Liz's Classroom
What is Visual Learning and Thinking?
  • Overview: Graphic aids, organizers, diagrams, and outlines and more are ways that can help students better understand information that is being taught in the classroom. Using visual strategies can also help students to retain the information, and use new knowledge with what they already know. Visual learning helps clarify students thoughts, organize and analyze information, help students integrate new knowledge, and help them think critically.
  • Graphic Organizers: A graphic organizer is a visual display that demonstrates relationships between facts, concepts, or ideas. There are many types of graphic organizers such as Venn Diagrams, cocept maps, and story webs.Graphic organizers can be used to multiple subjects and to teach many things such as cause and effect, organizing problems and solutions, and vocabulary knowledge.
  • Concept Map: A concept map is a type of graphic organizer used to help students organize and represent knoweledge of a subject.Concept maps can help learners brainstorm new ideas, encourage students to discover new concepts and the propositions that connect them, and much more. Concept maps can also serve as an evaluation for students growth and acheivements.
  • Mind Maps: A mind map is a visual representation of hierarchical information that includes a central idea surrounded by connected branches of associated topics. There are many student benefits to mind maps such as making it easier to organize ideas and concepts, help students take notes and plan tasks, and allow students to easily recall information. Mind maps start with one main idea as the focus, then branches out to other information about the topic.
  • Webbing: A web is a visual map that shows how different categories of information relate to one another. Webs are often used to brainstorm new information but can also help develop and improve student thinking, and allow students to discover new ideas and relationships between concepts. Webs can be used for more than just brainstorming, literary webs, and character webs are great for reading stories and books.
  • Outlining: An outline is a preliminary summary of written work, typically hierarchically organized in headings and subheadings. Outlining can help students clarify their ideas, or organize large amounts of information. This is typically the first step in the writing process, and can help organize which information or ideas will go into each paragraph.
  • Plots and Graphs: Plots and graphs are a type of visual learning diagram that visually represents a relationship between sets of numbers as a set of points having coordinates determined by that relationship. Graphs and plots can make seeing and understanding facts and data much easier. Using plots and graphs to understand data will help children to connect real world information and problems to what they are learning in the classroom. Because of this, students will develop deeper content knowledge, and strengthen critical thinking skills.
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