When I first met my third-grade student, she was a struggling reader with poor penmanship according to her parents. After working closely with her to build up her math, reading and writing skills, they decided to seek outside help in reading and writing. This is where I came in.
Third-Grader: Visual Spatial Learner
Amanda (pseudonym) is a charming, obedient, artistic girl. She takes everything in around her and expresses herself beautifully, so when she labored over reading comprehension and penmanship it seemed contradictory. How can a bright, vibrant, expressive child feel defeat during reading and writing? Well, this is not that unusual for visual spatial learners.
I decided to tackle both issues holistically with a notebook activity that involved art. More specifically, I had some cut-out activities for Mandy to paste into a notebook. I asked Mandy to pick a book that she could use to develop different skills required for third grade reading and writing. She chose Charlotte’s Web – what a great book for this activity!
Reading Themes
It all began when I found this notebook activity on the Teachers Pay Teachers website. I took the section on ‘themes’ that uses cut-outs of bubble-gum bubbles. There are also cut-outs of students with bubble-gum popped and stuck on their faces. This signifies that themes are like different types of bubble gum (all the different bubbles), but no matter what the theme – throughout the book, they all stick with a reader (bubble gum popped and stuck on a face). Essentially, reading themes take the guesswork out of the story line.
To take this concept a step further, Mandy applied this activity to her reading of Charlotte’s Web. She wrote a different theme in each bubble, colored the cut-outs and pasted them into her notebook. In the same way that themes stick with readers, themes brought the bigger picture of the story to life. For example, in Charlotte’s Web, ‘Friendship can happen with any living creature,’ is one of Mandy’s themes. Recognizing themes helps with reading comprehension because visual spatial learners struggle with sequential parts. They need to see the whole first in order to fit the parts together. When reading themes are recognized, visual spatial learners become active readers. In this way, recognizing themes and connecting events to the themes helps visual spatial learners make meaning from the text.
Writing Shapes
While printing legibly is an on-going tussle for Mandy, we did find that if she thinks about each letter as an individual shape, then her perception focuses on making the shape rather than the cumbersome task of forming letters. This helps Mandy to think of printing as drawing art, rather than forming letters. It gives her an eye to critique and improve her printing of letters. We are still working on printing more slowly. You see, Mandy has so many ideas swarming around in her head that she needs to monitor herself or slow down her pace to produce quality work. Those of us in the field of education know this is referred to as meta-cognitive strategies: strategies that students use for self-management.
Visual Artifact
All in all, Mandy has come a long way ever since I introduced her to this interactive notebook activity. She looks forward to reading, and even writing, because she is building up a notebook of her own artwork. This portfolio of Mandy’s work shows her progress. Over time, Mandy has developed reading skills, as well as, writing skills. We are trying to integrate all of the reading TEKS (Texas Essential Knowledge and Skills) covered during third grade so that she could refer back to this book whenever necessary. The notebook itself gives her the ‘whole’ of her learning during third grade, so she could connect the ‘parts’ as she progresses throughout the year. This bubblicious activity has turned into a visual artifact. A visual artifact that forms a sweet learning bubble for a very special visual spatial learner.
