A warm welcome to silkysteps, please take a look around at all the available resources

Resource links ..
  View forum posts from the past 3 days
  Sign up for site newsletters
  Shop for resource titles
  Read mark making suggestions & ideas

 
    
Home | Store | Forum | What's New | Contact | About | Terms | Links | Storytime | UNCRC
Mischief Mouse's collection of craft activities for preschool and early years.
Printable resources to help support play - colouring, mark making, labelling, promoting, engaging and extending..
Magical Mammoth's recipes to play with and recipes to eat ..
Stitch Squirrel provides a little tree space for some needle and thread projects  - handmade resources to support learning and development.
Activities for math - Calculator caterpillar's activity ideas to support children's numeracy, reasoning and problem solving play.
Hope Hedgehog invites visitors to take a look through some articles of interest ...
Navigator Narwhal's outdoor - in activity ideas for preschool and early years play.

Articles to support children's development in preschool, nursery and homelearning Articles for children's care, learning and development. 
What kind of learner is your child?
by Katie Sarl
Article published 12th October 2008
 

 
Every parent knows that no child is alike; each has his or her own unique way of doing things. We know that just because one child achieves a developmental milestone at a particular age doesn’t necessarily mean the next child will do the same.

As parents we tend to put this down to personality but could this be due to the child’s learning style instead? If so, what are these learning styles and how do we know which learning style our child has? And once we know what learning style they prefer, how can we adapt activities to help them learn more effectively?
Sensory perception - Kinaesthetic, auditory, visual
Eve Wilson, a Qualified OfSted Inspector and former Head-teacher, is the founder of Bright Starters classes for early years language development. Eve believes that knowing which learning style suits your child and the techniques that work best for that style, can aid your child’s education immensely.
Brightstarters.co.uk
www. Brightstarters.co.uk

patterns, sequence, individuality ..  

“Adapting activities to a child’s learning style, enables that child to grasp the learning activity much, more quickly because you are presenting the information in a format that child is predisposed to understand."
Quote Eve Wilson.
 
"In our Bright-Starter classes we use a range of multi- sensory techniques to teach letter sounds, shapes and words; in this way we cater for all different learning styles – if a child doesn’t grasp the concept one way then we change our approach and use a different technique.”
 
Eve believes schools are now recognising learning styles more and more, especially in the light of the introduction of the Early Years Foundation Stage - EYFS. One of the learning and development themes of the EYFS is ‘Enabling Environments’ whereby practitioners have to:

 “observe the children in order to understand and consider their current interests, development and learning” (EYFS 2007)



In the past, according to Eve,  “schools tended to be biased towards visual learners teaching many lessons by the ‘chalk and talk’ approach with the children expected to listen whilst the teacher explained/handed out facts.

Even when apparently working in groups, the pupils were not actually co-operatively learning but were discouraged from talking and usually told to ‘ get on with (your) work and stop chatting’.

Auditory and kinaesthetic learners, therefore particularly struggled as not only were they discouraged from using their particular skills, they also had requirements that were rarely met in school. This became more marked in the older age ranges”.
 
You might well ask when did this all come about? Well, the concept of learning styles is not new; in fact the best-known and most often-cited learning model is the visual, auditory and kinaesthetic (VAK) model developed by early years specialists and psychologists such as Keller, Orton, Gillingham, Stillman and Montessori way back in the 1920s.
patterns, sequence, individuality ..    TOP



The VAK model categorises learners according to their senses, after all it is our senses that help us to receive, process and impart information. Dr Lauren Bradley *1 believes that, although most of us use all our senses, when it comes to learning we have an innate preference . Using this model, visual learners are said to learn by seeing and observing things, preferring information given in charts, diagrams, mind-maps, pictures, demonstrations and handouts. Often these types of learners hate reading out loud and tend to use higher reading strategies such as skimming and scanning.  Auditory learners learn through hearing, preferring discussion, learning through music, jokes and rhymes. They often talk out loud to themselves and have difficulty with reading and writing tasks.  Kinaesthetic learners learn by touching and doing, preferring activities which involve physical experiences –feeling, holding and ‘hands on’ techniques.
 
NLP (Neuro - Linguistic Programming) experts *2 even go as far as stating that you can tell a person’s learning style preference by their speech and eye movement.

