Bobbie Marcoux

We Didn’t Start the Fire

December 12th, 2023

These two songs are about historical events from different time periods. How many of these events can you name or know of?

Learning Styles: What are they?

November 7th, 2022

What are learning styles? According to Teach.com there are 4 different ways of learning: Visual, Auditory, Reading/Writing, and Kinesthetic or VARK. These different ways of learning affect how a teacher should approach teaching each student. Some students are stronger in one area compared to others. The best way to reach students is to know and adjust to their learning style. For example, some students learn more from watching videos while other students may get more from reading articles. By changing the curriculum and sessions to suit each individual, teaching and learning can both be improved. (https://teach.com/what/teachers-know/learning-styles/)

Visual is the first learning style I will cover. Visual learners excel at learning through seeing. Using pictures, images, maps, graphs and other visual teaching aids are the best way to reach these types of learners. Presentations through PowerPoint and other mediums can reach these types of students more than other types of teaching methods. A good way to see how the student reacts to visual mediums is to use practice questions on graphs and maps to see how well the student understands. Movies can also be a good way to reach these kinds of students. Using different visual formats is the key to reaching visually-inclined students.

Auditory is the next learning style. To approach auditory-inclined students some methods can include: listening to lectures and lessons, speaking out loud, and possibly listening to books on tape or audiobooks. Students like this get a lot of value out of participating in class and interacting with the teacher. To encourage this, students should be allowed as much participation as possible when not engaged in classwork. Working in tangent with other learning styles will give auditory learners their time to shine.

Reading/Writing and Kinesthetic are the last two kinds of learning styles. Reading/Writing is when learners get the most out of writing and doing work that involves words while kinesthetic learners are hands-on learners that thrive when they can use their hands while learning such as learning with tools or gardening. I grouped these two learning types together because they are more active learning styles compared to the previous ones. These two styles require motivation and patience since without something to do the learner can become frustrated easily. To combat this, having a rigorous curriculum that focuses on the strengths of these two styles is important.

All of these different styles can be incorporated into a learning curriculum but by knowing what an individual student is best at can help focus on your teaching. If someone is more auditory, encourage discussions while if someone is reading/writing focused use more worksheets. Determining what your student is good at requires time but once you figure it out everyone benefits!

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