visual learning and comprehending readalouds

Hi Marycas,

Well, in my opinion, what they now are calling visual learners are ironically kids whose main issue is a deficit in vision skills. That is, the vision skill deficit is keeping them from learning to read by themselves, which then impacts their ability to understand that language is parsed into individual sounds (because they can’t attend to the print well enough to figure out the sound-to-symbol relationships,) so they get assessed as having an auditory deficit. That is, they are lousy segmenters and blenders. What’s missed is that this is due to their inability to view print long enough to learn to read, and there is no earthly reason to blend, and especially to segment, if one isn’t learning to read.

So, everything they do learn appears to be visual and hands-on because they avoid print like the plague and find other ways to learn. Then, someone reads to them and, since there’s nothing wrong with their cognitive skill, they understand perfectly well.

It’s a weird and vicious circle, but I would bet that your “visual learner” has a vision deficit, not an auditory one (or in addition to an auditory one,) that is causing his reading problem.

I can’t remember if we’ve had this exchange in the past, but if not, do some reading on vision therapy and the problems it is designed to address, and you might very well conclude that you son is exhibiting the symptoms of those problems…..Rod

I have been told many times my son is a visual learner, the last just last week when an OT evaluator told me how impressed she was by his >145 score on a test of motor-free visual processing. (Don’t have the name of test as written results are not in.)

However, I feel he learns best when he has auditory reinforcement of his material. (It is hard, though, to get him to consistently talk himself through studying and assignments—he probably thinks it looks foolish.) There has always been something slightily counterintuitive about this observation—he had CAPD (now remediated to an acceptable level) and inattentive ADD, which particularly evidences itself as a lack of auditory responsiveness.

I am wondering is there is a difference between what one’s sensory strengths are—in his case visual is clearly one of them—and the sensory channel through which one learns best. Possibly the latter is auditory in his case, but was hampered early on by too many ear infections. I would guess normally the sensory strength and the optimal sensory learning channel would be the same, but in other cases like my son possibly not. Any thoughts?

I have a friend whose child is hearing impaired and has processing issues as well. She was born normal but sufferred severe reaction to vacines. Anyway, one real problem with her is that she was probably naturally an auditory learner but can’t use that channel as much now. They have tried to train her visual system but it is difficult.

My son also has CAPD but also is an auditory learner. He also sufferred from ear infections and had to have tubes put in at age 4. He has learned tons of information auditorally—initially one on one for the most part. His best friend in K was the smartest kid in class because he was the only other one who knew all the sharks (and my son was not even on the normal curve). Now, after much therapy, he comes home from school telling me things his teacher has talked about.

So I do think you can be programmed to learn one way and have that sensory channel disrupted.

Beth

Rod,

Thanks for that explanation. My 8yr son is very much an auditory learner. As long as he has heard the material he has the highest grades in the class, even though he seriously struggling with reading. The teacher will also help him read test questions. I have been told he is not “hearing the sounds” in the words. I have been considering having him evaluated by a developmental optometrist, and after reading your post I am going to make to the appointment.

Some little online test I did with him maybe 3 yrs back where you visualized an ice cream cone and pointed to where you “saw” the cone. A visual learner will point to the forehead or area in front of it-that be me! Some one else(haptic???)would point to the top of their head and some kids will tell you they dont know-you tell them to guess. My son did the latter and ‘guessed’ exactly at the area over one of the ears which is the auditory center(I forget which that is)

My thoughts were ‘oh, great-in a kid who had severe-moderate hearing loss for over 3 yrs”

And if he ‘rechanneled’ to visual while his auditory was distressed, would he then switch back to auditory when it became more functional???

I also have to comment on the ‘one on one auditory’ mentionned. Definitely where he learns best AND resource reading is a very small group(5/6) So maybe it isnt the reading aloud itself but the size of the group????

He is on meds for ADDinattentive.

she felt his deficits were minor-made it clear that she wouldnt recommend therapy for such a mild problem(teaming I think)if he wasnt havent problems in school. It wasnt a strong enough diagnosis for me to spend 100/hr for therapy.

He has 3 wks of intercession coming up and I plan to do some of the vision exercises that have been posted on the parent board. I figure if he struggles, it might be worth another look-were in a different area now so it would be a different opinion.

