My learning styles:
- Tactile/Kinesthetic
- Visual
Types of teaching strategies more effective to my learning style:
- Tactile/Kinesthetic: Hands-on approach, exploration of what is being taught, many breaks, listening to music while working, skimming thought materials before really digging into it, and making around to learn new things.
- Visual: Being able to see everything that is going on. May visual displays such as charts, diagrams, illustrations, videos, notes, hand-outs, and other images. Taking detailed notes with highlighting important details.
Types of teaching strategies less effective to my learning style:
- Tactile/Kinesthetic: Sitting for a long time, not being about to explore myself, and listening for long periods of time.
- Visual: Listening without any visual representations, many verbal distractions, images without pictures and diagrams,
We can't teach each lesson focusing on every learning style that we have in the classroom. What should be our focus instead?
- In each lesson it would be beneficial to have visual, auditory, and tactile elements to the lesson. When giving directions you can orally say them, write them on the board, and also have the kids practice them by moving.
- You can make sure that students have a chance to work independently, with pairs, and with materials so that students can watch, listen and actively participate.
- Visual learners make of many of the population then auditory and then tactile. However, all three styles should be in each lesson to best meet the needs of as many students as possible.
One thing I noticed as I was reading through this post is how similar we are. For Gardner's multiple intelligences - Visual/Kinesthetic is number three for me, right after verbal linguistic. One of the strategies we are using for Thoughtful Education involves an activity carousel, which is very similar to the strategies you outlined in your post. Four centers are set up around the classroom. Each center contains an activity designed around one of the four styles (Each center contains material related to the same topic.) The students move from one center to the next - by the end of the class period/activity they will have participated in a curriculum based activity for in all 4 styles: mastery, understanding, self-expressive, and interpersonal.
ReplyDeleteWow I really like your idea! When I plan lessons I have the multiple intelligences posted on my office wall and check them off as I plan since I can easily plan to my intelligences since it is how I learned compared to the differences of learning styles my students have.
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