Helping Colorado Students and Parents Understand Learning Styles

Your learning style is the way you acquire information. Students learn faster and retain more when information is presented to them in their learning styles of choice. Most people have a dominant learning style, but they can still learn when information is presented in another learning style. Teachers should present information in ways that appeal to all learning styles, but they may not always have the time to do so. When you know what your student’s learning style is, you can tailor information so that they can understand and process it better.

The Seven Learning Styles

Verbal (linguistic): Verbal students prefer using words to communicate, both in speech and writing. They like to read and take notes.

Physical (kinesthetic): These students prefer using their body, hands and sense of touch. They enjoy learning that is action-based like science experiments, making projects and working with their hands.

Visual (spatial): Spacially-oriented students prefer using pictures, images, and spatial understanding. They work well when information is presented in graphs, pie charts, infographics, pictures or video.

Aural (auditory-musical): These students prefer using sound and music. They like listening to lectures or talks.

Solitary (intrapersonal): These are independent learners who prefer to work alone and use self-study.

Logical (mathematical): These students prefer using logic, reasoning and systems. They are great with math and science.

Social (interpersonal): Social students prefer to learn in groups or with other people. They love organizing study groups and collaborative projects.

Consult your Teachers and Tutors

Ask your teacher or tutor to help to determine your student’s dominant learning styles. Most students use a combination of styles to assimilate information. While they will have a dominant style, it’s important to remember that styles are dynamic. That means that with practice, your student can adjust to any style of learning.

Once you know what your student’s preferred learning style is, you can teach them to arrange material to suit their style. For example, if your student prefers a visual learning style, organize information that they need to understand into graphs, infographics, mind maps and pictures. Let them watch videos on the subject and allow them to create videos and visually-oriented presentations for their projects. Presenting information in their learning style will help them to understand and remember.

Your tutor can help to teach your students how to arrange information into a more favorable format and how to tailor study skills to suit different subjects. Ask your tutor to give a brief test to determine learning style preferences.

Here are some resources for finding out your learning style online. Most of these resources are short tests which help you to see which learning style suits your student best. Do two or three to get a better idea of the learning styles that your student prefers:

NC State University

Vark

How to Learn

Education Planner

LDPride

Edutopia

Accelerated Learning

How Social Media makes Social Learning more Effective in Douglas County

Social learning has around since the 1970’s when Albert Bandura suggested that learning is a social activity. Social learning theory postulates that learning occurs when students observe behaviors and mimic them. This includes the observation of rewards and punishments for behaviors. When harnessing this theory to effect change in the classroom, teachers can use social media to create a wider conversation and include other influential players. If used correctly, social media can be a real asset when teaching through social learning.

As parents you have already experienced social learning as your young students mimic your behavior and learn from your actions. Now with social media, you can augment the social learning opportunities at home and in the classroom by introducing your students to a wider audience of influencers.

What this means is that our educators and tutors are still mentors and models, but they are required to relinquish some of their authority to the community of learners as students learn from each other. With social media, this community is not restricted to the students in the classroom, but can also include students from around the world and all the resources that the Internet makes available. Now we have an entire network of teachers, tutors and learners all contributing to our body of knowledge and sharing their experiences.

While social media sites like Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, and Pinterest can provide a wealth of learning opportunities, they can also serve as distractions that eat up an enormous amount of time without contributing anything to your student’s body of knowledge. This means that social media can be a blessing or a curse and needs to be managed effective to achieve the desired results. Teachers and tutors need to outline lesson plans, goals and guidelines to direct social media actions and continually enforce these guidelines to add a structure to social media interactions. Social media is a wonderful tool to use in social learning, but it must be structured in order to be effective.

Students learn more when there is a human connection to their content. This means that they are more likely to remember an exciting video on a lab experiment than if they read the experiment in a text book. Social media makes this possible as students can watch videos of scientific experiments on YouTube and discuss them with other students in forum portals.

Social media also caters for all learning styles thanks to its multi-media capabilities. Students can talk to other learners, tutors and teachers, read blogs, watch videos and study graphics. No matter what kind of style your student responds to, they are bound to find the information they are looking for in a format they like. Social media also caters to students with different learning speeds. The faster they learn, the more there is for them to discover. Students who work quickly have an endless wealth of resources to explore on the internet.

Social media gives active learners the opportunity to explore and discover. They can work as fast or as slowly as they like and interact with their community and with the information in a format that suits them best.

5 Simple Strategies for Encouraging Shy Douglas County Students

Shyness is a complex emotion that is sometimes difficult to understand. What’s important to remember is that it usually elicits feelings of anxiety, fear, embarrassment, apprehension and tension in your student. Being confrontational only exacerbates the problem, but there are ways in which you can help your student to build confidence and participate in class activities. When your students don’t participate, they miss out on vital social and academic skills.

Be Understanding

Students aren’t shy because they choose to be. Accepting their feelings as valid is the first step to overcoming them. According to family therapist, Rose McAloon: “Be sure not to criticize your child for being shy. And don’t compare her with other kids or her siblings who may be more socially adept. Instead, respect her feelings and fears and work around them.”

Discuss ways in which shyness can be practically overcome. Role-play scenarios like how to start a conversation with someone your child would like to get to know better or how to deal with bullies. Having an arsenal of prepared responses will help your child to feel more confident. You can also ask them about situations which made them uncomfortable in their daily interactions at school. Discussing the ways in which your students could have responded will help them to feel more prepared.

