TEACHER-INITIATED PRACTICES TO ADDRESS THE LEARNING NEEDS OF VISUALLY-ORIENTED PRE-ELEMENTARY LEARNERS
FAITH JOY M. GONZALES
Individual learners vary in nature and attributes, but one thing is common among them, and it is being visually-oriented. Mostly, visually-oriented learners love visual elements like colors, pictures, objects and other visual aids to reinforce their learning. Visually-oriented learners also connect learning and meanings of instruction to the visual tools or materials that are used to convey the meanings of lessons.
Teachers are highly cognizant and knowledgeable of the learning needs and demands of their visually-oriented learners. Thus, in order to attend to these learning needs, teachers continue to employ creativity and innovativeness in initiating strategies and teaching practices that support and nurture the visual orientation of the learners. These include the consistent and sustainable development and utilization of variety of visual aids and visually-appealing instructional materials and resources. It truly makes a significant difference to teach young learners with the aid of visual tools and materials that range from the typical and traditional visual aids up to the most advance virtual learning aids and tools.
Apparently, it can be viewed and considered as one of the established developmentally-appropriate practices in teaching school-age children to utilize variety of visually-oriented learning aids and resources. It is developmentally-appropriate as it enables the teachers to align the scope of instruction to both the cognitive and visual learning capacities and comprehension of the young learners. The use of visual aids and materials is practically a way to direct and stimulate the cognitive skills and concentration of the learners towards the instructional meanings conveyed by the visual tools.
Moreover, addressing the needs of visually-oriented learners also include utilization of technology-aided visual learning tools. Learners including pre-elementary pupils in this modern education era have the earliest exposure and trainings on the use computers and other digital technologies. Evidently, the use of digitalized instruction and virtual learning materials can provide young learners with wide range of creative and innovative visual learning experiences and journey across different learning areas. This is due to the highly advanced and modernized features of the digital learning materials that can easily and effectively capture and even sustain the learning interest, enthusiasm and motivation of visually-oriented learners.
In addition, teachers are cognizant that visually-oriented learners also benefit from instruction that is facilitated in a more practical, functional and realistic approach. Thus, it is not enough to teach contents and meanings to young learners using only lecture method and other conventional teaching approaches. Instead, teachers ensure that as much as possible they can expose the learners to the use of real objects in teaching and demonstrating lessons and skills to the learners and to expose them in real-life learning environment where they cannot only visualize concepts but also perceive, experience and understand sources of knowledge.