Visual Thinking Strategie

Many times, as primary math teachers, when we explain new concepts to our students such as fractions, combined operations, surfaces, or volumes we see in them faces "this is a mess", "I do not understand", "this is very abstract "...

When we explain new concepts that we consider "easy" to understand, we must put ourselves in the shoes of children ages 6 to 12, adapting our explanations and our activities to their level and their language.

For example when explaining the concept of fraction to students in 4th grade of Primary Education you can start by explaining that a fraction are the equal parts that we take or leave the unit, but with that certainly not understood by 95% of the class . That is why making a simple drawing is infinitely simpler for the students to understand the conception of fraction.

Visual thinking is a tool that helps us to express ideas through simple drawings with the aim of understanding them better, finding solutions to problems, generating new ideas, etc. 80% of our brain assimilates and processes images, so it takes less effort than reading a text. That is why we must take advantage of this innate ability to show new mathematical concepts to our students.

We do not have to be artists, just know a series of basic shapes (dot, square, triangle, circle, line) and from them make simple drawings. In visual thinking the perfection of drawing is not so important, but the expression of ideas through them.

As teachers we can use this tool to explain more abstract concepts, to help the study of our students through abstracts or mental maps, to understand mathematical problems ...

We must encourage our students to visualize in their notebooks to explain concepts, to solve problems or exercises, to make mental maps to organize their ideas ... Children from 6 to 12 years still do not have prejudices, draw without stopping and without thinking The final result, has not yet appeared in them the phrase "I do not know draw." That is why we must take advantage of this ability to teach them to learn to think through images.