The majority of our students are visual learners, so we need to pay more attention to the development of their visual skills. Our schools are very focused on verbal literacy, but visual literacy is essential to success in the classroom, especially for our visual learners. Visual literacy requires us to be able to read, write and interpret visual images, so we need to help our children gain proficiency.
Today, much to our daughter’s delight, our grandson displayed an outpouring of all the ways he’s been learning to write. Brayden attends a great preschool and has been consistently exposed to letters, numbers and opportunities to write. Being a kinesthetic, active little boy he does write but often prefers more physical, social activity. Yet, today was a special day. Brayden sat and wrote and wrote and wrote his name! With much delight and pride in what he was doing, he wrote all the letters in the correct order again and again.
The physical act of writing is essential to success in the classroom and in life. As literate beings we need to know how to read and communicate using the written word. I still remember being in elementary school and filling pages and pages with evenly spaced, continuous circles and lines, in preparation for cursive writing. As an artist kid, I rather enjoyed those assignments and still find them in my current day doodles.
