Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Learning Environments Reading resources for visual spatial learners

Polarbear's comment on another post about her ds being visual spatial learner(vsl) and how he learned to read caught my attention. I am not sure if dd4 is visual spatial but seeing how she is struggling with reading makes me wonder. She visualizes numbers and therefore math comes naturally to her. But boy is she struggling with reading. Any books that are her level have pictures to go with words and she gets so focused on the image and guessing the words that she refuses to read the words. Books without pictures don't appeal to her at all. Are there any good resources for vsl who are at the very beginning stage of reading. Any good websites, activities, YouTube videos etc. dd is getting frustrated with her lack of progress and I am not sure how to help. Thanks.

My kids loved starfall.com at that age

My daughter has high VS scores and I'm not sure what that means....can anyone help me understand and get better resources for her?

My son also has very high vs scores and while I'm by no means an expert, this is what I've come to understand:
*They think in pictures. This is very hard for me to conceptualize because I'm such a wordy person.
*They may be more likely to be dyslexic, or at least not as responsive to phonics-based learning. Apparently, some VSLs learn to read by building up an extensive sight word vocabulary before decoding starts to take place. I read about one person who exclusively sight reads.
*They see the whole rather than the parts. (why phonics isn't best)

I can't tell you from a BTDT perspective, but my son's known single-letter phonics since he was 3 (He's 5 now), but still struggles to put them together in a meaningful way. I'm about to incorporate a more hands-on approach to teaching reading (He's been doing countless reading games -- Starfall, ReadingEggs, Ooka Island and so far none of them have just *clicked*. For example, I'm going to have him work on writing words in sand or shaving cream, building them with play dough or pipe cleaners, and other things like that.

Pinterest is great for ideas. Try searching for "multi-sensory reading techniques" or even "dyslexic reading techniques" (even if you don't necessarily suspect dyslexia). I've also seen visually intense flash cards, but they were very expensive.

Doubtfire, the book "Upside Down Brilliance" is about the mind of the VSL learner. I know that there's someone on this board who's critical of the idea of VSL being an actual thing, since most of the research is anecdotal and done by Dr. Linda Silverman. But I've also been reading Dyslexic Advantage and seeing a lot of similar statements about these learners without the VSL label and with a bit more science-backed (mri) evidence.

I bought my dd the videos, "Meet the Sightwords," which are sight words in pictures when she was about 2 1/2. The only reason I got them is because her older brother has dyslexia and in the off-chance she did, too, I wanted to expose her to words early. But she loved watching and she also loved the flashcards that go with the videos. I knew right away that she didn't have dyslexia because started reading other words right away and was a fluent reader by 4. It might have been this early exposure that helped her crack the code, or she might have been an early reader anyway like her DYS brother.

http://www.amazon.com/Meet-Sight-Wo...301&sr=1-2&keywords=meet+the+sight+words

The psych who assessed DD and gave her the WISC said that she is a VSL. She was very high with perceptual reasoning on the WISC and hit ceilings on two of the subtests. Verbal was quite a bit lower (still above the 99th percentile though). I didn't ask her about VSL's, she just mentioned it and put it in the report. DD is on the hyperlexic side of things--reading came very easily to her. The psych put some websites in her report, I think this was one of them. http://visualspatial.org/
We were talking about DD's troubles w/ remembering math facts though, and she said that's not surprising, and that that website could help.


My 6 year old DS is another kid who most people would probably say is a VSL based on the description. Like DD he hit the ceiling on two of the perceptual reasoning subtests (the same two), and when he was given a test of visual perceptual ability (the TVPS I think it was called) he hit the ceilings on the subtests for visual spatial ability and visual memory. If you ask him where Alabama is, he can name all the states surrounding it and draw a picture of Alabama from memory. But I don't think he is actually visualizing Alabama, I think he remembers details of how the borders of Alabama look. He is also hyperlexic and learned to read very early, around his 4th birthday.

