Some children, whether they are born preemie or not, have difficulties with some aspects of thinking. This section provides some recommendations for specific skills that are important for learning.

When attempting to intervene or accommodate for a students’ difficulties in the classroom, whether it is memory, attention, or executive functions, it is important to consider the classroom culture as well as teaching style. Ideas that will benefit more students have a better chance of success.

Strategies for Visual Spatial Difficulties

Visual spatial skills refers to processing visual information so that you can move around in an environment, orient appropriately, accurately reach for objects, understand visual patterns, and the ability to shift gaze to different points in space

(de Vega, Intons-Peterson, Johnson-Laird, Denis, & Marschark, 1995)

Children with visual spatial processing problems may have difficulty in some of these areas:

• Visually imagining something
• Remembering their left and right
• Copying information from the blackboard
• Navigating unfamiliar environments
• Noticing small detail differences between objects
• Manipulating objects
• Accurately comparing visual lengths and angles
• May become overwhelmed in cluttered, messy, or crowded spaces
• Mathematics

Strategies at Home

The following details some ideas to help children with Visual Spatial Processing difficulties

• Encourage your child to maintain a clean and uncluttered workspace so they don’t become easily visually distracted.
• Encourage your child to explore new environment, under supervision.
• Encourage games and activities that help practice manipulating and constructing objects.
• Practice visual tasks, like jigsaw puzzles, work find puzzles, and “spot the difference” pictures.

If you are concerned ask your paediatrician for a referral to neuropsychologist for assessment. (Online links to clinical and neuropsychologists will be available soon at preemiehelp.com)

Strategies at School

• Emphasise verbal instructions rather than relying only on visual displays, such as drawing, graphs, and diagrams.
• Provide copies of teacher notes rather than rely on them copying from the blackboard.
• Encourage the student to proof read for accuracy and reduce the pressure for working quickly
• Try using graph paper for maths problems so that numbers can be easily aligned in columns and minimise the potential for placement errors. Encourage the student to utilise plenty of space and to only do a few problems on each page.
• Encourage student to talk themselves through visual spatial based tasks.
• Provide plenty of activities that provide opportunity to practice manipulating materials.
• Encourage the student to clear their workspace between each new task, this will reduce the clutter and prevent them from becoming overwhelmed and visually distracted.
• Use stories, anecdotes, and examples, when referring to information on the blackboard.
• Promote lots of discussion and encourages questions.
• Should focus on extending the student sight vocabulary and word recognition to assist with their spelling and reading. Have the student keep a word journal that they can refer to often