1st October 2020

Learning Styles: Visual Learner Characteristics

How can you tailor teaching to suit visual learners? Research into the process of learning has shown there are three main ways in which people learn. These ‘learning styles’ can be used to create lessons that benefit pupils by playing to their strengths. Recognising that your pupils learn in different ways will enable you to modify the way you impart knowledge to different students a tailored approach takes more energy, but the payoff is higher engagement from pupils who might otherwise struggle if they are forced to learn in the same way as pupils with completely different learning styles.

What Are The Three Main Learning Styles?

Most individuals fit into one of the three main categories – there are lots of great online resources suitable for adults and children to determine which learning style suits you best – we like this one!

• Visual Learners – learn best with imagery and visual aids
  
• Kinesthetic Learners – learn through movement and tactility – read our post about Kinesthetic Learning here
  
• Auditory Learners – learnt through listening and speaking

How Can Teachers Recognise Visual Learners?

Recognising the individual learning styles of a classroom of 30 pupils can be a challenge, but taking the time to observe how your pupils flourish whilst taking part in different learning activities will have a huge payoff, allowing you to tailor support and allow individuals to shine and succeed!

1. Visual learners work better in a quiet room without distractions
2. They can take longer to recall information as they replay scenarios in their head
3. Visual learners see better than they hear – their attention span for listening to speakers or auditory stimuli might be shorter than watching a film, for example
4. Younger Visual Learners may struggle to translate images into words
5. Visual Learners may find explaining the process of how they got a result more difficult!
   

We hope this article has given you some fun ideas to try in your lessons – we’d love to hear your experiences of managing different learning styles over on our twitter – come and join the conversation!