I read this by Temple Grandin about "Thinking in Pictures" and it was interesting how near the end she said that some people think visually, and others see patterns in everything. I think my two kids might be the type to see patterns and notice visual details, rather than being true visual thinkers or thinking in images. They may be good at reading, or "hyperlexic" because they notice patterns with phonics that other people might not notice. http://www.grandin.com/inc/visual.thinking.html

So I don't think there is a clear link between having a strength in visual spatial ability or visual memory and having troubles with reading. It may be the case for some kids, but not all. The website I posted might have some resources for kids who truly do think in images or see the "whole" rather than parts.

My anecdotal experience is that it does, and it doesn't.

Whole-word recognition as a reading strategy is particularly helpful at the beginning of learning to read in English, because a great number of our phonetic violators are basic words. At early reading levels, a whole-word recognition strategy works in every case, whereas a phonetic-based decoding strategy fails almost as often as it succeeds. In this way, whole-word recognition is easier and more conducive to early reading, because it's more effective. And yet it's also more difficult, because it takes time, effort, and repetition to build up that mental, visual dictionary.

When we're talking about gifted VSLs, getting them to put in the time and effort is not really difficult... it's usually harder to get them to stop.

The success rate for phonetic decoding increases dramatically once you begin encountering words with Latin roots on a regular basis... in other words, once you begin studying sciences at a secondary level.

I think "visual-spatial learner" was a strongly suggested but an ultimately unfortunate label. Pattern vs. detail or abstract vs. concrete or intuiting vs. sensing or synthesis vs. analysis or even deductive vs. inductive are all likely to be more robust descriptions. The correspondence is that an image can encode patterns that can be easily detected by someone with those strengths; and there can be a large preference because if you can pick up information in a glance that might take ten minutes of someone explaining, it is pretty compelling.

However, it isn't a question of ability or preference, but a question of balance between the two sides and the abiliy to switch between detail and pattern oriented thinking.

DS8 learned whole words very young because he could remember the patterns of the letters at a glance and associate them to the word. The problem is it isn't phonetic, and it is a bit epic to undo what he did instinctually at two. You can strew things informally; such as we had CC (closed captioning) turned on the TV and that seems to have been a huge source for him, but I'm not sure now if it was a good idea with the degree of entrenchment we have.

I am so sorry for not noticing these replies till now. Is there a way to get email notification when a reply is posted? Anyway, thanks so much for the ideas. Again, we haven't tested dd yet so I have no idea if she is a visual thinker. But like zenscanner said the term is an unfortunate label and there is so much more to it. During the last week ( winter break so dd is at home), I figured out that she can read most words as long as there is nothing else to distract her. So we started to build a word wall and I was amazed how much she could read. I also wrote clues for her for treasure hunt and she was able to read the sentences without much problem. Also she really seems to like word families. So all of these are going to be my strategy. If only I can find simple books with large print, complex stories and no pictures. Any suggestions?
I did start dd this week on reading eggs. She tested at map 8 level and she loves it so far mainly because of the free eggs, shop and avatar.
Syoblrig, I was able to find a YouTube video on meet the sight word about a month ago and that is what got dd interested in reading in the first place. However we were only able to watch it once for free. The next time dd asked for it, it asked for a rental fee so I ended up not going back to it. But dd learnt about 10-15 sight words just from that one exposure. So I will definitely buy those DVDs.
Lilmisssunshine, dd knew all sound words since before she was 3 and she has been an excellent speller since she was 3 but struggled/ showed no interest in reading. Introducing her to sight words has helped tremendously in improving her confidence. She now really wants to learn to read and phonetic reading slows her down and frustrates her. Maybe it is the same with your DS?
Blackcat, thanks for the links. Dd has many of the items listed under the vsl. Like your son, she is very strong with visualization and seeing patterns and relationships.
Again thanks so much for the links and ideas. I will post any new ideas that click with dd so others with similar age kids might find it useful.