Visual Leap ─ A Step-by-step Guide to Visual Learning for Teachers and Students

Visual Leap is a how-to book for teachers, students and parents interested in making learning easier. In step-by-step fashion, it presents an effective, universal,visual method to teach students how to think independently and critically, and how to organize their ideas for any instructional purpose. The visual strategies are rooted in the science of human learning and are effective because they tap into the ways that we learn naturally.

The Visual Leap method simplifies teaching the skills of the Common Core State Standards and gives teachers explicit ways to differentiate instruction to meet the needs of all learners. The strategies work across many grade levels and subject areas and for a wide variety of instructional objectives across the curriculum, such as vocabulary acquisition, reading comprehension, writing, speaking, and listening.

Visual Leap offers easy ways to foster dynamic, creative, and critical thinking in the classroom, and provides teachers and students with a toolkit of problem-solving and learning strategies designed to serve them throughout their academic and professional lives.

Jesse Berg, MSIT, M.Ed. is an accomplished teacher, professional coach, instructional technologist, and educational speaker. Berg’s mission is to improve teaching and learning through visual thinking strategies that make complex cognitive tasks, like reading, writing, and critical thinking, easier to do.

Throughout his career, Berg has explored how visual thinking such as mapping ideas and modeling mathematics helps learners to harness their creativity, gain deeper understanding, and reach their intellectual potential.

Berg’s experience consulting for public, private, suburban, urban, parochial, and charter schools around the country, and as a teacher and sports coach, informs his high-energy, hands-on approach to professional learning in instructional technology that focuses on co-learning, collaboration, and practicality.

He lives with his wife and two children in Philadelphia.