I think the size of the group matters for kids with auditory processing issues. One on one or small group you can tailor the information to the child. You notice when the attention is wandering while in a classroom that isn’t so.
You can make sure they understand.

Beth

The biggest problem with the argument that someone is not hearing the sounds is that if they learned to speak then they do hear the sounds. They re not connecting those sounds to the sound symbol This is an entirely different type of problem. Once kids really understand the sound symbol relationship they can beging to really read. I have been using PG and then Rewards for work on multi-syllable words and fluency. I also use trade books and comprehension strategies. I have been having great success with my middle school kids.

> she felt his deficits were minor-made it clear that she wouldnt recommend therapy for such a mild problem(teaming I think)if he wasn’t having problems in school.

Hi mary,

I’m a little confused. An eye-teaming problem can be the reason a child is having trouble reading. And why is your son in a pullout reading class if he’s not having trouble in school?
Anyway, assuming he was having eye-teaming problems then, and he is now having problems in school, I will stand by what I wrote in the first post. See another developmental optometrist, as you implied you might be considering….Rod

Hi Naneb and stacy,

I agree with you Naneb that PG is an excellent program. However, it is oversold; in training several years ago we were told that nearly everyone could be remediated using it.

Since that time I have worked one-on-one with well over fifty kids, mostly very low readers, and I have found that most of those fifty kids also had a vision problem running through their family history.

Yes, those kids learned a lot from the reading program, but no, most of them did not turn on to reading until their vision issues were addressed effectively. The reading program will teach them HOW to read, but it takes vision therapy to make them WANT to read. And yes, I’ve seen kids get excited when they realize that English isn’t all that tough. But if you follow them long enough, you’ll find that the ones with a vision issue that goes unaddressed tend not to make sufficient gains to achieve independent grade-level reading.

Most PG users disagree with me on this, as do the developers. But it is one thing to take the lower half or two-thirds of a class and teach them by this method, and another to take the lowest 10 or 15 percent and try the same thing. That lowest 10 to 15 percent is the group that needs both a good phonics program and a good vision therapy program in the majority of cases, in my opinion….Rod

PS: All you really have to do to begin to convince yourself of the truth of what I’m saying is start asking about the family history of reading problems. Don’t ask an adult if he or she can read well; just ask if they had problems learning to read in the early grades. I can assure you that the ones who had trouble remember the experience well…..start asking the question and see. But then, remember that it’s really a genetic vision issue being passed along, not a reading issue. As I explained in the earlier post, I believe that in many cases the auditory deficits arise because the vision skills never develop to the point where the auditory skills are put into play.

Hi,

I took my son to a dev. opt. about a week ago. He has teaming and convergence problems. We are waiting for a computer CD to come in that he will use at home - and then the doctor will check progress monthly. The whole thing, including the exam/testing was $250. I found his name through this site:

homevisiontherapy.com

This makes it affordable for us. I, too, was told a year ago that my son had “slight” visual processing problems by a different doctor. Plus the therapy was extrememly expensive. There were so many other things going on with my son, that I did’t worry about that one, too much. After a year of trying different remediation (and PG) I realize my son needs something more - so we are trying the vision therapy.

Lil

My tutor told me my daughter is a visual learner. She has BOTH visual and audtory deficits. Listens to books on tape, one teacher said (small group) she was the only one who answered ALL 3 parts of a 3 part question. Has a hard time telling the difference between say, navigate and negotiate or different and difference visually (if she hears it, she knows which one) She’s had LMB and SI OT. (Maybe my tutor was wrong?)

She’s on Concerta. When asked, she told the doctor, “It (the med) makes all the noise in the room go away so I can read better”. Go figure.

I would be more concerned with getting someone to help your son with sound/symbol relationships. There are MANY good programs. You need to make the school address this Immediately, or you need to do so privately. Don’t let him go any further without any help in this area. The older the child the more difficult and longer it takes to remediate.

Also, be careful - not all programs work for all kids - there’s not a cookie cutter solution. Oh, and stay away from Sylvan and Huntington IF your child is truly LD. JMHO

Rod, I must say, my daughter has both auditory and visual reading issues. She has not received “vision therapy” per se by a dev. op, but has had her visual processing addressed through a SI OT. (She’s also received LMB). All I can say, is that we have seen tremendous gains (tho not a “complete cure” - which we KNOW not to expect) She still has some tracking issues, but is now reading Harry Potter (and LOVES it). She’s 4th grade.

