Homework and Your Child’s Learning Style

If your child is auditory - they like to listen and talk - try one of the following homework hints:

• Make a learning tape together with your child. Let her explain the new topic into the tape recorder.
• Discuss the lesson together.
• Encourage your child to compose and record a song, a poem or a radio play about the topic (e.g., World War II, global warming, flower pollination, Mexico).

If your child is visual - they like to read and look at images - try one of the following homework hints:

• Create a mind-map, illustration, cartoon, poster, slide show, costume, historical time line, illustrated report.  
• Watch a DVD about the topic (“The King and I” about Thailand, “Little Einsteins”).

 If your child is tactile - they like to handle objects in order to learn - try one of the following homework hints:

• Make use of question-answer jig-saw puzzles), electro- boards (a bulb lights up for every correct answer), flip chutes, etc.  
• Encourage your child to make their own memory aids: sculptures of molecules or board games depicting new topics.

If your child is kinesthetic - they learn best through physical experiences - try one of the following homework hints:

• Bake a cake together to teach conversion from grams to kilograms.
• Pantomime or act out a history lesson.
• Play a board game to discover new facts.
• Take a field trip to the zoo, a court house, a factory.
• Put on a puppet show together.

Teaching Love By Hand

(Today's guest post is by Tracy Lockley, an Australian writer, school teacher and mum. As she teachers her toddler daughter to cook, Tracy's words remind us of the value of love, family traditions, working as a team and learning by doing... or, if you're too small to do, then at least learning by watching.)

This afternoon, Mckenzie and I made a steamed pudding together. It was the perfect day for it – cold, grey, rainy with wind howling in off the Southern Ocean – the perfect time for a mother and daughter to engage in the time-honoured transfer of knowledge that isn’t in a book or on the internet.

I know she’s only two and a bit, but I also know that I never really cooked until after I left home. The kitchen was my mother’s domain. Although my father cooked from time to time and I baked endless chocolate cakes to avoid having to write lines for forgetting to take my books to class, my mother cooked most efficiently alone.

I would sit on the kitchen counter and read poetry to her while she cooked and she would narrate what she was doing, only occasionally requiring me to hold a pan while she scooped the contents into a bowl, or stir the gravy while she added stock. The rest of the time, I watched, and read, and learned. In this way I learned not recipes, but what food looks like, smells like, what the texture feels like as it progresses from raw ingredients towards the table.

This afternoon, as I worked around Mckenzie’s fluffy little head, helping her hold the beater, showing her how to cup the egg in her hand and how to time that sharp little blow with the back of the knife, I realised how much knowledge is contained in the simple act of making a steamed pudding.

Yes, there was a good description on the internet of how to tie the foil over the bowl, and that the bowl should be greased, but nothing about making a pleat in the foil to conduct the moisture away, how to make two straps of foil that intersect at the bottom of the bowl to ease the finished pudding out onto the plate, nothing about lining the bottom of the bowl with paper-thin slices of lemon, or dipping them in sugar so that they taste like marmalade or how to overlay them in a beautiful pattern like scales on a fish.

All this knowledge is contained in me. It exists, dormant, while I am driving on the freeway, teaching, sleeping, skydiving, but it is always there. It was planted there over a hundred chilly evenings, watching the smile on my mother’s face as she lifted the bowl off the pudding and said “Dad loves this” and many Christmases when either my mother or my grandmother would call on me to supply the pressure of one finger (oh hallowed moment!) as they secured the string on the pudding bowl before committing it to the water, followed by the patient tending of the pudding, topping up the water until it was done.

Over the years I have added my own variations and discoveries and of course, none of it is written down. I wouldn’t know where to begin. I will have to wait a few years before Mckenzie is old enough to supply that finger pressure on the string. It takes two women to do it. The string came off today when time came to lift the pudding from the pot. On your own, you just can’t do it.

In an age when many women’s cooking skills go as far as heating microwave dinners, I wonder whether Mckenzie will grow to love food in this way, not just as nourishment for the body, not just as a list of
ingredients and instructions, but as communal enterprise, and the communication of love from the cook to those she (or he) cooks for, and from generation to generation. Her apprenticeship has started. She touches and tastes freely at every stage of the process (“Mmm… taste like egg”) and delights in her handiwork when the finished product appears, but still asks “Where come from?”

