Reading
VSL (Visual-Spatial Learners) have a hard time breaking down phonics – they need the BIG picture as VSL’s think mainly in pictures. There are no pictures for many words (such as “the” or word parts /ra/, /ta/, etc). There are nine different sounds for the letter /o/ (tot, vote, toot, book, ton, town, boy, pour, lesson) and even more confusing for a VSL the letters /gh/ (tough, through, hiccough.) Students can draw pictures for words such as MouNtaiN or use a raindrop to dot the “I” in rain.
Teach the students to speed read (skip the small words) as they still get the meaning of the passage. Teach the students to use different colored post-it tabs to mark such things as dates, names, new words/unknown words.
Most VSL’s like to be read to, as they can develop the pictures in their minds as they are being read to and have great comprehension.
When working with your child who has difficulty with reading, do not make corrections or confront him/her with mistakes. Remember that he/she is already frustrated and that reading is not a favorite subject. It is a good idea to start by reading him/her the material and then have him/her read the material. Make sure that you approach it by telling him/her to read the words he/she knows and you will read the words he/she doesn't know. If your student is right-brained, he/she has difficulty with phonics and reads words from memory. It is very difficult to erase a word from his/her memory that has been mispronounced in the past. The next step is to pick out words that your student hasn't encountered. Write these words (using the same font or as close a font as you can to the book) and have your student read through them. After giving him/her 2-5 seconds to visualize each word, have him/her read through the materials. After mastery of that, the next progression is to have him read the word after the word you point to and then read the word 2 words after the word you are pointing to. When your child is close to reading at his/her grade level, introduce speed-reading.