Thanks! Actually you raised an interesting point. What do you think about Linda Silverman's research about visual spatially gifted children? Any resources that talk about the debunking? Silverman thinks that the children need to be taught differently to read, and so far her written work seems to make sense. This is actually affecting our school selection and we don't know if it should. Basically the premise is that schools that does a lot of rote memory learning is not going to work. We do have an excellent traditional schools in our area, which we ruled out because of this.
I have read her book and the psych who assessed DD called her a "VSL". DD learned to read very easily, probably a combination of phonics and learning whole words. She was reading very well by the time she started kindergarten. She listened a lot to audiobooks while following along with the print. DS is also a "VSL" and is extremely good at decoding. He can read words that he's never seen or heard before. If i gave him a college level textbook, he'd be able to read it fairly well. Probably not understand what it says, but read it. I don't think "VSL's" learn to read differently unless there is some sort of disorder involved, like dyslexia (which may or may not be more common in VSL's). I think Silverman has some interesting insights but they are not backed up by research. I definitely would not choose a school based on whether you think he is a VSL or not.
