Understanding your child’s learning styles makes it easier for you to teach him more effectively. It enables you to present the lessons in a way that works for his brain instead of trying to make his brain work with a set curriculum.
While there are a variety of models for learning styles, the one that I’m going to cover this week relates to the way your child inputs information from the world. It’s called the Visual Auditory Kinesthetic (VAK) model (developed by Neil Fleming). Let’s look a little more closely at how it works.
We perceive the world through our five senses. That’s how God made us. When we learn something new, we take in the information through one or more of these senses. Three of those senses stand out as far as learning goes: vision, hearing, and touch. While smell and taste do impact our minds, they don’t typically come into play when it comes to formal education (unless you chew your eraser 😉 ).
Every person has a preferred “sense” for receiving knowledge. This is called their dominant learning style or modality. A visual learner prefers to learn by sight. An auditory learner is partial to hearing information. A kinesthetic learner would rather do something physical.
Many people balance two or even all three modalities when learning. Those who can use all three methods are optimal learners because they can take in information regardless of how it is presented.
The preferred learning style can also be dependent on the subject or task. For example, you may have a son who is a visual learner, but he relies more heavily on his auditory processing when he plays a musical instrument.
Now that you know what the Visual Auditory Kinesthetic model is all about, let’s look at how you can use it when teaching your child.
First of all, let me explain that I have found that balance works better in education than extremes. In the case of using VAK, the extreme would be to find out what your child’s dominant learning style is and rely ONLY on that modality for everything. That’s not necessarily a good idea. Let’s face it, God puts situations in our lives where we have to step out of our comfort zone and learn in a way that doesn’t necessarily fit our style. Take a church service for instance. When the priest or pastor presents the sermon, he does it in a way that is best for auditory learners. If you are a visual learner, you can’t expect that he’ll put up a Powerpoint presentation just for you. Or if you are a kinesthetic learner, you can’t bounce on an exercise ball or walk laps around the church during the service. Instead, you HAVE to rely on your ears for learning.
When it comes to teaching your child, it is better to rely more heavily on your child’s dominant learning style than to rely on it exclusively. Play to his strengths as much as possible, but don’t entirely ignore his weaknesses.
When your child experiences frustration with learning a particular subject or topic, select activities that fit his learning style best or use a multisensory approach. For example, if you have an auditory learner who struggles with doing copywork, play music for him while he works. That will make it a more pleasant experience for him. That’s why I included lists of classical music selections in my Homeschooling with a Touch of Class copywork products. I wanted to address the needs of auditory as well as visual and kinesthetic learners.
What about the modalities that your child is not as proficient in? Find fun activities for him to do that exercises those skills. If you have a visual learner, you can strengthen his listening skills with these fun activities. And you can use physical education activities to enhance his kinesthetic skills.
You can also combine learning styles, or use a multisensory approach, when teaching some lessons. This can be helpful when you are teaching multiple children the same lesson. For instance, if you are using Story of the World to teach your children history, you can have your visual learners sit beside you and follow along as you read the text or take notes. Kinesthetic learners can be doing something quiet, yet physical, while listening such as moving on an exercise ball or knitting or building with blocks. Your auditory learners are already happy because the text is being read aloud to them.
You can likewise combine subjects that blend learning styles. The Paint the Music activity that I posted about combines Art and Music. It also has something that appeals to all three learning styles because painting is visual and kinesthetic and listening to music is auditory.
When in doubt as to which method to use for a particular lesson, use all three and observe your child to see which technique made the topic click” for him. Always go with what works in any given situation.
You can learn more about each specific learning style by clicking on the links below.
Have a great year!
Many blessings,
What a great post to help us figure out what to DO with the learning styles our kids have. Thanks! Featuring on this coming Thursday’s Hearts for Home blog hop.
http://www.proverbialhomemaker.com/2013/09/hearts-for-home-blog-hop-35.html