Your child's learning style - The key to their success (1)

When your child knows what their learning style is and how to use this to their advantage, they can be empowered to be themselves and succeed.

This series is an introduction to what a learning style is and how to use it to your advantage. 

Each child is unique, with their own set of characteristics, strengths and weaknesses. Helping a child to identify his or her strengths and weaknesses is important so that they know what they can work with and build on and what they should avoid.

A learning style is one of these strengths. It is the way the each individual child takes in and processes information best. If information is taken in and processed effectively, it is more easily retrieved (remembered).

There are many different theories about what the different learning styles are and how many there are, however, we will use a model of 3 learning styles: the Visual Learner, the Auditory Learner and the Tactile/Kinesthetic Learner.

Children learn in all of these ways, but tend to be more inclined towards one or two of these particular learning styles. This means that while children experience information in all of these ways, they tend to take in and process information better if it is given to them in the style that their brain tends to prefer.

Here is a very simple example:

In a classroom setting, the teacher talks about the concept of fractions. She shows them an example of this by cutting an apple into various fractions. Then, she draws pictures with accompanying numbers to show how the numbers and reality work together. She hands out a worksheet to be cut and pasted in their books. Finally, she asks the learners to complete their worksheet and allows them work with their partners if they would like to.

The information about fractions has been given in a very visual and auditory way – children see the apple being cut up, they see the pictures and numbers written on the board, they’ve heard her speaking about the information.

The task they’ve been given is largely visual as well, but it contains elements of tactile and auditory learning: The children must cut their worksheet out and paste it in their books, they also have to write answers and draw or colour in pictures on the worksheet. These are tactile things, even though the children is not necessarily moving around too much. They have also been given the option to talk with their friends about the information. This is an auditory process.

All of the children have encountered the same lesson, but if you ask them what they remember the most, you will get different answers because some parts of the lesson resonate more deeply with each individual child than other parts do. This is rooted in the child’s learning style.

In the next few posts we’ll discuss each learning style in more detail with some more tips on how to use it to your advantage, taking in and processing information more effectively so that it can be retrieved in the future.