Skip to main content

100 Powerful Learning Specialist and Educational Therapy Materials

This week I wanted to tell you about my online store, Good Sensory Learning. I’m Dr. Erica Warren, and I established this site so I could share all the materials that I have created over the last 20+ years as a learning specialist and educational therapist. When I first began my private practice, Learning to Learn, I had great difficulty finding fun and multisensory materials for my students that were effective and engaging. So back in 2005, I made it my mission to design and distribute high-end, remedial products as well as memorable, motivating lessons that bring delight to learning. If you would like to try a free sampling of my activities , CLICK HERE . How Are the Products Organized at Good Sensory Learning? You can download my Free Printable Catalog or you can browse the site using the grey “search all products” bar in the top right of any page with keywords such as dyslexia, working memory, and executive functioning. What’s more, drop down menus in the red banner allow you t...

5 Free Ways to Improve Visual Processing for Weak Readers

Visual processing is an important cognitive skill for students to master. It assists with the encoding of information into the brain, and it helps students make sense of the learning content. This skill often needs to be developed and exercised, and there are many engaging activities that can help.
strengthen visual processing

What is Visual Processing?

Visual processing is a cognitive skill that allows us to process, interpret and find meaning from visual images. In other words, it is how we make sense of what we see.

Why is Visual Processing Important?

Visual processing is vital because it plays a key role in learning visual information from our environment. It is a fundamental skill for reading, math, and spelling.

What Are the Different Types of Visual Processing?

Visual processing involves a number of cognitive processing skills:
  1. Visual Construction Skills: organizing and manually manipulating spatial information to make a design. 
  2. Visual Processing Speed: processing visual information at a certain pace or speed. 
  3. Visual Scanning: looking at and absorbing all parts of a visual field or text document. 
  4. Visual-Spatial Skills: manipulating 2-dimensional and 3-dimensional figures in one's mind. 
  5. Visual-Spatial Reasoning: perceiving the spatial relationships between objects. 
  6. Visual Memory: remembering what is seen. 
  7. Visual-Motor Integration: translating visual perception into a motor response. 
  8. Visual Synthesis: uniting visual information into a coherent whole. 
  9. Visual Sequencing: determining or remembering the order of symbols, words, or objects. 
  10. Visual Closure: making sense of visual information when some of the images are missing. 
  11. Visual Reasoning: finding meaning and making sense out of visual information.
    happy kids reading

5 Free Ways to Improve Visual Processing for Weak Readers:

  1. Help students improve and strengthen their visual tracking skills so they can read in a fast and fluid manner. Click here to learn some free strategies. 
  2. Exercise and improve visual processing skills by playing key games. Click here to get a comprehensive list of games. 
  3. Go to Eye Can Learn and do eye exercises to strengthen tracking, visual discrimination visual memory, visual sequencing, visual-spatial skills, visual closure, and more... 
  4. Use text-to-voice Apps like Voice Dream Reader that highlight the words while it reads the text aloud. This helps with both visual and auditory processing as well as sound/symbol association. You can also use their "Pac Man mode" that erases the words as they are read aloud. This helps the brain to process without getting visually overloaded. 
  5. Read aloud to yourself or someone else. This helps the eyes and brain to work in sync.
  6. Watch my Youtube Video:

What are Some Ready-Made Materials that Strengthen Visual Processing?

Visual Processing Exercises:

At Good Sensory Learning we now offer a series of visual processing exercises!  You can choose from the following publications.  You can click on the following links to learn more.

Following Directions Primary:

Following Directions Primary offers fun activities that develop visual processing, listening skills, linguistic abilities, and the core cognitive skills needed for reading. The 49-page download offers coloring and process of elimination activities. Cute animals and aliens as well as numbers, letters, shapes, and arrows are used in these enjoyable brain breaks. If you are interested in learning more about this publication and would like to download FREE ACTIVITIES CLICK HERE.

Reversing Reversals Primary:

Reversing Reversals Primary strengthens the foundational cognitive skills needed for reading and math. It also develops visual processing and perception such as reversals that impact students with dyslexia. This publication is available as a download, and it offers 72 pages of activities as well as a game. If you would like to learn more about this publication and also get FREE ACTIVITIES CLICK HERE.

I hope you found this helpful. If you know of other sites, materials, or games that you find benefit visual processing, please share them below.

Cheers, Erica
 
Dr. Erica Warren is the author, illustrator, and publisher of multisensory educational materials at Good Sensory Learning and Dyslexia Materials. She is also the director of Learning to Learn and Learning Specialist Courses.

· Blog: https://learningspecialistmaterials.blogspot.com/
· YouTube Channel: https://www.youtube.com/user/warrenerica1
· Podcast: https://godyslexia.com/
· Store: http://www.Goodsensorylearning.com/ & www.dyslexiamaterials.com
· Courses: http://www.learningspecialistcourses.com/
· Newsletter Sign-up: https://app.convertkit.com/landing_pages/69400


Comments

Popular posts from this blog

100 Powerful Learning Specialist and Educational Therapy Materials

This week I wanted to tell you about my online store, Good Sensory Learning. I’m Dr. Erica Warren, and I established this site so I could share all the materials that I have created over the last 20+ years as a learning specialist and educational therapist. When I first began my private practice, Learning to Learn, I had great difficulty finding fun and multisensory materials for my students that were effective and engaging. So back in 2005, I made it my mission to design and distribute high-end, remedial products as well as memorable, motivating lessons that bring delight to learning. If you would like to try a free sampling of my activities , CLICK HERE . How Are the Products Organized at Good Sensory Learning? You can download my Free Printable Catalog or you can browse the site using the grey “search all products” bar in the top right of any page with keywords such as dyslexia, working memory, and executive functioning. What’s more, drop down menus in the red banner allow you t...

88 Assistive Technology Tools for Struggling Learners

Making sense of the complex weave of assistive technology devices and applications for struggling learners can be a confusing and frustrating chore. This blog talks about 15 different types of assistive technology that can benefit struggling learners with links to my favorite tools. For a more comprehensive discussion of these technologies  CLICK HERE Comprehensive Technologies: Don Johnston Inc. - $. Kurzweil 3000 - $   TextHelp - $ ClaroRead - $ Planning, Time Management, and Organization: iStudies Pro - Free/$ - Remember the Milk - Free - RescueTime - $ Strict Workflow  - Free - Wunderlist - Free - Text to Speech: AnyBook Personal Reader - $ Audible.com - $ IntoWords - $ NaturalReaders - Free/$ Project Gutenberg & Librivox - Free Raz-Kids - $ Read & Write for Google Chrome - Free/$ Read OutLoud - $ Snap&Read Universal - $ Voice Dream Reader - Free/$ Voice Typing - Free Speech to Text: ...

How to Develop Reading Stamina for Struggling Readers

Building reading stamina for struggling readers can be a tricky endeavor.  After a few pages of text, many lose interest because reading is a difficult and cognitively taxing chore.  So what can be done to increase endurance and help learners find joy in reading. What is Reading Stamina? Reading stamina is a learner's ability to sustain attention and effort when reading independently. Why Do Some Students Struggle with Poor Reading Stamina? Poor reading stamina is often associated with other areas of cognitive-based weaknesses.  If readers, for example, are placing too much attention and energy on decoding words, there is little mental space left - if any - to comprehend the material.  Perhaps they can decode words, but their tracking, visualization skills, or working memory are lacking.  Again, they may not have the cognitive room to make sense of what they are reading.  Here are a few possible processing areas that could get in the way: Weak visual proces...