Sunday, August 19, 2018

Is lack of visual tracking skills getting in the way of your learners progress?


I have recently been testing some students who are struggling in reading and writing.
My detailed testing has shown that they struggle with visual tracking and scanning.




Vision and visual tracking are activities that happen automatically without us really focusing on it.  The brain recognises our eyes are moving, tracking, scanning, focusing, pursuing, and accommodating without us even realising.  

What is Visual Tracking?

Visual tracking is often defined as the ability to efficiently move the eyes from left to right (or right to left, up and down, and circular motions) OR focusing on an object as it moves across a person’s visual field. This  is important for lots  of our daily activities, including reading, writing, using scissors, drawing, and playing.  

Researchers says that the  typical development of visual processing, the ability to visually track objects emerges in children around the age of five.  

Difficulties in Visual Tracking

Your learning might have difficulties in some of the following areas if they have challenges with visual tracking:
  • Losing place when reading.  Re-reads or skips words or lines.  
  • Omits, substitutes, repeats, or confuses similar words when reading.
  • Must use finger to keep place when reading.
  • Poor reading comprehension.
  • Short attention span.
  • Difficulty comprehending or remembering what is read.
  • Confusion with interpreting or following written directions.
  • Writing on a slat, up or down hill, spacing letters and words irregularly.
  • Confusion with left/right directions.
  • Persistent reversals of letters (b, d, p, q) when naming letters.
  • Errors when copying from the board or book to paper.


Formal testing is required to determine if they is a visual tracking or scanning issue.




Visual perceptual skills require the ability to see, organize and interpret visual information.  Visual tracking is one type of visual perceptual skills.  Visual tracking is the ability to control the eye movements using the oculomotor system (vision and eye muscles working together). There are two types of visual tracking: maintaining your focus on a moving object and switching your focus between two objects.


Possible activities to support our learners:








Activities to promote eye tracking:

  • Complete puzzles.
  • Word finds
  • Find as many things as you can see of a certain shape (circle, square, rectangle, triangle) in the room.
  • Copy a series of motor movements made by someone else.
  • Perform dot-to-dot pictures.
  • Find the mistakes in “What’s Wrong with this Picture?” pictures.
  • Sort playing cards in different ways (color, suit, number), or use playing cards to find two with matching numbers.
  • Solve mazes.
  • Play “I Spy.”
  • Play balloon toss.
  • Use tracing paper to trace and color simple pictures.
  • Perceptual motor programmes 

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