Wings Educational Resources Blog

Learning Styles

Posted admin on April 9th, 2008 | Filed under Educational Resources, Learning Styles

One of my biggest pet peeves in education is hearing or seeing teachers who say, “read pages…” and “do the workbook pages…” day after day in every class.  Yes, there is mandated material to cover and there is a place and time for textbooks, but what about those students who are not book learners?  And, who says that particular textbook is the ultimate authority on the subject?

Try books with more visual or story illustrations of the concepts, not only will this maintain the interest of most or all students, but it gives them variety and encourages individual exploration of the topic(s) from other sources.  Teach the kids a poem or song about the concepts being covered or have fun creating one with them.  They will find this memorable and it will stick in their minds longer.  

Encourage them to use and explore other sources about the topic and/or to create computer (i.e. Power Point), audio (i.e. song, rap…) or visual presentations (i.e. costumes, posters, 3D objects…).

All of the above assists the learning processes of students who are auditory and visual learners, who may or may not have less advanced reading skills.  And, who says that the book learners don’t benefit from this and can’t apply their knowledge to their activities. 

As far as I am concerned, the more on-topic, reasonably time-framed, interaction between students the better.  They can be the greatest teachers for each other at times.   Working on these projects also promotes other skills: cooperation, problem solving, applying knowledge to actions…

Some teachers will argue that their classes are too large to do such activities or it is possible that they don’t have enough computers.   Try working in groups.  Students are not robots who need to sit still and quietly in their desks all day long.  Face it!  How many adults could?  They learn by doing.