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Learning Styles: Give Students a Fighting Chance by Roger Lewis Fischel
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Learning Styles: Give Students a Fighting Chance |
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Education
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I've written about learning styles in previous articles. Today I want to focus on a fatal error teachers make when working with students. That mistake is to not respect the individual learning styles that are present in every classroom. In a room of 30 students, there are 30 individual learning styles. Every student present has one dominant and from 1 to 2 secondary learning styles guiding the way they learn. "Ah, but I can't make accommodations for every student in my room," teachers say. I would have to have 30 separate lesson plans. "I cannot focus on each individual child in the room all the time," they complain. These are excuses born of misunderstanding. To be an inclusive teacher, one must concentrate on creating a condition for all to flourish under a single plan. It all begins with recognition. The Evil Greta Carpenter Greta Carpenter was my 6th through 8th grade English teacher. She was a rigid teacher for whom one way only was the correct way to learn. This was true whether we were working on grammar, reading a book, or writing essays. While each area had its own special approach, one had to adhere to that approach or else failure or worse. Ms. Carpenter's method is best reflected in the way she taught writing. During any writing unit, she gave us an essay assignment on Friday with an outline of our essay due on Monday. My personal learning style eschews outlining. Not that I can't outline something written, rather that I cannot think in outline form. I am a linguistic/visual learner. I make lists, draw pictures and make connections with lines, arrows and other visuals. To create Ms. Carpenter's outline, I had to write the essay in its final form. Once I finished the essay, I could create an outline with ease. The problem was, that my outline as well as my paper was finished. In the time allotted to writing in class, I had little or nothing to do but cause trouble. While I always had good marks on my outline and on my finished essay, I gained the reputation of being a troublemaker. Solutions If I knew then what I know now I might have advised Ms. Carpenter to allow multiple approaches to pre-writing. An outline is only one possible way to think about a subject. Story boards, lists, diagrams, drawings, words and phrases are all ways to think about an assignment. She, however, looked at the process in a rigid, singular approach. There was no room in her mind for deviation from what she considered the 'best' way to pre-write. If she were to think about teaching multiple approaches to pre-writing allowing students to use the one that worked best for them the problem she created would be solved. In fact, she could have assigned the essay on Monday, using class time for pre-writing. Tuesday through Thursday for draft writing and Friday for completion. In this way each student would be working on a general problem in individualistic ways. One single lesson plan, monitoring students at work in class without having to monitor individuals answers the objections to inclusion. Implications for Studying While the above addresses a problem in teaching, savvy students can make this information work for them in even the most rigid of classrooms. The first thing is to truly understand your own learning style. Google learning styles test and you'll find any number of self-administered tests that help you understand how you best learn. Armed with that information, you are able to study and learn in ways best suited to you. If you must, you can follow my lead and fake the rigidity of one-way teachers. When you do, you are staying true to your own learning styles. __________________ Dr. Roger Lewis is the owner of Effective Study Tips where he introduces parents and their children to the most effective study habits we know of. Dr. Lewis is a career educator teaching in both middle-school settings and in university departments of education. His specialty is in the teaching of reading methods for k-12 students. He is now retired concentrating on sharing his knowledge with a broader audience.
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