Problem is: Honesly, how much money does the average parent have to address all these different issues? My daughter is adopted. I shudder to think what would have happened if she had remained with a working, single mom (young with no education to speak of). (Very poor family). She had supposedly an MR aunt. I often wonder IF the aunt was really MR or just had all these different and varied problems and then a mom that drank as well. (My daughter’s maternal grandmother). I could see a poor, uneducated family (my own, a couple of generations ago) saying, “You mean, you can’t read, write, tie your shoes, or rhyme? - You must be MR”. My own mother used to say her sister was “stupid” b/c she could study all night and still not pass the test. - Sorry to get off on a tangent, just shows the ignorance of the “general public” re: LDs in general.

AND back to the question, where does all the money come from? She’ll have to get a loan for college - but with the right therapies, at least she’ll be able to go.

I understand about all the different “fires” (i.e., deficits) and you throw your “water”/money on whatever one is the most out of control.

We have done SI OT and LMB. We have paid for keyboarding. Now, at 10, I realize she probably needed speech (but speech was a plus, back when she couldn’t read, write, rhyme or tie her shoes). She’s 10, adversive to speech therapy. I guess we’ll have to let it go. She does well except says “yogret” in lieu of yogurt, and has problems with words like “obstacle” and other MS words. So she’ll never be a public speaker - I can live with that. The other day she called it “NoxzeNa”, instead of “NoxzeMa”. I correct her and sometimes she will “get it” and other times she just says, “Whatever - you know what I mean”.

Actually in the book, “Why our Children Can’t Read and What We Can Do About It,” by Diane Mcguinness she states that the research supports the idea that about 1% of the population will need vision therapy to learn to read.
1 in 100 is alot of kids.

I think even more have marginal vision issues and would benefit from vision therapy but I would be happy if that 1% had access. I think we need to use the proven teaching methods first and if those do not achieve desired results you have to consider the need for VT. I also think that early screening for vision problems would yield better results than putting all poor readers through vision therapy.

Signed,
Linda Mom to a 1%er

Mary,

It became very clear to me that my son had these issues when we did the exercises. You might find it interesting that he doesn’t stuggle with all the exercises. They don’t even do gross motor things with him because he does well with those.

I tell you this because you may need to do several different types of exercises to find the area that is her weakness.

My son did speech first - 1st and 2nd grade through the schools. He sounds just about like your daughter now. Except instead of “whatever” I get, “I just like to use my own words, Mom, OK!” I tell him using his own words might be fun, but if it isn’t the real word, no one will be able to understand him. :-)

Lil

Leah,

If she is reading Harry Potter and loving it, she is there, in my opinion. What I would give for my son to do the same.

I think that we all have deficits. We just usually learn to compenstate for them. If children have too many or too severe, compensation doesn’t work. I would suspect that with the LMB and other therapy you’ve done, your daughter’s minor tracking issues are not a problem for here.

My son’s Neuronet therapist once told me she almost never sees a child who doesn’t have deficits in at least 3/5 areas that she evaluates. Any less than that, the child is able to compenstate (my son had deficits in all areas, of course).

Beth

We are in same boat. At 9yr 3rd grade, my dd’s reading is coming along (she tested at 4th grade level at school, but it was the not an official reading assessment - just the ones the teacher does with all kids before progress reports come out - I really don’t believe she is at 4th grade), her writing is below grade, but legible and readable and we do see progress.

We have not done speech either because of all the other therapies we have had to do to get her reading on track. Her dentist told us that she uses the wrong tongue placement for various sounds - R being the worst. (this is creating a slight overbite). It’s the one area her classroom teacher has been encouraging us to address - so we can’t delay anymore. My dd is not happy about it. It doesn’t bother her any - she thinks it’s cool because kids tell her she talks with an accent. We have been advised that girls will get alot more cruel toward her speech come about 5th grade.

Something that just occurred to me (I think I’M a slow processor :0) ).
She does much better with hard cover books. It just hit me that I believe it’s the size of the print. She always changes her font on the computer to 14 instead of the standard 12 we use at the law office where I work. She is also nearsighted (and has glasses of course), but I really think the bigger print makes a big difference.

I guess they’re telling us “don’t sweat the small stuff”. It just bugs me sometimes, but it’s not bothering her and she seems to have friends, so …I try not to make a big deal out of it.

