Oh, I See! How Visualization Supports Successful Executive Functioning at School and at Home

By Jenny Whichard ’92, Head of Lower School at McLean School

Visualization is a tried-and-true tool; professional athletes do it before a big game, picturing everything from the warm-up to the winning basket, goal, or shot. Research shows that creating positive mental images in advance can help us prepare and plan to support a productive outcome. Athletes aren’t the only ones who achieve success as a result: visualization also helps students build stronger executive functioning skills.

Educator and author Sarah Ward, with more than 25 years of experience in the field of executive functioning, talks and writes extensively about the integral connection between being able to visualize an activity or assignment and the ability to complete it. When you picture what’s possible, it activates the brain’s ability to plan, break down, start and finish a task.

In my 26 years as an educator at McLean School, I’ve seen how some students do this intuitively; but many students need more explicit instruction and time to practice and develop the skill of visualization.

Visualization can be particularly powerful in three areas that are important for school and life success: internalizing routines, developing time awareness and managing materials. 

Routines
Parents and teachers have expectations for routines. At home, it could look like “get dressed, brush teeth, get backpack.” At school, “come in the classroom, submit homework, get out binder.” At McLean, our teachers intentionally give students who need help internalizing these routines the support they need, and gradually pull back as they build skills and become increasingly self-sufficient.

What does this look like when we weave in visualization as a tool? In Lower School, teachers might photograph each student doing the required tasks and post them. Now, students can see themselves sitting in a circle, standing in line, putting classroom materials where they belong, getting their lunch boxes, or having their notebooks out.

Unlike clip art, these personal images better help students visualize what each finished task looks like to help them complete it independently. As students get older, there’s less of a need for those valuable visual prompts to internalize the information.

At home, parents take photographs of their child brushing their teeth, having their backpack on, etc., and post those photos in a prominent place where they need to be done for the morning routine.

It could also look like guiding a child on a visualization journey. Encourage them to picture the next morning going smoothly, everything from getting dressed, to having breakfast, to walking out the door on time. This is particularly helpful in advance of a change in routine—maybe someone else is bringing them to school or they need to remember to pack items for a field trip or afterschool activity.

Time
Sense of time can be elusive for those who struggle with executive functioning; it’s easy to get lost in a task or feel overwhelmed, not having a sense of how long it might take.

Visualization is key here—you can’t ‘see’ time.

At McLean, teachers employ a range of strategies to build time awareness, many adapted from researcher Sarah Ward: calendars as visual demonstrations of past, present and future; color-coded clocks that help students see, in a concrete way, the passing of time by showing how long particular activities or lessons will take; and a daily schedule visually modified to show longer parts of the day (like academic lessons or specials) relative to others (like lunch or dismissal). These strategies help build important skills around estimation, expectation and overall time management. 

At home, I encourage parents to talk about time sequentially and help children visualize it. Then, break down all the components of what they need to do during the time it takes to achieve an end goal. So instead of just “time to get ready for school,” it might look like talking about the “two minutes brushing your teeth, five minutes getting dressed and three minutes getting your materials in your backpack.” Parents may also want to invest in a clock that shows the passage of time (sand glass clocks, iPad timer with a countdown component, TimeTimer, etc). 

Materials
Organized belongings equal organized body and mind, as we say. But the task of “clean your room” or “clean out your locker”’ can seem daunting to many students. Where to start when things are a mess? Visualization again is key. Students who struggle to start and complete the task of organizing materials may have challenges visualizing what the final product looks like. At McLean, teachers emphasize the importance of managing materials using strategies such as color-coding what goes where, posting photos showing what the inside of an organized locker or backpack looks like, and introducing binders in grade four to pilot their use as a central organizing tool before students get to middle school. By building these pieces early, and with a lot of visual prompting, our students are prepared to meet the increased organizational expectations to come.

At home, this could look like working with your child to clean a room to your expectations and taking photos of the finished product. In what drawer do the socks go, where do dirty clothes go, etc. By now having visuals of the organized space, your child can see what they need to do to get to that finished product. 

I encourage all parents to think about how visualization, or “future thinking” can be used in other instances. Maybe it’s to ease anxiety about turning in an assignment, giving a presentation, or taking a test. Instead of solely telling a child “it will be ok!”, have them picture themselves doing these things successfully. No task or situation is too small to visualize, from where a student might picture themselves sitting during an assembly to asking a teacher for help, or even inviting a friend to play a game at recess. 

When the brain visualizes something repeatedly, it can make the actual experience feel more familiar. Additional benefits of visualization include improved attention, planning, memory, motor control and perception—all necessary executive functions! And the more you do it, the more well-worn the neural pathways become, literally training the brain to think and behave in a more organized way. 

Bio of Author:
Jenny Whichard is the Lower School Head at McLean School and Director of Auxiliary Programs, overseeing McLean’s summer camp—SummerEdge. Jenny has 25 years of experience as a teacher and administrator and previously served as Assistant Head of McLean’s Middle School for 10 years