Case Study

Ron is a boy who shows the typical signs of a kinaesthetic individual. When talking to you he, waves his head to and fro, makes a lot of gestures and has a deep voice with slow speech. His writing is not clear but smearing. He even writes over the margins of his exercise book. Those are typical signs of a kinaesthetic learner, who wants to have everything in motion.

They can`t sit still very often and act spontaneously during lessons not knowing what is going on in the lessons. They are in their own world which is very hard for the teacher to intrude. Ron is very weak in spelling and his mother tries to learn with him spelling words without any success.

I meet with Ron for an interview. I ask him to imagine letters as pictures. Thus he writes on a sheet of paper a capital “A” and paints a roof in the same line. We proceed from letter to letter until Ron has the 24 letters of the alphabet linked with icons that envisage the abstract letters. We simply turn round the historical process of the alphabet from a picture to an abstract sign, by lending each letter its pictorial roots. They can be remembered more easily than the abstract signs of letters.

Ron has successfully linked each letter with a picture which serves now as an visual anchor for every letter.He has made a table where each letter is shown with its corresponding picture. Ron has fixed that table on the wall to have it at hand everyday. He understands words now like a chain of pictures that tell him a story consisting of links between them. Ron has invented these links and has great fun in doing so. Words which were former pitfalls for him have become part of his own imagination.

A very common misspelling for German students learning English is the pronoun “which” because they mistake for “witch”.To avoid that Ron has the following line of pictures:

He has told me that he walks around in a mountain chain, finding a chair in it. There he sits on it painting with a stick the halo moon. In the end he remains sitting on the chair.Ron enjoys this story and depicts the situation with a lot words. In the end it was very easy for him to separate clearly “which” from “witch”.

It is possible to improve with this method the spelling ability of children. My experience with a lot of children has shown to me how succesfully you can help children with spelling disabilities to add to a better learning .