What is your Child’s Learning Style?

Have you ever wondered how one child might be so articulate with words, pick up lyrics of the songs easily and write beautiful poetry but on the other hand be very clumsy, not so agile in sports and dance as if having two left feet? While another child might be really well coordinated, play sports with elan, dance gracefully but be really feeble at putting words to his/her experiences? Each child is wired and inspired differently. He/she experiences his/her world and makes sense of it in his/her own unique way. There are so many different ways we can understand these differences and one perspective I find very fascinating is learning styles. There are many complex theories of learning styles but I will simplify it by naming just the 3 basic ones: Visual, Auditory, Tactile-Kinesthetic Learners.

Identify Your Child’s Learning Style

Go through the following questionnaire and tick the ones that come closest to describing your child. After that make a total of all the items you ticked in each style and the ones with the maximum ticks will help you understand you child’s learning style.

Visual Learners

  1. Remembers what the teacher wrote down on the board rather than what she said
  2. Speaks so quickly that the words come out in a jumble
  3. Has picked up reading more by word recognition rather than the phonics method
  4. Good speller
  5. Strong, fast reader
  6. Enjoy puzzles, art & craft, drawing, painting, dressing up
  7. Can get too preoccupied with the physical appearance
  8. Inhibited in expressing feelings and embarrassed about others emotional outbursts
  9. Good at fine motor skills like drawing, embroidery, beading, colouring
  10. Prefers studying alone
  11. Presentation of school work is neat

Auditory Learners

  1. Good orator, eloquent speaker
  2. Excels in verbal expression
  3. Learnt to read well through phonics method
  4. Large vocabulary
  5. Easily distracted by noise
  6. Good mimic, good at poetry
  7. Learns by listening, discussing
  8. Can spell out better aloud than writing
  9. Remembers lyrics of songs
  10. Able to verbalise emotions and talk about feeling
  11. Presentation of school work is inconsistent

Tactile Kinaesthetic Learner

  1. Thinks and learns better when he/she is moving and walking around
  2. Gestures a lot while speaking
  3. Learns by manipulating and doing
  4. Can’t sit still for a long time, fidgety, squirmy
  5. High need for movement while learning
  6. Can be very distracted while teacher is talking
  7. Loves wide open spaces
  8. Well coordinated and generally would excel in sports, outdoor activities, dance
  9. Language delay & classroom difficulties
  10. Noisy while playing with friends
  11. Presentation of school work is untidy

“If I can’t learn the way you teach, teach me the way I learn”

Do remember that most of are a mix of different learning styles. However, each one of us has a preference for a particular modality. This is the modality we use to deal with day to day experiences. For example, I am predominantly a visual learner. I prefer to email than talk on the phone. I sleep through presentations without visual aides. I can get lost if I am being given oral directions but on the other hand give me a map and I can navigate with ease. My son is an auditory learner and learns through discussions, brainstorming and discussions. He picks up lyrics of song with ease and makes poems at a drop of a hat. My husband is a tactile kinesthetic learner and has to move around to clarify his thinking. The more complex the topic he is grappling with, the faster he paces up and down, moving his hands driving his point home and with facial expressions to match. Observe the different people in your family and you will be fascinated by how each one is wired.

It is important for us to identify our children’s unique learning style because at the end of the day education is about learning. Qualifications and scores are just by products. And to move away from performance orientation to learning orientation teachers and parents have to become learning facilitators.

Visual Learners learn best by:

  1. Seeing, watching, observing, viewing, and reading
  2. Visual stimulation – pictures, images, flow charts, diagrams, flash cards, white boards, strategic use of colours, underlining, highlighting, visual symbols
  3. Graphic Organizers: mind mapping, fish bone, idea maps, story maps, cluster maps, venn diagrams (www.inspiration.com or Mind Mapping for Kids by Tony Buzan)
  4. Electronic – smart art graphics, powerpoint presentations, films, DVDs

Auditory Learners learn best by:

  1. Verbalizing, listening, explaining, asking, brainstorming and answering questions
  2. Studying with a partner or a small group, reciprocal teaching (acting as if teaching a class)
  3. Audiotapes, drama, role plays, speeches, debates, stories, phonics method using music, rhymes, verse and song to reinforce learning of information (try it for learning timetables, it really works)

Tactile- Kinesthetic Learners learn best by:

  1. Touching, doing, moving, hands on learning, frequent movement opportunities. Memorizing through walking, jogging, bouncing ball, trampoline.
  2. Learning games, experiential learning, demonstration, diorama, role plays, hands on material, field trips, project oriented, active learning, objects to touch/manipulate, lab experiences, performances, role playing, art & craft construction activities, tracing on various surfaces (for little kids learning alphabet)
  3. Electronics – Animated powerpoint presentations with sound, music and exaggerated movements

Most schools operate on “one size fits all” philosophy. However, studies are clearly indicating (check the box) that multisensory instructions are much more effective than uni-sensory instructions (which is auditory in most schools). If curriculum is about ‘what’ of learning than learning styles is about ‘how of learning’. As Carl Jung put it “Education is not about filling a vessel but lighting a fire”.

Multi-sensory Instruction -Studies on sensory preference have shown interesting results

  • 46 % have visual preference
  • 35 % have tactile-kinesthetic preference
  • 19 % have auditory preference
  • Studies on learning (recall after 24 hours)
  • Lecture – 5%
  • Reading- 10%
  • Audiovisual – 20 %
  • Demonstration – 30 %
  • Discussion groups – 50 %
  • Practice by doing – 75 %
  • Teaching others – 90 %

Dr Shelja Sen
Consultant Clinical Psychologist & Family Therapist

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