You are probably familiar with the concept of visual thinking, whether or not it is applied to the educational field. And it is one of the best-known methodologies, due to its versatility and its ability to enhance the understanding of concepts.

In this week’s post, we will see what the visual thinking methodology consists of, how it is applied in the educational field, and how we can apply it in the classroom to help us in our teaching.

If you are interested in the topic of educational methodologies, you can take a look at other posts we have made on this topic: new trends in emerging methodologies, educational methodologies for primary, thinking-based learning (TBL), and a long etcetera. And once you start in the world of educational methodologies, it’s non-stop!

What is visual thinking?

When we talk about the methodology of visual thinking, we are talking about a methodology whose basis is in the use of visual tools to express ideas, organize information and communicate concepts in a clear and understandable way. The introduction of visual elements (such as graphs, infographics, mind maps, drawings, etc.) facilitates understanding and improves communication.

Applied to the educational field, this methodology helps to improve the teaching process of teachers, as well as the learning process of students, offering several advantages that we will explore next.

Advantages of applying visual thinking in the classroom

If there is something good about visual thinking, it is that it has a great capacity to adapt to any educational stage and any subject you teach, whether in preschool, primary school, secondary school… It is about recognizing in what ways you can work with this methodology so that it has effective results in your subject. But don’t get overwhelmed, because in this post you will discover how to do it.

In addition, visual thinking applied in the educational field has other advantages:

• Stimulates student creativity: Thanks to the use of visual tools, students feel freer to express their ideas, and do so in a more creative way.
• Facilitates the understanding of concepts: Visual representation is a good way to make it easier to understand certain concepts that may otherwise be difficult to understand. This helps students assimilate information more effectively.
• Greater motivation: Thanks to the use of visual tools, it is very likely that the contents will be presented in a more attractive way for students, increasing their interest in the subject and increasing motivation.
• Greater long-term knowledge and greater information retention: Information presented visually tends to have a more lasting nature, due to its memorability. This improves retention of information, and students tend to remember it more efficiently.
• Greater collaboration between students: By using visual tools, collaborative work between students is promoted, since they have to create mental maps, presentations, etc.

This is how you can apply visual thinking in your class

At this point, you may be wondering, how easy is it to apply this methodology in the classroom? What tools do I have to do it effectively? How exactly does it work? All answers below.

If you want to focus on visual thinking in class, you can use two types of support. On the one hand, physical supports, and on the other hand, digital media. Let’s see it:

• Physical supports: It is about using physical materials, whether paper, pen, cardboard, post-its, cardboard, markers, blackboard… With all these physical materials, we can bring the ideas that we want to represent to reality.
• Digital media: In this case, it is about taking advantage of the opportunities that technologies and the Internet offer us, using applications or web pages that allow us to represent concepts visually. We are talking about apps to create concept maps, to make infographics, to create presentations, create videos, etc.

Some ideas to inspire you…

And if with the previous list you still need concrete ideas to apply visual thinking in class, don’t worry, we’re coming to the rescue! With the following examples, you will see how easy it is to apply this methodology in your subject. As we have already told you before, visual thinking has the ability to adapt to multiple subjects and educational stages.

• History: A very good way to apply visual thinking in history class is to make temporary timelines, which will visually help represent historical eras and periods, and will help your students better understand the concepts worked on in class.
• English Language and Literature: One idea, of many that there may be, is to create a general storyboard of the work you are reading in class. By representing the work with drawings, students will become aware of the key moments of the work, and they will understand it better.
• Biology: In Biology class, creating mind maps is a good way to delve into concepts that may be difficult to understand.
• Physical education: One way to apply visual thinking in Physical Education is to teach students which muscle groups are involved in each type of activity and exercise that is performed.

Whatever idea you finally have, we encourage you to transfer this idea to Additio App, using the resources. With Additio App, you can easily link resources you have in Google Drive or Microsoft OneDrive. That way, you will always have them on hand and you can easily send them to students.

Did you already use this educational methodology?

Even if you didn’t specifically call it visual thinking, you were probably already using this educational methodology in some way or another. We would love for you to tell us how you use it in your subject! You already know where to find us: Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and Youtube.

See you around!