LEARNING AND TEACHING

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LEARNING AND TEACHING

• Placing the learner at the centre of educational
  practice
• With thanks to Sarah Palmer, Director of
  Learning, Queens School, Bushey for her help in
  the preparation of this presentation

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Session Aims

• To examine differences in learning styles and
  suggest ways to encourage development of
  different forms of learning
• To identify your individual preferred learning
  styles and consider their impact on classroom
  practice

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Summary of Research

• Neural Linguist Practitioners (NLP)
• sensory preference for receiving and making sense
  of new information
• Learning Cycle (Kolb)
• action-experience-reflection-conceptualisation
• Multiple Intelligences (Gardiner)
• the balance of intelligences affects ones
  preferred way of learning
• Thinking Styles (Gregorc)
• accessing and organising information

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• We all aspire to be good teachers but do we allow
  all our students to be good learners?
• Should teachers adapt to learners, or learners to
  teachers?

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Why Bother?

• It benefits the students
• It encourages independent learning
• Accessing a preferred learning style promotes a
  sense of ownership
• It benefits you
• Stress-free
• Imaginative teaching adds energy and creativity

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What Is a Learning Style?

• Research has suggested that learning styles are
  strategies or regular mental behaviours that are
  habitually applied by an individual to learning.
• Three Learning styles-VAK
• Visual (29 prefer to learn by seeing)
• Auditory (34 prefer to learn by sound)
• Kinaesthetic (37 prefer to learn by doing)

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Visual

• Characteristics
• prefer to see the information
• like reading text
• memorises by writing repeatedly
• when inactive, doodles, looks around
• Enhancing
• visual representation of information-posters etc
• Visualisation-imagine
• Visual prompts
• Concept maps

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Auditory

• Characteristics
• like to listen to teacher
• talks fluently and logically
• memorises by repeating words aloud
• inactivity leads to talking to self or others
• Enhancing
• active listening
• rhyme and rhythm-mnemonics
• imagine you can hear

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Kinaesthetic

• Characteristics
• hands on
• talks about actions, speaks more slowly
• inactivity leads to fidgeting
• distracted by physical disturbance
• Enhancing
• use objects that can be manipulated
• acting out
• body language and physical movements

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Principles for Developing Lessons

• Allowing situations where we ensure that the
  learner has the greatest capacity for self
  learning
• That different learning styles does not mean
  creating endless materials
• Identifying that teachers have a tendency to
  create learning opportunities akin to their
  preferred learning style
• That a multi sensory approach enables more
  students to access learning
• Awareness of the range of learning styles within
  a group of students-staff and pupil understanding
• Kinaesthetic activities and behaviour

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Practical Examples

• Visual
• mind maps, colour highlighting, pictures/charts
• Auditory
• Discussions, debates, mnemonics
• Kinaesthetic
• Circling sections, role-play, ordering objects,
  human lines, flash cards
• Project based activities tend to bring a multiple
  learning style approach into the classroom

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Creating a learning environment

• If students are going to learn, we need to
  consider the learning environment, in particular
• Displays
• Room layout
• Who sits with whom
• Music/water for students?
• Classroom rules and consequences
• Classroom rewards

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Creating a learning environment
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Activities (1)

• Complete the attached questionnaire which will
  help you to identify your preferred style of
  learning
• Visual
• 1a,2a,3a,4b,5b,6b,7c,8c,9c,10a
• Auditory
• 1b,2b,3b,4c,5c,6c,7a,8a,9a,10b
• Kinaesthetic
• 1c,2c,3c,4a,5a,6a,7b,8b,9b,10c
• It is highly unlikely that you will only score in
  
• one learning style for the whole questionnaire

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Activities (2)

• Teach one of the following in a way that appeals
  to visual, auditory and kinaesthetic learners
• The LBW rule in cricket
• The offside rule in soccer
• The 13 times table
• Different learning styles

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Activities (3)

• The Accelerated Learning Cycle (Smith)
• In small groups, study the seven yellow cards
• Sort these cards into the correct order so that
  learners can be motivated and helped to believe
  they can achieve
• Match the statements on the red cards to the
  statements on the Learning Cycle