~ VISUAL LEARNING ~

VISUAL LEARNING

What is a Visual Learning? 

The visual thinking is a learning style where the learner better understands and retains information when the ideas, words and concepts are associated with images. Research tells us that the majority of students in a regular classroom need to see information in order to learn it. We as a future teachers we have to take into account this useful learning for our future students.

Some common visual learning strategies include creating graphic organizers, diagramming, mind mapping, outlining... These strategies and more are being used in classrooms across the country. 

                                   

These strategies help our students of all ages to learn their objectives and achieve academic success. As students are required to evaluate and interpret information from a variety of sources, incorporate new knowledge with what they already have learned, and improve writing skills and think critically, visual learning tools help students meet those demands. Paired with the brain’s capacity for images, visual learning strategies help students better understand and retain information.

How does visual learning help students?

Visual learning helps students clarify their thoughts

Students see how the ideas are connected and they realize how information can be grouped and organized. With visual learning, new concepts are more thoroughly and easily understood when they are linked to prior knowledge.

Visual learning helps students organize and analyze information

The students can use diagrams and plots to display large amounts of information in ways that are easy to understand and help reveal relationships and patterns.

Visual learning helps students integrate new knowledge

According to research, the students remember better the information when it is represented and learned in both ways visually and verbally.

Visual learning helps students think critically

Linked verbal and visual information helps students to make connections, understand relationships and recall related details.

The visual learning research in both educational theory and cognitive psychology tells us that visual learning is among the very best methods for teaching students of all ages how to think and how to learn.

Visual Literacy

As future educators we have to explore new core competencies for 21st century learning. The importance of visual literacy is a reoccurring theme. How do we teach learners to interpret and create visual, digital, and audio media in a contemporary culture where media dominates, and how is visual literacy in education being redefined through technology? We have to begin looking for resources that would integrate visual literacy into their classroom.

TEACHING LITERACY THROUGH CINEMA

In this new post I would like to relate the teaching of literacy with the cinema. I would like to propose various and different activities relaed with films and the cinema to work in class with our students:

• CHARACTER ACTING: A great way of encouraging children to think more about characters in stories.

    This activity is a wonderful drama game for children. They will really enjoy it!

    Each child choose a character from a book to act out (without speaking).

    The other children have to guess the character and explain their reasoning.

    

• MEDIA AWARENESS: Analyse adverts, and try to make your own, with this enjoyable Literacy activity.

      Children were to think about an advert and what made them think about that.

      To watch a video full of adverts, then they have to discuss who they think the adverts are              made for.

      To design a table to categorise the adverts looking at when they would be shown.

      Children start planning their own adverts in small groups.

      To make the adverts. All adverts to be viewed by the children and a juding panel to decide          which advert is the best.

• FILM MAKING: A wonderful way for children to work together in a wide variety of subjects.

    Children make group of five to make a film lasting about five minutes.

• ANIMATION IDEAS: A number of ideas for using animation in the classroom.

• SOUNDTRACKS: A range of activities which focus on the soundtracks of movies and games.

To end this post I write here some quotes from film celebrities that I would like to share with you:

"If students aren't taught the language of sound and images, shouldn't they be considered as illiterate as if they left college without being able to read or write?"

~ George Lucas, filmmaker

"If one wants to reach younger people at an earlier age to shape their minds in a critical way, you really need to know how ideas and emotions are expressed visually"

~ Martin Scorsese, director and filmmaker

READING STRATEGIES

Becoming our students into efficient readers:

Reading strategies for children can help our future students to be prepared for academic challenges they will face. 

Being a proficient reader in the early years of school is really important for their future.

Good readers use different strategies naturally, but not everybody is familiar with the ways that work best for them individually. So as future teachers  we must facilitate them different strategies to improve the acquisition and the comprehension of the content of any text.

To achieve this goal we have five very effective strategies:

• VISUALIZE

        To get children imagine or draw what a character looks like.           They could verbally explain what a setting looks like. Many               students think visually while others have difficulty, so this                can be helpful for both types of learners. 

• SUMMARIZE 

       This stage allows our young students to differentiate between the main thoughts                and the minor details. After finishing a chapter or section, we should make them              to retell what they just read and then write down a brief summarization. 

• PREDICT

        

        This third reading strategy consist to make them to               predict what they think will happen next.                           This helps encourage active reading and helps                     them stay engaged with the text. This can also                     help signal a misunderstanding of the text that                     needs revisiting. 

• ASK QUESTIONS

          Have children come up with questions about the text, steer them away from the               questions about minor details and have them focus on questions about the meaning           or morals. This helps nurture active learning.

• FIND CONNECTIONS

      For the last reading strategy we could ask them to               relate a character in the text to themselves or                     someone else they know. 

     Have them connect different similarities and direct              opposites. This will help them understand the text                fom a new perspective and encourages deeper thought.

It is important to adapt how you read to suit the material and your purpose for reading.
It is important to promote reading our students because that will be the basis for dealing with the problems of life when they grow up.

If we follow these strategies in class they will succeed!

* Do you like to read?

* Do you think that your teachers encouraged the pleasure of reading in school?

* What strategy do you think is the most important?

* Would you add some other strategy?