You’ll love this: When she was younger I would try to get her to sing “Jesus Loves Me… from Sunday School. She would say, “Well, mom, that’s a little hard, but I have my own song.” and she would croak out “God made trees, and frogs and bushes, etc., it would go on and on.(completely off key, of course)

NOT being gifted :0) it took ME a long time to figure out that she couldn’t remembe the words of any songs so she would just make up a different one each time.

As someone once said, “Give them credit for being smart enough to save face”.

While there are folks who fit the profile Rod describes, there are also many kids who really, honestly *are* visual-kinesthetic learners — and a true “v-k” kid often does struggle with reading because it requires tying in the auditory to the visual. (Basically, reading can get you coming and going — you’ve gotta have both.)

Just because he’s visual doesn’t mean he’s deaf :-) I could also imagine the teacher tossing out the vocab to them on M and T… and expecting them to connect it to the reading which they would do silently later. Hey, that will be wonderful for me, Miss Verbosity. Other kids, though, aren’t going to make that quantum leap from the definition of a completely new word to comprehending it in reading about a challenging topic.

Consider this as a reason why reading aloud works for reading but isn’t so good for Science & HIstory: his reading class is about words and words and words… and the oral reading is focused, intensive practice with words. Getting it read to him models exactly that reading task.

The Science and Social STudies “tasks” are different. How are they tested on their knowledge in those areas? Does he have interest & knowledge in them that he’s gotten through discussions or videos or hands-on experiments?

that helps tremendously-I think the teacher guides the outline, if not totally writes it, but it has been a big help over what I gather was ‘lecture’ type teaching in the past.

Small group research and small group discussion also help-and, definitely any projects that have a craft-type component.

And, yeah, youre right-listening to a science lecture is a two step process as he would need to take in a lot more new info AND remember it until the test. The reading probably isnt as ‘new’ and ‘conceptual like gravity’ and the tests/worksheets are given pretty frequently(less time to forget-more practice)

Maybe his ‘listening skills’ are just improving across the board and this is the first place it showed up(oh, please, please)

My son also does better with larger print books. His Neuronet therapist told me that this is developmental—it is easier to process larger print. Last year we went as far as enlarging everything. For whatever reason, our children’s vision is a little behind normal development. Still, if he can read Harry Potter, I wouldn’t worry. If you think about it, your daughter wasn’t reading the large print books at the age she should have been. She may still be catching up.

Beth

My son’s auditory and visual systems are both, at this point, better than the integration. That is the big bugaloo.

So what do you think of approaches that are addressing the visual learner—I was talking to someone locally who talked about making clay images of words that are not easily visionalized. Guess it was a take off on Davis therapy. The attractive thing about it was that they worked on visualization which is not a strength of my son’s.

Beth

Hi Linda,

Well, I’ve read Diane McGuinness’s book, and I’ve read the research that convinced her that vision problems were minimal. In my opinion, she and the researchers were both wrong, because the research did not address the issues that are found by developmental optometrists which impact reading.

And I certainly agree with you that we should not administer VT to every poor reader. Objective testing reveals those who are in need of it.

If I’m right, your daughter is a 10 or 15 percenter, not a 1 percenter, and she risks passing a vision problem on to one of her children someday. So, it’s important to make sure that the family remembers that this is a problem and is alert for the possibility when a child is very young. Then it can be addressed before they suffer through several years of school with an undetected vision problem….Rod

This is one of the Davis theories that REALLY makes sense, in my opinion: Think of the word ‘elephant’. What did you visualize? An elephant, which most of us have seen at least pictures of at a very early age. Think of the word ‘the’. What did you visualize????????? Most of us learned early on to visualize t h e and know it was ‘the’, with the meaning attached. SOME OF US need much more help…

I also think that the actual modeling with clay helps kinesthetic learners, and the coming up with a modeled representation of the meaning (which is often abstract, not concrete, and must be tied to an example plus the knowledge to understand how to apply the rule to other verbal situations) works for those who need things to ‘CLICK’ internally before they truly ‘KNOW’ them…

