One of the most important tasks as an academic coach is to help students understand how to leverage their learning styles to study more effectively … and hopefully more pleasurably.

This week one of my 9th grade clients came in beaming. She couldn’t wait to show me the flashcards that she created for her geography class. She’s an incredibly visual learner, and so I’ve been working with her on drawing pictures to represent the definitions of key terms.

Initially, she created cute pictures that were loosely related to the word she needed to learn. However, it was clear to me that she was leaving out key parts of the definition. Together we practiced how to pay attention to the *entire* meaning of a word, and to find pictures that represent the totality of the definition.

The flashcards pictured above are two of many fine examples that she brought in this week. Judging by the glee with which she showed me her work (and the perfect score on her test), it is clear that her visual learning style made studying both effective…and pleasurable.

(Note: I’m gleeful that this entire blog post was written on my iphone in my car as I waited to go into an InterPlay class. Wow!)