Spelling Success Through Visualization

By Author: Mayank Gupta
Total Articles: 37
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As educators, we tend to all likely understand a student who "shuts down" when spelling tasks are referred to. The mere thought of getting to work on orthography makes the scholar develop into mush, and the walls come straight up as a result of they associate their performance as not being adequate.
Visualized learning is one of the modern approaches implemented by various girls boarding schools in Dehradun. Visual aided learning plays a significant impact in the minds of students as it easier to retain information for long-term.
Learning and spelling shouldn't be a daunting task. It ought to be an exciting adventure! However, will we tend to, as educators, facilitate to assist them during this journey? As a Vision therapist, one among the tools I learned was the ability of visualization. Working in the developmental optometry office, I had the privilege of learning regarding; however, our brain and our visual system communicate so as for us to retain data in a more kinesthetic manner. Sure, straight memorization would possibly work, but the alternative -- a more "whole body" based learning -- creates a more significant ...
... input that the brain is more incentivized to retain.
There are various visualization tools used by boarding schools in Dehradun to assist students in learning. These schools provide new and improved learning techniques to make students learn faster.
Over the past decade, I even have been ready to utilize many tools to assist students of varying learning levels and skills in increasing their visual memory and visualization skills. But today, I would like to share my favorite one.
Game: going on an ADVENTURE!
(Jungle Trip, Picnic, patrician journey, you name it!)

This one is a fan favorite! I take advantage of this game as a starting stage of how I explain the concept of visualization. This game is easy. You actually don't want anything and may play anywhere at any time. Begin with establishing the journey. As an example, let's go on a picnic. Please discuss with the student what the picnic would possibly look like (in the start, to make it a bit more concrete, I will be able to draw out the picnic for them in order that they will literally see it). If the materials are available or for more concrete learners, I will be able to truly discover a picnic in the area. Here are some of the queries I ask to induce their visualization wheels turning: I conjointly encourage outrageous question as that helps stimulate memory:

Close your eyes and movie this:

Where are we? (park, backyard, school)
What do you see? ( a hill, a sandbox, hills, playground, trees, dinosaurs)
Pick an area for us to place our blanket down (next to the big red dinosaur)
What colour is our blanket? (checkered red and white, rainbow-coloured)
Now let's sit and see what else we tend to bring to the picnic!
From here, we tend to take turns bringing something to the picnic and putting it somewhere within the visual imagery. Once it's your turn, you repeat everything else that has been brought before you by closing your eyes, picturing the picnic and easily just naming what you see. Here is an example of dialogue:

I am going on a picnic, and I am bringing with me… a big PINK SANDWICH! (now all children close their eyes and place this big pink sandwich somewhere within their picnic – maybe it's in the sandbox. It doesn't matter wherever as long as they're placing it in their own imagery).

Then the next participant can say "I am going on a picnic and I am bringing with me…a big pink sandwich, and a BLACK DOG!" By continuance what the previous participants brought, it stimulates their visual recall to retrieve the imagery in addition to retain the pictures.

The goal of this activity is to induce the students to show the item into a "picture" instead of repeating in their head "pink sandwich, pink sandwich, pink sandwich" so as to recollect it. Once the student is able to find out how to live within the imagery they're making; it'll become much easier to retrieve the data they're recalling. Over time, you'll be amazed at how many things a student is able to remember by making these silly pictures in their minds.

Here's wherever all of this ties into spelling: Utilizing this idea, I encourage students to show their spelling words into photos. As an example, the word "Dog" – instead of repeating and remembering D-O-G, D-O-G, over and over, we tend to draw it out. The letter D with tongue sticking out, and O turned into a spiral and a G that's wearing a hat?! However hilarious! We tend to make up stories; we draw them in the air; we tend to draw them in the sand; we tend to dance them out. It becomes a picture they merely can't forget. Now, once asked to spell the word DOG, they aren't racking their brains for the letters that frame the word, they're visualizing the image the word creates. Over time, this approach can facilitate their ability to examine words while not having to draw everything out or add ridiculous details. It exercises the areas of the mind and sensory system that communicate and can create it so much easier for them to easily see words, turn them into visual pictures, and retrieve them when necessary.