What are learning styles and why is it important for parents to know about them?
· If you ask a child who needs movement to sit still and memorise a times table, you’re unlikely to get good results. You would do far better if you allowed them to walk around or play hopscotch on a makeshift map of times-tables.
· Tactile children, would love to use Koosh balls and learn better by using self-correcting learning tools and other hands-on activities.
· Auditory children benefit from making tapes of their lessons (either recording their teachers in class, or reading the material themselves out loud).
· Kinesthetic children may make schoolwork more interesting by miming the lesson or staging a production.
Your Learning Style helps you answer the following questions:
· Do you like working alone or with a friend?
· Do you like doing your homework at the desk or on the sofa?
· Can you solve problems better in the morning or in the evening?
Case Study
Tanya is eight. She loves reading and completing jigsaw puzzles. Her teacher says she has a lot of potential, but she simply doesn’t want to learn. In class, she’s forever looking down, cracking her knuckles or folding the corners of her books, or doodling on the margins. The teacher says this proves she’s not listening. In fact, Tanya is listening. She’s trying to listen so intently, she has to keep her hands busy to help her along. In LS terminology, we would say that Tanya is a visual (words-based) and tactile learner, with a non-preference for auditory input. But that’s only a small portion of Tanya’s Learning Style: we don’t yet know whether she has analytic or holistic tendencies, what her environmental preferences are, whether she needs bright or dim light, likes to learn alone or in a group, what motivates her, what her persistence is like, and so on.
A child’s greatest asset is their sense of self-worth. It comes from ‘being good at’ things. To analyse your child’s Learning Style click here.
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