Visual Strategies for Children with Disabilities

Students with learning disabilities, attention problems, or autism often require visual strategies to make progress. These teaching methods can decrease the amount of time required for learning, improve subject comprehension, facilitate information retrieval, and increase retention rates.

To decrease learning time, visuals reinforce auditory information and serve as reminders. Here are a few examples of visual schedule use:

Visual schedules decrease anxiety as students can anticipate activity changes and look forward to preferred activities. They also increase independence as the children can move through their day with fewer prompts.

Students who think concretely may require a schedule with objects.



Some of these learners may then be transitioned to pictures,



and others may eventually move to a written schedule.



How have you used visual schedules?

Next time: Using visuals to improve comprehension of subject matter.