily by seeing it. These are the kinds of students who tend to think by visualizing lesson subjects, more color-oriented, and remember more through image-oriented learning like hand-outs. They need to see the information rather than hear it or practice it. This means that classrooms tend to be great environments for students. If you’re using a blackboard or whiteboard, projectors, visual aids, all of that enables the visual learning student to retain information better. The sights, so to speak, catch a student’s attention.
Some have likened visual learning to having something of a photographic memory. They may not remember the facts as easily if recited but, students who possess visual learning see the information, then they are more likely to learn. It’s that simple. Those who are visual learners learn better with visuals.
Appealing to Visual Learning Styles
Now that you know what visual learning is, how do you appeal to students who lean in that direction? It isn’t just decorating the classroom with an overview of information you’ll be covering this semester. It’s not just pictures on paper either. There are many ways to reach students and appeal to their knack for visual learning. To understand that, let’s go over some of the known strengths of the visual learning style:
- They can more easily visualize objects and images
- Have a strong sense of color
- They can more easily discern minute similarities and differences in images
With that, you can piece together ways to implement visual learning styles into your lessons. While there are other learning styles, visual learners are often the majority of students. So, it’s more how to integrate enough for those who are visual learning into an overall teaching method. Here are some tips to do so in the everyday classroom:
- Incorporate colors into presentations, classroom decorations, and handouts.
- Instead of purely verbal lectures, use diagrams and visuals as well as handouts.
- Demonstrating to your students how to do something rather than purely visual directions
- Flashcards and written feedback
Many teachers already do these visual learning methods already. Though it’s also important to know what to do with whom. Many students are visual learners but not all of them. Whether it’s individual or group assignments, directing some of the lessons to one style of learning or another enhances your ability to impart knowledge.
It’s also difficult to appeal to everyone in a larger class every day. So, what is a great opportunity to mix and match, enhance the overall lessons in a single time-slot?
An Opportunity to use Visual Learning Strategies
You wouldn’t immediately think of it but, school assemblies are a great opportunity for those who favor visual learning. Many of the programs at Academic Entertainment carry visual demonstrations, wild colors to enhance the show, and active demonstrations that the students can engage.This is a great opportunity to integrate visual learning strategies with other types of learning styles. Kinesthetic learners, for example, need to touch and be tactile with what they’re learning. They need to get involved. Those who learn through auditory lessons will be engaged by the speaker.
This is a wonderful combination of learning styles that can enhance an overall part of your lesson plan. Whether this part of the year is focused around math, science, history, or social practices like bullying. You can more fully engage your students, all of your students.
Where Virtual Meets Visual
The modern age offers wonders for those who learn best via visual learning. Using virtual classrooms and visual chat rooms, students can learn just as well from a distance; perhaps more so for visual learners. This is important as due to the current Corona/COVID-19 pandemic being in full-swing, it’s more important than ever to embrace education in new ways.
Academic Entertainment is helping educators to continue to provide for their students with virtual workshops. A kind of virtual classroom meets school assembly. This mode of learning is a boon for those who do best by visual learning while tying in modern technology that they use at home for fun. We use the school’s existing e-learning applications to ensure students don’t miss a beat and, as always, combine interest with education.
For example, a great way to keep the kids active and engage their visual learning leanings is with the Diversity of Dance Virtual Class. The latter focuses on developing a positive mindset for negative circumstances. It’s important to help students through these uneasy times. While school assemblies are often used to quash worries, with quarantines sweeping the nation, a virtual school assembly is the safest way to ease student’s concerns.
Visual Learning in Visual Summary
A quick checklist of what we’ve covered:
What is visual learning?: It’s a type of learning where a person best retains information through visuals such as graphs, handouts, or demonstrations.
How do you appeal to those who are visual learners?: By using visual aids in lectures, incorporating a lot of colors into the classroom and lessons, using video and images, also flashcards for studying or homework.
What is a great opportunity for visual learners as well as other types of learning styles: The school assembly.
Now show those students what they need to know!
