LEARNING PREFERENCES
It is paramount for teachers to bear in mind that every student perceives and processes new information according to his/her own learning style. There are three main ways to approach new knowledge: visual, auditory and kinaesthetic. In general terms, visual learners learn best by seeing the information; auditory learners learn best by speaking and listening; and, kinaesthetic learners learn best by touching, manipulating objects and doing, that is to say, by incorporating their whole bodies in their learning.
Assessing students’ learning preferences turns to be crucial if teachers wish to reach all their students’ needs and succeed in their teaching efforts. Diverse instruments and techniques can be used to obtain information and get a clear picture of individual learner styles, for example: direct observation, questionnaires, discussions, tests, diaries, among others.
When planning, teachers must contemplate this diversity by providing their students a variety of tasks and instructional approaches for educational success to be ensured.
These are the characteristics of visual, auditory and kinaesthetic learners:
AUDITORY LEARNERS
?Enjoy talking.
?Talk aloud to themselves.
?Like explaining things to others.
?Remember names.
?Recognize variations in a person´s tone of voice.
?Understand concepts better by talking about them.
?Are distracted by background noise.
?Have difficulty following written directions.
?Read slowly.
?Have difficulty being quiet for extended periods of time.
?Like being read to.
?Memorize things by repeating them aloud.
?Enjoy music.
?Whisper the words on the page as they read.
?Hum or sing often.
?Like being around other people.
?Enjoy the performing arts.
VISUAL LEARNERS
?Like to read.
?Are good spellers.
?Memorize things by seeing them on paper.
?Are organized.
?Would rather watch, than talk or do.
?Have good handwriting.
?Notice details.
?Remember faces better than names.
?Have trouble following verbal directions.
?Are easily distracted by noise.
?Doodle on their paper.
KINAESTHETIC LEARNERS
?Are good at sports.
?Can´t sit still for long.
?Are not great at spelling.
?Do not have great handwriting.
?Like science lab.
?Study with loud music on.
?Like adventure books and movies.
?Like role playing.
?Take breaks when studying.
?Build models.
?Are involved in martial arts, dance.
?Are fidgety during lectures.
TEACHING TIPS
The suggestions below are meant to make teachers reflect upon their own teaching practice and help them teach, taking into account their students’ learning preferences in order to increase their educational success.
AUDITORY LEARNERS
•Provide the opportunity for these learners to participate in interviews, debates and oral discussions.
•Ask students to give oral reports.
•Encourage these students to study with a friend or in groups.
•Encourage them to read the textbook out loud.
•Have your students to use repetition to memorize.
•Use auditory materials like videotapes, audio tapes and books on tape.
VISUAL LEARNERS
•Use visual instructional aids such as textbooks, charts, graphs, diagrams, pictures, cartoons and posters.
•Ask students to write down information and highlight main points.
•Ask these students to sit down away from windows and doors to avoid distractions.
•Encourage them to ask for comments or directions to be repeated if they did not understand directions the first time.
•Demonstrate what you want these students to do.
KINAESTHETIC LEARNERS
•Set up experiments and movement activities which require students to move around and use their bodies.
•Encourage these students to take frequent but short breaks.
•Use role-plays.
•Ask students to take down notes and highlight key points as they read.
COOL ACTIVITIES TO REACH ALL LEARNING STYLES
CLOTHES CHAIN GAME
Language level: beginner/elementary
Materials:
– a suitcase or travel bag
– a ‘change of clothes’ (items to suit the vocabulary students have learnt)
Procedure:
Students sit or stand in a circle; pile of clothes and suitcase in the center.
Since the aim of the game is to memorise the items packed for the holiday, each student goes to the centre and puts a piece of clothing in the suitcase, after showing it and voicing its name as loudly and clearly as possible. Teacher makes notes, in case there’s the need for correction.
For example: the first students goes to the center, picks a red shirt from the pile, shows it to the rest, and says: ‘I’m packing (the sentence could be changed for any structure students need to learn or revise) my red shirt’. The second one does the same but says: ‘I’m packing my red shirt and my blue skirt’. And so on, until there’s a person who fails to remember, in the correct order, what was packed before . When that happens, they start, from scratch, again.
