A Learning Styles Classroom

Question: How do you turn your classroom into a Learning Styles classroom?

Answer: It's not easy, but it's fun.

1. Start by analysing your students' learning styles to identify their learning style preferences and needs.
2. Create a Group Profile of your students to get the at-a-glance-summary of how they like their environment to look.
3. Look at any results that are 80% or higher and select one or two of them that look like the easiest to change (the cheapest, the most exciting).
4. Allow the children to help.

Some students are likely to grumble: they are probably the ones who value routine and are upset by change. Assure them that once they've tried to new way, they will be allowed to create an area in the new classroom that looks just like the old classroom.

Learning Styles and the Magic of Group Profiles

Learning Styles and the Magic of Group Profiles

 

Why Learning Style Group Profiles Are Better Than Lesson Planning

 

What are Learning Style Group Profiles?

Learning Style Group Profiles are a free tool available from Creative Learning. When your class has completed their Learning Style Analysis (LSA) profiles and you’re faced with reading 16 pages of results for every student, you can create a group profile for your class instead.

 

A group profile is a summary of all the learning strengths and flexibilities in your class. It will empower you as the teacher to get to know what makes your pupils tick when it comes to:

a.       Behavioural problems

b.      Learning challenges

c.       Attention span

d.      Motivation

e.       Conforming

f.        Reliability

g.       Finishing tasks

h.       Making deadlines

i.         Dealing with tests.

 

Common Lesson Planning Mistakes

As a teacher, you will be expected to create lesson plans. However, it’s all too easy to get so caught up in the admin process that you lose the sight of the true purpose of lesson planning. Here are the most common ways of lesson planning going wrong:

·        The objective does not describe what the student will actually do or achieve.

·        The materials specified in the lesson plan are not right for the objective and not right for the student’s way of learning.

·        The teacher’s instruction method is not efficient for the level of intended student learning give the student’s unique Learning Style and needs.

·        The student activities listed in the lesson plan keep the students busy but do not contribute to the lesson’s objective, particularly if they don’t take into account the students’ varying visual, auditory, tactile and kinesthetic strengths.

 

Lesson Planning In Style

Creative Learning instruments for assessing Learning Styles identify 48 elements to consider when doing lesson planning for your group, while the Group Profile allows you to align your lesson plan with the students’ learning strong points.

 

Do you know what the 10 Most Common False Beliefs About Learning are?

 

 

 

Learning Styles and Classroom Management

As a teacher you are often expected to do the job of an educator, a counsellor, a parent, a guide and a friend.

 

That’s a lot to ask of one person, especially in a class of 25 or more students. We, at Creative Learning, can help.

 

Learning styles show you how to communicate with your students, plan your lessons, and handle any misbehaviour. Our free group profiles give you a handy summary of learning strengths and non-preferences in your class.

 

For example, if a majority of your students is holistic, it makes sense to:

• Tell your students the purpose of the lesson or of the task you asked them to perform.
• Provide an overview of the learning material before jumping into the details.
• Relate the lesson to the students’ experience.
• Use humour.
• Allow your students to map, graph or illustrate the material.
• Give positive feedback even for small achievements.

 

Do you experience discipline issues in your classroom? Probably. But did you know that some of the disruptive children or teens could be made over into exemplary students if you satisfied their learning style needs for:

·        mobility at frequent intervals

·        variety of learning tools and teaching methods

·        informal learning environment (because of their inability to sit on hard chairs for a length of time)

·        low lighting

·        tactile or kinesthetic sensory input 

·        late morning or afternoon study sessions

·        freedom to not conform

·        recognition of their high motivation irrespective of their school results.

 

What is your students’ Learning Style? Find out. To quote Kurek Ashley, the international life coach guru: “If you do one thing today, then make a decision, commit to it, invest in yourself and follow through.”

 

Learning Styles and Tests

If you are familiar with the concept of learning styles, you will realise that your child’s learning style will have an impact on the type of classroom test that your child prefers.

· Analytic children generally prefer questions that require factual detailed answers, typically in the form of “True/False” or Fill-the-missing-word or List 5 differences between a snail and a frog.
· Holistic children may do better in essay-type tests and more open-ended questions.
· Impulsive children will like multiple-choice type tests.
· Visual children will enjoy tests with lots of pictures: label this diagram, draw a cross-section of a plant cell, etc.

Of course, your child’s very attitude to tests will also depend on her unique learning style. If she is a holistic learner, she will need to understand the purpose of the test. Tell her tests are important to monitor learning progress and to show how well the teacher is doing his job.

Holistic children may also get more stressed in test situations. Try to remove as much of the stress as possible: ask the teacher to let them take the test in their preferred environment (based on their LSA results). Give your child a test at home every day for a month and then the test it won’t feel “special”, so the stress factor will be reduced. Removing the time factor (i.e., not letting them feel that there is a strict deadline for finishing the test) may make them perform better as well.

What motivates your child: external recognition (i.e., doing well in the test) or the internal knowledge that she understands and knows the material?

To analyse your child’s learning style, have a look at this free online demo.

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