Learning Styles Post

In the past, during undergraduate degree, some of my personal learning styles and tendencies.  I revisited some of these by retaking these tests online.  I received the same results.  Yeah for consistency! :)  Revisiting my strengths and weaknesses was good.  Results showed me that I am, indeed, a VERY verbal and social learner (and person, just ask my husband who is very much the opposite!!!).  I need to talk things out, and share experiences with others to learn the best.  Even if I don't need your help to figure it out, I need to process the information aloud and talk about it to figure it out.  I don't always want an answer from you, but just need a sounding board.

In the classroom, I didn't actually do this group learning as much as I should have, in hindsight.  Even though I learned his way, I didn't use this learning style to help my students learn nearly as much.  I know that many students enjoy talking through a problem to solve it (although at first grade level, this is not a well developed trait and talking about lunch or playing tag at recess was much more of a "hot" topic).

I am also a very visual learner.  I have to see it with pictures, graphs, demonstrated and anything I can watch.  If you can show me how to do it, I will succeed.  Written directions? Bah, not if I can watch you do it!!  This is at top of my learning style, just a point under verbal... (long post, anyone?). 

The top three(well four actually... three and four were tied in score):

• verbal
• visual
• social/physical (tied for third)

I find physical learning amusing in the sense that I'm not always moving around when I learn, but I find that if I do something with my hands when I learn I can tie it to something (touch nose to remember point one, touch head to remember point two.. etc) I can remember things.  I am also tactile in the sense that I love texture.  I find myself absentmindedly touching the tv remote's buttons, clicking a pen, rubbing my hands over a textured surface.  (My favorite is to just push remote control buttons).

I found that in the classroom I would use these learning styles.  I was very visual in class.  I would teach writing with 5 different marker colors.  I would solve math problems with my magnetic frogs.  I would show a youtube video to the class.

I would also have the kids stand up and do motions with me to songs or little rhymes to remember a topic.  (when I taught Shurley English we had to learn about the five parts of a complete sentence). I would do the following little chant with motions:
1. had to have a subject noun (point to self)
2. had to have a verb (action-run in place)
3. had to make sense (point to brain/head)
4. had to have a capitol letter (stretch arms way up in the air)
5. had to have an end mark/punctuation (point finger in the air and make a dot with a pffft sound... think Victor Borge reading a book)

I would definitely use these top learning styles of mine in the classroom.  I guess I never thought about it that I learned the best this way, it was always just the way I taught.  It makes sense.

The last on my list is solitary and mathematical/logical.  I guess I just don't make sense by myself... :)  just kidding.  Although I do not like math problems or thinking about ways to solve a problem using a mathematical equation.  Again, i would talk it to death and figure it out.  My hubby tells me all the time that there was a better way to solve my problem than the one I talked to myself to figure out.

With all these different learning styles (and even multiple intelligences) there are many ways to go about teaching in the classroom.  As teachers, we need to look outside the box at times, or beyond what is comfortable to help students understand.  With this being said, not every style can be taught/learned all the time.  We need to focus on different styles for different times.  Even trying different styles throughout the day to catch or refocus attention of students.  If there are times that something can be taught while playing music, or letting students talk out math problems together, then we can accomplish several styles at one time.  Ultimately, we need to incorporate many different ideas at short intervals to help all students.

P.S. In college I took the Myer-Briggs Personality Test.  It showed that I was an ENFP.  Apparently a very rare personality! :)  My mom always said I was "one in a million."