This game suits all learning styles perfectly well.Those students who are mainly auditory, hear and say the name of the item; the visual ones get to see colours and shapes (previously, the teacher may do some brainstorming: showing, saying and writing on the board the names of the pieces of clothing to be used in the game) and the kinaesthetic learners move around packing and unpacking the suitcase.
Note: This game is ideal to do a revision and could be done with anything you can think of… (groceries, pictures of furniture, colours, stationary, people,etc.) The whole brainstorming and game shouldn’t last more than 10′.
FEELING ADJECTIVES
Language level: Beginner/Elementary
Resources to be used: Cards with adjectives written on them; dictionaries; glue; scissors; magazines; notebooks; white or black boards; white board marks or chalk.
Objectives: Study feeling adjectives; playing the «Expressing Feeling Game»; Work the opposites of feeling adjectives.
Procedure:
1) Show students, cards with feeling adjectives. For example: angry / sad / happy / afraid / anxious / puzzled / joyful / surprised / proud / fearful / worried / excited / furious / frustrated / mad / scared / nervous.
2) Divide the group in pairs, and give each pair at least one card.
3) Ask each pair to get the dictionary and search for the meaning of the adjective and write it down in their notebooks.
4) Students have to look for pictures in magazines that exemplify the adjective they received. If they do not find any, they are allowed to draw a picture to exemplify it.
5) Each pair has to show the picture and explain the meaning of the adjective.
6) In order to increase the communication and interaction in the class, the students must get together to create a post using the pictures, drawings, and other things they find both relevant and interesting.
7) The students give the cards back to the teacher who will invite them to play the game: «Expressing your Feeling».
8) Divide the students into two groups. The groups have to discuss the strategies to be used during the presentation. They may mime, act, but they cannot talk during the game. Each group will make a presentation to the opposite group who have to find out what adjective the other group is trying to show. Explain to the class that the answer has to start using: He / She is…… (the adjective).
9) The teacher gives a point for each correct answer. If the group does not get the right answer, the point goes to the group that is miming. The groups that cannot guess the answers still have the chance to get an extra point, if they write down the opposite of the adjective correctly.
10) The winner is the group that scores the most points.
Assessment:
Students should remain in the same groups. The teacher has to explain to them that they have to be very fast and accurate in the next step of the activity. They have to continue doing collaborative work. They have to write down sentences with the adjectives studied, and as soon as they finish, they have to write these sentences on the board. The group that finishes first will get an extra point for that; (it has to be explained at the very beginning of this activity to avoid problems). When they have finished writing the sentences on the board, everybody has to sit down again to follow the corrections. With the help of the teacher the students now have to read the sentences of the opposite group and say if they are either right or wrong, and they also have to suggest a correction. The teacher will give the final word about their opinions and possible corrections.This is an entertaining and efficient way to check if the students really understood the class content.
OBSTACLES & STATIONS
Language level: beginner/elementary
Materials:
-It depends on the topic (teachers can be very creative!).
Objectives: To practise vocabulary and giving instructions.
Procedure:
1) Teacher gets the room ready by placing different obstacles and stations all around.
2) Students work in pairs. One is blindfolded and the other has to give him instructions to reach each of the stations -there has to be some obstacles in the room to make the game funnier!- in which he is to taste, touch, smell or listen to stuff and guess what it is.
3) Once he’s ready to give answers, they have to approach the board and the blindfolded one should spell the answers for the other to write them on.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
http://www.education.com/magazine/article/auditory_learners/
http://www.education.com/magazine/article/Helping_Visual_Learners/
http://homeworktips.about.com/od/homeworkhelp/a/tactile.htm?p=1
http://www.everythingesl.net/inservices/learningstyle.php
http://www.vark-learn.com/english/page.asp?p=questionnaire
Authors:
Hubner Itaniel Claudio, Klassen Emily, Neve Brito María Guadalupe, Sánchez Mercedes María de Lourdes, and Schmidt Micaela.