In part, she’s right. A cake is more than its ingredients. There’s a kind of magic that happens and there are spells that bind generations together. I would like to think that one day, in another kitchen, far, far from now, another woman, maybe Mckenzie, or maybe her daughter will work patiently around a little head, teaching things that aren’t written down, but written on the heart.

Maths and Tactile Learning Styles

How do you teach counting to a child whose Learning Style is tactile?

• Tactile learners love plastic counting beans - they are colourful and smooth and a pleasure to touch.
• You can also use coins, board game tokens, dry beans, M&Ms, raisins... anything with an interesting texture.
• Board games are good for tactile learners. Try Snakes&Ladders played with two dice to practice addition.

How do you help a tactile learner with multiplication, division, fractions?

• Cuisenaire Rods are a great visual as well as a tactile learning tool.
• Create your own Bingo board game where you read out a multiplication problem (3 times 4, or "John has 5 rows of 5 marbles, how many marbles does he have") and your child covers the answer on his Bingo Board.
• Tactile people prefer writing, sculpting or carving the answers. Allow your child to write them in glue and pour sand onto the wet glue to make the grains stick. He can shape them from play-dough. You can find him an old piece of soft wood (a plank) and let him carve in the answers with his pen (remember the old days when "naughty" children wrote on their desks? it feels sooo good to sink your pen into soft wood!!!)

What about problem solving?

• Tactile learners love computer games. Computer games are both a blessing (educational games really do aid education) and a curse (they are addictive), so it's your choice whether you'd allow it, but have a look at http://www.mathletics.co.nz/ and http://www.coolmath-games.com/.
• For other hand-on maths tools, please see http://www.ehow.com/math-manipulatives/.

The thing to keep in mind, though, is that you can't always teach everything only in a tactile way. Some topics need to be presented visually, or verbally, or by taking a field trip. The idea is to use as many senses as you can to teach your child, but concentrate on always providing him with a tactile outlet (let him play with his pen or with a coin or with a Koosh ball). Also pay attention to his other needs: the time of day, intake, learning groups, authority, routine versus variety, imposed structure versus self-structure, motivation, etc.

Is your child tactile? What are his or her physical learning needs and environment preferences? Find out.

Story Magic - Bring Stories to Life with Learning Styles

We all agree how important it is for the next generation to love books, right?

Absolutely!

But when it comes to books, it's not all about reading... not only about the skill of reading. It's also about the actual stories. Stories are a useful way to teach children our values (it pays to be noble and righteous, because good overcomes evil in the end), introduce the concept of "baddies" in a loving, secure environment, as well as inform us about the way things work (from making soup to what a hearing aid is).

All children love stories, so it makes sense to smuggle in new and difficult information to them using the medium of the written word...

... except, of course, not everybody's learning style is visual (words), in other words, not all children enjoy having to read the words themselves.

What is a parent to do?

• If your child is auditory (internal), click here to listen to children who read stories to other children.
• Children who are auditory external may prefer to read the stories out loud and to re-tell them to you in their own words.
• If your child is visual (external), watch this site.
• Kinesthetic children will enjoy acting out the stories as you read them out loud.
• Tactile children may want to draw or make the characters from the story, participate in reading touch-and-feel books, or even make ordinary books into tactile books themselves.

To determine your child's learning style, start here.

The Secret of Stress-Free Teaching with Learning Styles

Attention All Teachers

Everybody has a unique way of learning new and difficult information. To have a good day at school, all you need to do is satisfy the learning style needs in your class....

 

Easier Said Than Done?

If you look at Learning Styles, you will see 48 elements that need to be taken into account when teaching new and difficult concepts.

• Some students will need less light in the room.
• Some will need to discuss the new topic among themselves.
• Others will not function well in the morning hours.

How can you possibly please them all?

 

The Secret

A student whose learning style is not matched, is a student who won’t learn. The secret of Stress-Free Teaching with Learning Styles lies in clever classroom management that helps you match your lesson plan to suit everybody’s needs. Our free group profile tool allows you to see an instant overview of your students’ strengths and learning needs, while our LSA Manual offers generic ideas on how to teach your specific group of students.

 

A Bonus Tip

If a group within your class is highly tactile and needs Learning Style Tools, don’t panic. You need not make the tools yourself. Your tactile students will be delighted to make their own flip-chutes and Question-Answer cards (thus learning the material while they’re making the tool).

 

Now that’s what I call magic.