Brain development through dual code learning with emphasis on visual codes to build vocabulary

Brain development through dual code learning with emphasis on visual codes to build vocabulary: Teaching photosynthesis to a dysgraphic student ~Lalit Kishore

Visual learning is most basic way of learning by children with learning disabilities and more so the dysgraphic children who need to see more visual information to process and make meaning out of it.

Visual Learners learn best through visual codes, visually sequenced information, graphs, charts, maps, diagrams, and other forms of visual stimulations to learn and relate to sound codes. Now, visual codes along with language codes - or dual code learning - which is now an integral part of whole brain learning. This kind of learning helps dysgraphic children to comprehend content at their own paces.

Further, in general education and inclusive education situations, studies have shown that dual-code learning improves achievement scores of students in all content areas.

However, schools and teachers have to create their own dual code material for dysgraphic children. The inset-picture shows the use of dual code material to teach 'photosynthesis' to child with dysgraphia at Disha in Jaipur.

In such teaching, the dual cards material to built visual vocabulary was created and used first followed by the sequence of visual cards for reading in the 'when' and 'then' phrasal forms to comprehend the photosynthesis process.

Neuro-science informs that various areas of the brain work when we see with our eyes with thinking skills, visual information gets encoded in the visual cortex of the brain. However, the visual information has to be pass through the processes of visual recognition (visual codes), categorization (analysis and other cognitive skills), and learning (internalization, memorization and recall) of through abstract codes in written or spoken forms.

If teaching is done properly with visual codes, during tasks of recognition or vocabulary building, an increased activation in the left inferior temporal cortex and brain's ability to form neutral pathways based on new comprehended information.