Meeting strangers

If you bump into a friend and want your child to greet them, but they are too shy, don’t apologize. Preempt this behavior by chatting with your friend for a few minutes before you introduce your student. When your student sees that you are comfortable, they are more likely to respond or make eye contact.

Small groups

Most shy students find large groups intimidating. Instead, arrange for one-on-one meetings with new people or new friends.

Preparing your student for large events will help to ease their discomfort. If they have to perform at a school concert, practice their part until they know it by heart. Then get them to perform it in front of your family, then add some friends so that they are accustomed to performing in front of a crowd.

Get them to visualize their performance, the stage, and all the people in the audience. They should visualize themselves giving a successful performance and feeling confident. The same technique can be used to great effect when preparing for presentations.

Small challenges

Try to give your student small, confidence-building challenges every day. Be sure to only give them challenges that they can cope with as failure only helps to reinforce shy behavior. Be patient and understanding and never push them too hard. While you should encourage them to move outside of their comfort zones, let them move at their own pace.

Always build their confidence with praise. Focus on the positive and don’t be over critical. Focus on their positive attributes and help to build their confidence.

Get a tutor

If your student is not participating in class, you can help to build their confidence by getting an in-home tutor. Here they can work in the comfort of their own homes which helps them to feel secure and confident. They can overcome gaps in their knowledge and feel more confident when answering questions in class.

Things about gifted children that every parent should know

It’s difficult to define exactly what ‘gifted’ is. In the U.S., gifted children are seen as those who have the potential to perform exceptionally in five areas: general intellectual ability, specific academic aptitude, creative or productive thinking, leadership ability or visual/performing arts. This definition is so general that it leaves the identification of gifted children and their education up to the various states they live in.

Some states have tests and criteria in place for the identification of gifted children and programs to help them succeed while others do not. Whether a gifted child is identified as such and put into an academic program that fosters their gifts is largely a geographical potluck. Gifted children who are not identified rarely succeed and there is a large percentage that drop out of school altogether.

Giftedness is not easy to identify: Although gifted students may have the aptitude to excel, they often have trouble communicating or taking tests. Although some tests do exist to measure giftedness, the information may not be presented in a way that the gifted child will be able to process. Gifted children are not just regular children with a high IQ; they need special nurturing to fulfill their potential.

Gifted students are not all geeks, nor are they all socially inept. Gifted students come with every physical and personality trait imaginable. There is no set of characteristics that define giftedness, which is why it is so difficult to identify.

Gifted students will not succeed on their own. Just like any other student, gifted students need guidance and nurturing. While some claim that in an age of austerity and budget cuts, it’s not possible to continue funding special programs for gifted students, these programs remain essential to the success of gifted students.
Our ability to guide and develop the talents of gifted students is one of our most valuable intellectual assets. Gifted children do require special programs, but their contribution to society makes their development worth every cent. Gifted students are not the vestige of the wealthy and many families are simply not able to provide the specialist education that their gifted students need without state funding.

Early detection of gifted students is possible. Most states only start testing for gifted students when those students have reached the third grade. However, the National Association for Gifted Children is able to start testing in the pre-kindergarten phase. The sooner giftedness is detected, the more support we are able to provide and the greater the gifted student’s potential for success.

Gifted students provide an exceptional rate of return for the financial investment made in them by the state. Programs for gifted students need to be expanded and testing methods refined so that gifted students are given as great an opportunity for success as possible.

What's your Student's Learning Style?

“Everybody is a genius. But if you judge a fish by its ability to climb a tree, it will live its whole life believing that it is stupid.” Albert Einstein
Students process and absorb information in different ways. Some students like to see the big picture first and then learn the details and skills of each step while others can’t imagine what the big picture will be until they have learned each little step along the way.

Some students find diagrams and infographics helpful in learning information while others like to listen to the teacher’s lesson to get their facts and figures. Others like to build, measure, mix and experiment when they are learning. Knowing what your student’s learning style is will make it easier for you to present information in a format that they can relate to.

Visual learners
Visual learners like their information presented in an interesting visual format so videos, pictures, charts, illustrations, mind maps, and online presentations are a great way for them to learn. Presenting information this way makes it easier for them to see how things relate to each other. Visual learners should create their own mind maps and graphics when they are studying as this will help them to remember the information and see.

Auditory learners
These students are good listeners. They like teachers and tutors who explain, talk and read aloud. These students learn understand through a more traditional teaching method. When they are learning, auditory learners can benefit from reading aloud or listening to taped lectures and online podcasts.

Tactile learners
These students like to learn through action. They are great with experiments, measuring, observations, field trips, building models and other physically-oriented tasks. Activity is the way to get them to remember information or learn new skills.

Most teachers present information in a number of different formats to accommodate the learning style of all of their students. If your student is having trouble with a subject, ask their teacher or tutor to help you ascertain their learning style and then present the information in a way that they will absorb best. The internet is a great resource tool for finding the information you need to share in a format that suits your student. There is a video, infographic and experiment you can try for just about everything.

If you are curious about your student’s learning style, take a quick online test with sites such as ID Pride or VARK. Tutors and teachers are also great at understanding learning styles and they will be able to not only help your student to understand their learning style, but to convert information into a format that they understand best.

- See more at: http://www.tutordoctorhelpsallages.com