Visual supports teach students and individuals to look in patterns. We learn to look from left to right, or right to left dependent on where you live. But we also learn to look from top to bottom dependent on where you live. Are there more strategies? Yes there are. Where we live depends on what we learn? When we start to search for information we learn to scan what is readily available for us to easily see. We notice the patterns of how one page links to another page, about how one person communicates to another person. The visuals of how each person communicates can be thought of too like a visual layout, just with moving images. Hand signals, gestures that communicate to those around them. Some close and some far across the room or down the end of a corridor.
Building up your own individual skills requires being able to process all of the details that are hidden with in the layers of a task or of an environment. What you miss can be of high importance, especially when someone else is trying to teach you a lesson in something particular? You may understand the concept but not be able to identify the ‘when’ of what is happening so you don’t know when to use the right skill at the right moment in time that it is asked of you. Being able to cope with all of that information coming at you can be overwhelming. Which is why sequencing within the layout of a page supports predictability for others to find information and to follow the pattern or pathway which is being set out for them in order to learn something new or to discover something that may be of benefit to them. Knowledge of patterns is extremely helpful for watching the way others learn and helping guide them down other pathways that can lead to a predictable end to support their own and groups learning of what is important versus what is not.