What’s your student’s individual Learning Style?
An Introduction to Learning Styles
Ask yourself and your child what comes to mind when you hear the word ‘dog’. Some people see a picture of the animal, and hear a bark, while others visualize the animal in question.
Those who see a picture of a dog in their mind’s eye or see the letters are usually visual. While those who hear the bark are normally auditory learners. Those who feel the soft fur of a dog are probably kinesthetic.
What’s your student’s individual Learning Style?
Purpose:
To learn about learning styles.
To understand the differences between auditory, visual and kinesthetic learners
Teaching Tips for Different Learning Styles
Visual Learners: take numerous detailed notes and tend to sit in the front are usually neat and clean, often close their eyes to visualize or remember something, find something to watch if they are bored, like to see what they are learning, benefit from illustrations and presentations that use colour, are attracted to written or spoken language rich in imagery, prefer stimuli to be isolated from auditory and kinesthetic distraction, find passive surroundings ideal.
Auditory Learners: sit where they can hear but needn’t pay attention to what is happening in front, may not coordinate colours or clothes, but can explain why they are wearing what they are wearing and why, hum or talk to themselves or others when bored, acquire knowledge by reading aloud, remember by verbalizing lessons to themselves (if they don’t have difficulty reading maps or diagrams or handling conceptual assignments like mathematics)
Kinesthetic Learners: need to be active and take frequent breaks, speak with their hands and with gestures, remember what was done, but have difficulty recalling what was said or seen, find reasons to tinker or move when bored, rely on what they can directly experience or perform, activities such as cooking, construction, engineering and art help them perceive and learn, enjoy field trips and tasks that involve manipulating materials, sit near the door or someplace else where they can easily get up and move around, are uncomfortable in classrooms where they lack opportunities for hands-on experience
communicate by touching and appreciating physically expressed encouragement, such as a pat on the back
Teaching to Different Learning Styles
How to Make Learning Happen More Effectively
Visual Learners
About half of the student population learns best by seeing information. They are termed visual learners.
Teaching Tips
Textbooks, charts, course outlines, and graphs are useful instructional aids.
Ask these students to write down information, even rewriting or highlighting key points.
Ask students to preview chapters by looking at subheadings and illustrations before they read each chapter.
Seat these students up front, away from windows and doors (to avoid distractions).
Encourage them to ask for comments or directions to be repeated if they did not understand directions the first time.
Use overheads and flip charts.
Auditory Learners
This is a style used less frequently than the previous two. These students learn best by hearing; they can remember the details of conversations and lectures and many have strong language skills.
Teaching Tips
Provide the opportunity for auditory learners to recite the main points of a book or lecture.
Encourage these students to study with a friend, so they can talk through the main points.
Audiotapes of classroom activities can be helpful.
Suggest that they read class notes into a tape.
Encourage them to read the textbook out loud.
It can be helpful for these students to say out loud the meaning of the illustrations and main subject headings, and to recite any new vocabulary words.
Group work can be a useful class activity for auditory learners.
Kinesthetic Learners
This is another popular learning style, which is also called haptic (Greek for “moving and doing”) or tactile. These are “hands-on” learners, students who learn best by doing.
Teaching Tips
Try to plan for the student movement in-class presentation, as well as independent study time.
Movement should be planned to avoid distracting others.
Memorizing information can be enhanced if these learners are encouraged to physically move about the room.
Providing students with a coloured desk blotter or coloured transparency to read a book is called “colour grounding” and can help focus their attention.
Ask them to take notes and encourage them to underline key points as they read.
Encourage them to take frequent but short breaks.
Try to use skits and role-plays to help make instructional points.
Overview:
The main thing when teaching all dominant (visual, auditory, kinesthetic) learning styles to group classes is to ensure there is at least one element of each when teaching. This ensures ALL learners’ needs are fulfilled and where possible exceeded.
When teaching/tutoring individual students, it’s always best to identify this at an early stage. This will enable you to give the best possible lessons, and as a result, improve results.
Useful websites:
7 Types of Learning Styles and How To Teach Them – Teachable
Teaching Styles: Different Teaching Methods & Strategies | Resilient Educator
Identify your learning style – University of Wollongong – UOW