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.

Learning Styles on YouTube

Yes, we do walk the walk as well as talk the talk! For those of you out there who enjoy watching videos (this translates to a preference in external visual input and external auditory input on the LSA Pyramid), we've collected the following clips:

• a TV interview with Barbara Prashnig in USA about the power of Learning Styles;
• a report from Forbury School;
• a clip from Te Puna about the learning environment;
• a clip from Wellington High School in Australia;
• Personal Learning Power.

Enjoy!

The STOP-START Teacher

Wouldn't it be great if we could STOP-START the teacher any time we wanted? Like when our attention wanders, or when we didn't quite get what they drew on the board... what if we could just press the REWIND button and watch the explanation again?

Now you can. The Khan Academy is a not-for-profit organization with the mission of providing a high quality education to the Internet community. Their menu consists of arithmetic, calculus, history, biology, finance... all in all, around 1,500 video clips that can be viewed online.

The learning style best suited to this method of teaching is:

• studying alone
• high responsibility
• visual (reading)
• visual (video)
• auditory (external)
• tactile
• no movement needed.

What is your child's learning style?

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.