Helping ALL students with the use of visuals in your lessons
Students who struggle with auditory learning may be more susceptible to understanding new concepts with the use of visuals. There are a lot of ways that teachers can add visuals to their lesson plans to help students learn to the best of their ability including the following:
Above is a review of 5 things that you can do when creating your lesson plans but now lets get into the breakdown of what each section means.
When it comes to adding visuals for engagement you can ask yourself the questions above. Your ultimate goal is to build relationships with your students to understand their likes/strengths/preferences. You can then use this to your advantage and incorporate them into your lesson. For example, if your student loves spider man you can create spider man related lessons like counting spider man manipulatives. Sometimes even adding a simple visual to lessons/worksheets can help students engage more easily to a lesson they may not have been interested in before.
2. Next is the format of your information. From the text size to where the information is posted (slides, posters, worksheets) can make or break it with some students learning. This is where understanding your students needs deeply comes into play and can help you easily offer a universally designed lesson plan that meets everyones needs.
3. Reminders to refer back to after a lesson is taught can not only help those struggling with auditory processing but can also cause a lot of INDEPENDENCE, woohoo! These tools can be as simple as a number line and as detailed as an anchor chart.
4. One of my favorite things about teaching is using DATA to watch my students grow and soar. This can also be a great visual tool to help students with auditory processing needs so they can understand where they are and what the expectation is for their growth, that way there is no question about the learning process.
5. Lastly, visuals for explaining the process can be extremely helpful to auditory processing need students! I use this strategy a lot with my adult students I teach too by taking pictures and a road map of every step of how to log on, create a post, etc. A picture example can go a million miles in making oral directions clear for those who struggle with understanding the expectation.
I personally struggle with auditory processing so this need is close to my heart because I would much rather someone offer me the text and visuals then orally explain concepts for certain things. This can also be really confusing when comparing this to visually processing needs. A person with auditory processing need is struggling with understanding oral discussions/directions so a visual can super help them. While a student with visual processing needs struggles with understanding a picture concept so they would benefit from more oral directions. I hope this helps explain some needs your students may need and the basis of these tools is having a great relationship and understanding of your students. Until next time,
Happy Learning :)