Visual-Spatial Learning: The Complete Guide

Does your child have trouble understanding verbal directions? Maybe they shut down verbally when stressed? Are they unorganized? Or do they generally prefer to show you rather than explain something?

If these apply to your child, they are likely to be a visual-spatial learner. Like any learning style, this comes with unique challenges and strengths.

The important thing to know is that for many children, their struggle with words is not related to a learning disability, it is simply how they learn. Visual imagery is a learning style, and once we understand this, it opens up many doors of possibilities! To help a visual-spatial student learn best, it is important to know that visuals and stories are all great ways to keep them engaged. Let’s take a look at the specific characteristics of visual-spatial learners, where they face challenges, and where they thrive.

Key Characteristics 

1. Need to See: Being a visual-spatial learner doesn’t mean they learn by seeing. Just because they can see it doesn't mean they can learn it. What they see has to be organized in a way that they can make sense of.
2. Global Thinkers: They need to see the whole picture with all of its elements first in order to understand where details fit.
3. Process Primarily in Pictures: They think in pictures, not words. They see a whole concept in their mind, including how details fit and how ideas are connected (imagine a web). Those images go into visual memory, so learning is instant and permanent.
4. Pattern Recognition: They excel in searching for and finding similarities between elements, grouping those together naturally, and recognizing patterns.
5. Trouble with Linear-Sequential Thinking: They struggle with lessons taught in a step-by-step fashion, as well as breaking down the whole into sequential steps. Frequently, the more vivid the mental picture, or the more important the idea is, the more words fail them.
6. Difficulty with Drill & Memorization: They tend to like options, and they don’t do well with pressure, being timed, or being put on the spot. While short-term cramming can appear to be successful memorization, something a visual-spatial learner thought for sure they knew can suddenly disappear from memory without warning. If these learners have the luxury of seeing the whole picture, they are able to easily learn details by seeing how they fit into the whole. Drill and memorization become totally unnecessary!
7. Excellent at Creating Efficient & Effective Steps: Telling them exactly how to do something, asking them to memorize steps and carry them out is less effective than making sure they understand the goal, the function, and then letting them make their own steps.
8. Sensitive to Emotions: They tend to be sensitive to emotions in themselves and in others; they are very good at reading people and their emotions and caring for them. Visual-spatial learners tend not to focus on details; they generally do not readily recall facts, names, and dates. However, they remember the feeling of the story, what each character was like personally, and how the story line went.
9. Highly Intuitive: They extract meaning, they read between the lines, they understand shades of meaning.
10. Great Spatial Awareness: They have a good sense of direction, location, perception, visualization, and orientation.

Remember, your visual-spatial learner will probably forget what they hear but will remember what they see!

Learn more about how to tell if your child is a visual-spatial learner here.

Teaching Tips for Visual-Spatial Learners 

Since the brain learns best from sensory input, a multisensory approach is most effective for teaching visual-spatial learners. This approach targets multiple regions in the brain and body (whole body/brain learning) via visuals, body movement, touch, and the use of concrete objects.

*Be sure to relate every abstract concept (symbols, rules, etc.) to something tangible that is known to the learner. 

Images

When you are working with a child who doesn’t “get” something you are teaching, stop and consider if there is a more visual-friendly way to present the same concept. Use visuals integrated into symbols in order to access the visual cortex. Visual-spatial learners will snap a mental picture and then will be able to recall the information later. Visuals are so powerful, and for children who are visual-spatial, supplying them with a visual that is directly embedded in their learning is very powerful.

Instructions

Take a few more steps in helping picture thinkers know what is expected. One easy help is to write out directions for what you want them to do; anywhere you can add images, the better. If there are only auditory directions provided, there is nothing to refer back to. Another easy help is to show an example of a finished product. Visual-spatial learners need to see something to understand what is expected. Try this Interactive Steps & Procedures Activity to encourage your learner to practice planning steps and following procedures.

Visualization

To help a visual-spatial learner extract and comprehend the meaning of words, encourage them to use visualization. Whether it is learning a new word or a group of words used to compose a thought, have your child close their eyes and imagine a picture in their minds. Have them describe what they see and, afterward, have them draw what they saw.

Stories

Any time there is a concept you want a child to remember, tie it to a visual reminder, using objects children are familiar with. Use stories along with visuals to convey ideas you want the children to learn. Adding stories to visuals will enrich the learning experience for visual learners by utilizing another pathway to the brain. Stories are powerful because they provide context for learning new material and are an opportunity to elaborate on concepts you are teaching.

Movement

Use body motions along with visuals and stories to engage the cerebellum as frequently as possible. Relate the concept to the child’s body whenever possible. For instance, when teaching a child how to correctly form letters of the alphabet, have them create the letters with their bodies. You can also use fingermapping to help children correctly sequence sounds in a word as they are writing. It acts as a visual map, helping children see the sequence of sounds/letters, enabling them to correctly write the word. A powerful tool in learning sums to 10 is the child’s own pair of hands. When a child maps out the sums of 5 on their own hand, they are seeing the sums as tangible objects (their own fingers). They are feeling the pull of their fingers as they make the sums, and their mind will tie those facts to what they felt and saw on their own body.

Patterns

Teach using patterns by grouping related things and presenting every fact as related to other similar facts. Visual-spatial learners easily remember when content reveals a pattern. They prefer to start with the whole before breaking the whole into parts and steps. They learn by pattern-seeking and by relating like things together. This way of learning requires them to have a lot of information available to them from the beginning. For example, if you teach a particular sound spelling, such as AY, don’t teach it using one word in isolation. Generate a whole list of words containing that sound spelling and then have your children sound and write them on their whiteboards as you lead them through that exercise. If you teach one word such as “light,” as a sight word, don’t stop there. Collect all the -igh words you can find and teach them all at one time. If you teach 2+5=7, also teach other sums that equal 7 at the same time. Let the child see the array of problems so they can see all the ways to make seven at one time. In both of these examples, you will  be relying on patterns that exist within numbers and within words that will make sense to visual-spatial leaners.

Hands-On Activities & Games

1. Use visual and tactile tools for letter formation:
• How to Distinguish Between B & D
• How to Tell the Difference Between M,W,n,u
• Which Way is J?
2. Utilize your child’s visual strength for spelling and writing:
• Spelling & Writing Activity
• Tips for Teaching Writing: Mapping Paragraphs
• Tips for Teaching Writing: Purposes for Writing
3. Use patterns to teach sound spellings and word problems:
• Long A Sound Spelling Activity
• Math Word Problems Activity
4. Incorporate visualization activities to strengthen comprehension:
• Reading Comprehension: Visualization Activity

Conclusion

Some of our most creative potential problem solvers and designers are kids who think in pictures. If you have a visual-spatial learner, enjoy! As long as they have the opportunity to use their best learning tools, what you will have is a happy, creative, amazing child!

The biggest challenge they face is not knowing how to arrange content in a way that makes sense to them. They do not automatically exercise metacognition, and they don’t have the experience that would enable them to help themselves unless an adult helps them first. Once they understand their own strengths, they will be able to help themselves all through their education.

Let’s encourage them to use their giftedness by opening the door to alternative ways of learning and new ways of expressing their learning. We can make it so that all our children love learning.

Take this Visual-Spatial Learner Assessment today. If your child meets many of these characteristics, there is a good chance they are a visual-spatial dominant learner and will greatly benefit from Child1st’s multisensory resources!