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Teaching to a child's strengths
By Stefanie Arias : August 30, 2013 : Updated: August 30, 2013 6:23pm
Photo By Kristian Sekulic / Getty Images
When Sarah Colglazier's twin sons Mason and Ethan started kindergarten, she knew right away that the boys were different types of learners.
Ethan had learned to read on his own by age 4; Mason looked through books upside down and backward and had difficulty when he tried to write. The Colglaziers sought help at Learning Foundations, a diagnostic and learning center, where Mason was identified as a primarily auditory learner as well as strong kinesthetic/tactile learner.
“If he hears things, he can comprehend them well,” Colglazier said. “Saying things out loud allowed him to hear what he was doing. He used tiles with letters that had to be pushed together to make words. There were multiple learning modalities involved in trying to develop his reading skills.”
After kindergarten, Colglazier decided to home-school her sons to be able to provide each with individualized lessons. The boys will soon turn 13.
“By allowing them to learn in a way that is meaningful to them not only is learning easier, but they learn so much more,” she said.
Experts and educators use the VAK model of learning styles— visual, auditory and kinesthetic/tactile —to categorize different types of learners.
Visual learners receive and retain information best when they can see examples of the subject matter, such as drawings, graphs, charts or reading text on a page.
Auditory learners better understand when they can hear the information. Lessons presented with rhymes, music and oral lectures work well.
Kinesthetic/tactile learners prefer hands-on experiences, such as building with blocks, science experiments, memorizing choreography and playing sports. They also may prefer the sensation of writing down notes or problems on textured paper.
At Learning Foundations, students' learning strengths are reinforced and their weaker areas are developed.
“Most come to us because they're struggling in one area in school, or they just have a lot of attention or hyperactivity issues, which could be caused by an over-stimulus of information,” said director Rafael Scarnati. “Some don't have difficulty in school but want to boost performance by finding their weaknesses. We work on those so they can become strengths.”
Educators have the same goal, said Patricia Castellano, senior director for school improvement at North East ISD.
“Meeting the students where they are in terms of learning style helps engage them,” Castellano said. “When kids are engaged they receive the learning better. The other part is that we have to know their learning style because we have to help build them in the areas they tend not to enjoy. The goal is to expose them to enough variety that they build their capacity in all areas.”
The challenge is working with a classroom full of various types of learners. Differentiated instruction that offers multiple entry points into lessons will benefit students of every learning style, said Julie Rychlik, North East ISD's assistant director for school improvement in elementary mathematics.
“In elementary school, if they're learning how to combine numbers, a teacher should offer a way for students to build it with blocks and then draw pictures before they ever get to using the symbols '2+3=',” she said.
Small children are kinesthetic/tactile learners, Rychlik said, but as they get older they usually morph into visual or auditory learners. Therefore, going from a concrete lesson (blocks), to representational (pictures), to abstract (symbols) helps students work more easily in the abstract as they advance in school.
Students benefit most when they learn in their own best way, and when that style is supported both at home and in the classroom.
“Frustration occurs when parents try to solve things for the student,” Rychlik said. “The point is understanding. That's what moves the learning forward. It's what gives them the confidence to go into school and do it without Mom and Dad there.”
Colglazier said she does worry about when Mason goes to college or starts a career. But in the same way she was able to educate her son to read and write by thinking outside of the box (audio books, voice-to-text technology), she's confident he'll find his own way.
“In today's world there are so many opportunities to pursue degrees and careers that are geared toward your strengths,” she said. “As a home educator I'm trying to teach my child how to think so he can figure out how to do that, versus just being able to answer questions.
“He has the background knowledge he needs in his brain's filing cabinet, and he knows he can pull it out.”