When I first started a teaching internship, I was handed a text and dumped in the classroom (NOT a good approachn to beginning teaching — for various reasons it later turned out the program had been forced on the school staff and they wanted us to fail). The text I was handed was the incredibly bad Dolciani series, a set of texts which is single-handedly responsible for much of the math failure and anxiety in high schools in the past two generations. So the teacher handed me this geometry text and told me to teach Chapter 2.
Chapter 2 was ENTIRELY a list of definitions. Period. No discussion. No question of why you might want to know these things. No mention of what they might be good for. Just memorize this list of totally irrelevant and incredibly complicated definitions, many of which were defined in terms of things that were even more complicated (like defining a wheel in terms of centrifugal and centripetal force). Did I say that this text series was really really bad?
So, I thought about this, and I thought back and remembered how I learned all these definitions. I DO know them and I know how to use them, so yes, I learned them. But never once from a vocabulary list. Rather, my teachers introduced a problem that needed to be solved, and in the process defined the words that we were using. And vocabulary was mostly tested by being used in applied problems.
Recently, I’ve been teaching ESL. My students have been disappointed that I don’t give them nice neat vocabulary lists to memorize. Unfortunately, there are about 2000 to 5000 words per level, and there’s no way you can write or memorize the total list.
Consider this: the average English-language high school graduate has a comprehension vocabulary over 50000 words, and a vocabulary in use of 10000 to 20000. Not counting basic reading instruction in the first two grades, that means kids are learning to comprehend 5000 words per year and to use actively 1000 to 2000 per year. That’s around 25 comprehension words including 5 to 10 active use words *every day*.
Imagine if you tried to teach this with word lists. *Every* single day, you give the kid a *new* list of 25 words and definitions to memorize. Ten of the words are starred and he has to learn to spell them - that’s ten different *new *words *every* day - and to use them from then on in his writing. If you think about learning in this way, first of all the entire day would be dedicated to trying to memorize the word list, second there would be huge retention problems and most kids would be totally lost by mid Grade 3, third nothing else would ever get taught, and finally both teachers and students would have nervous breakdowns.
Not to mention those kids who are doing second languages and the immersion kids here who are pulling a double load, at least in good schools…
Obviously, word lists are NOT how we learn vocabulary!! In fact, looking back on my own experience, word lists class among the very worst, most ineffective possible ways to teach vocabulary.
So what does work? Real, old-fashioned teaching. Students and/or teacher read something orally and discuss what it means. Teachers teach analysis of vocabulary from context, from root words, from grammatical structure, from parallels in other known languages, and as a last resort from the dictionary. Teachers use advanced vocabulary in speaking, and give students reading passages that are challenging enough but not too difficult. Students are encouraged to write more than fill in the blanks. It’s a lot longer than handing out a list before the reading passage, but it actually does some good.

Hi Victoria, I just finished reading your E and really enjoyed it. I’m not a teacher, but rather, a Phono-Graphix therapist. I want to tell you about an assignment I give to all parents who come to me. It seems to fit with what you are saying (at least, it did to me!) Parents seem to think they must EXPLAIN a new word to their child. I tell them that’s not how the child (or parent) learned most of his vocab. Just USE the word a lot. Ex: new word is “reprimand”; the kid keeps nagging the parent and the parent says ” of you continue to bug me about this, I’ll have to reprimand you and send you to your room.” the next time the parent says “do I need to reprimand you again, by taking away your sleep-over tonight?” It doesn’t take long for the child to figure out what it means. I take words they don’t know from what we read and make a list for the parents. They post it on the fridge, or wherever they’ll be reminded of it. This has worked soooo well for my students, whose parents follow through. The best part is that the word usually comes up again and again in their reading and now, they know the word; very good stuff.
Also, I have a 5 yr. old “pseudo-grandson” who has been speaking full sentences since age 18 months. His mom has ONLY spoken “adult language” with him (never “dummied down her language, or used baby talk), and he says things like “that mom hit her child; that’s not an appropriate thing to do for that behavior.” Need I say more? I’ve gone on long enough. Thanks for an interesting msg. Leslie

You shoulda heard my five-year-old. Consider how verbal I am and well …

When she was four I took her to a wonderful dinosaur museum where they actually show you the bones in the ground (Drumheller, Alberta, Canada) and of course bought her two dinosaur puppets and a T-shirt. So we went home and people asked my angelic blonde four-year-old what she wanted to be when she grew up, and she said “a paleontologist!”. Floored them every time.

Of course she’s twenty now, and now she’s a fireman. Some kids.