Verbal and Non-verbal Reasoning Skills
Verbal Reasoning Skills
Verbal reasoning thinking skills include using reasoning, flexibility, fluency, and adaptability in working with words and solving verbal problems. Some things you could do to support children’s growth in this area include:
- Read a variety of genres, including fiction, non-fiction, biography, poetry, memoir
- Generate a list of questions about a vocabulary word, a story, a character, a setting, etc.
- Create a drawing, model, or action for vocabulary words
- Write vocabulary word definitions in your own words
- Write synonyms and antonyms for unknown words
- Learn Greek and Latin word roots
- Learn which English words are based upon words from other languages
- Analyze multiple-meaning words and decide when to use each meaning
- Use fantasy to discuss vocabulary words or write stories
- Write a sentence where each word begins with letters in alphabetical order
- Create new titles for pictures, stories, cartoons, etc.
- Create riddles, jokes, cartoons
- Create new idioms (“in hot water”)
- Create new similes (“mean as a snake”)
- Create analogies, “How is a ____ like a ____?”
- Write poetry in different styles.
- Put poetry to percussion music.
- Use adjectives and adverbs
- Perform plays, puppet shows, readers’ theatre.
- Create dialogue from an unusual perspective, like that of an animal, an object, a historical person, etc.
- Research the facts behind historical fiction, write historical fiction
- Learn a foreign language
- Participate in such programs as Georgia State Saturday School
- Attend plays or puppet shows at such places as Center for Puppetry Arts or Kudzu Playhouse
- Read books that use content creatively, such as The Phantom Tollbooth by Juster and Lost in Lexicon by Noyce
- Use Enrichment Sites on www.fultongifted.org
- Use resources such as Tin Man Press, Bright Ideas, Gifted and Talented Workbook Series, Creative Learning Press, Creative Teaching Press, Critical Thinking Co.
Non-Verbal Reasoning Skills
Non-verbal reasoning skills include understanding, remembering, and making visual sequences, interpreting the meaning of and relationships between the visual presentations or pictures. Some things you could do to support children’s growth in non-verbal abilities include:
- Construct, draw, or create visual representations of content
- Take picture notes as well as word notes for content
- Pre-read the visuals in a chapter
- Create a mind-map of content
- Use metaphors to make connections between content
- Analyze paintings, sculpture, music, dance
- Experiment with different mediums to create art projects
- Build with Legos or K’Nex
- Do puzzles, create puzzles
- Identify similarities and differences between shapes in the world around you
- Create complicated color patterns and tessellations
- Draw objects from unusual perspectives
- Practice elaboration: How many details can you add?
- Create a new picture by changing a picture already made
- Create a larger picture by adding to a picture already made
- Combine two pictures into one new picture
- Practice showing emotion, movement, humor in drawing
- Practice drawing symmetry
- Ask “How does (a concept) look, sound, taste, smell, feel?”
- Use guided imagery/visualization
- Practice activities in How To Think Like Leonardo da Vinci by Gelb
- Participate in such programs as Georgia State Saturday School and Camp Invention
- Field trips to science museums, art museums, nature centers
- Use the software program Making More Music (voyager.learntech.com)
- Use Enrichment Sites on www.fultongifted.org
- Use resources such as Tin Man Press, Bright Ideas, Nature Watch, Delta Education, Museum Tour, Gifted and Talented Workbook Series, Creative Learning Press, Creative Teaching Press, Critical Thinking Co.
- Learn more at http://www.visualspatial.org/