Visual Learners tend to say thing such as:
green   “I see what you mean”, “I get the picture” and “what’s your view?
green  Visual learners tend to look upwards when thinking or answering a question.
Auditory Learners tend to say thing such as:
green  “I hear what you’re say”, “Sounds ok to me” and “that rings a bell”.
green  Auditory learners tend to look straight ahead when thinking or answering a question.
Kinaesthetic Learners tend to say thing such as:
green  “I catch your drift”, “I get what you’re saying”, “It feels alright”.
green  Kinaesthetic learners tend to look down when thinking or answering a question.

-------------------------------------------------
 *1  Dr Lauren Bradley, www.helpingchildrengrow.com/learningstyles.php

 
*2  O’Connor and Seymour “Introducing NLP Neuro-Linguistic Programming” Thorsons; 2Rev Ed edition (Jan 2003).
NLP is a form of physiotherapy that examines how the way we think (neuro), the language we use (linguistic) and our learnt behaviour (programming)  produces the outcomes and results we experience in life.  Learning styles in NLP are referred to as ‘Representational systems’

-------------------------------------------------


patterns, sequence, individuality ..     TOP
 
Complete the following questionnaire and see if you can identify your child’s learning style

Click to download / open the questionnaire word .Doc

How can I use this information to help my child?
Like many parents, we want our children to learn basic concepts such as some letter sounds, shapes, days of the week, colours and basic numbers before going to school. All too often we hear parents say that, “my child just won’t sit down and concentrate” or that they show no interest in reading – this maybe because the technique they are using conflicts with their learning style. In Eve’s 30 years experience in education, she has found that all young children can only concentrate on a task for a short period of time and need frequent breaks in order to learn, especially kinaesthetic learners.
 
Eve Wilson outlines the different methods used in her Bright Starters classes to teach these skills according to the learning style: 
 
Visual Learners – Letter shapes and sounds
 
orange Colouring pictures
orange Jigsaws both manual and onscreen
orange Word matching puzzles
orange Matching Stickers with words and letters
orange  Word Bingo
orange  Colourful books
orange  Literacy programmes on television

Visual Learners – Colours
 
orange Point out in stories
orange Talk about the colour of clothes as the child gets dressed
orange  Point out colours in the environment

Visual Learners – Numbers
 
orange Use the numbers in the environment, in the shops etc
orange Use the excellent TV programmes
orange  Use jigsaws of numerals
orange Count and colour shapes
orange  Colour in numerals






patterns, sequence, individuality ..  patterns, sequence, individuality ..   TOP
 
Auditory
Learners – Letter shapes and sounds


orange Learn letter sounds through music and rhyme
orange Talk the letter shapes out –  E.g for the letter ‘C’ tell your child to pretend to drive a car round the bend etc
orange Talk about stories that you have read to your child and ask them questions
orange Describe the shape as you are helping the child to write it – ‘Start at the top, go down to the bottom, up to the middle and round’. Encourage the child to say it with you.
orange Use a song to teach the alphabet  ( Bright Starters uses ‘Bright Beats’ in its classes which are available from www.Learn4life.co.uk
 
Auditory Learners – Colours

orange   Say the colour out loud , e g Yellow for the sun then show the picture
orange   Make up a silly rhyme for each colour ‘ Red in my  head’ and tap your head. Encourage the child to make these up with you – the sillier the better!
orange Use colours in songs and rhymes
Auditory Learner – Numbers

orange Use Nursery Rhymes – ‘1,2,3,4,5 Once I caught a fish alive’ , Ten in the Bed’ Six Little Ducks’ etc. Show the numbers as you sing them
orange Make a line of numbers using a washing line and pegs. Say the number as the child puts them on the line
orange  Point out numbers in the environment – in shops etc  and always say them as you point
orange  Use the excellent programmes now available on TV

patterns, sequence, individuality ..  patterns, sequence, individuality ..   TOP

Kinaesthetic Learners – Letter shapes and sounds

orange Fill a tray with back paper and add salt. Shake the tray so the salt is evenly spread over the black paper and get the child to draw out the letter in the salt.  This is a very effective way of teaching letter shapes – especially as the letter is black on a white background similar to reading books.
orange Make letter shapes with playdough
orange Make a set of letter shapes using sandpaper so that the child can actually feel the shape.
orange Print out balloon words and get the child to colour in the words
orange Buy and use Letter tracks to teach letter shapes -  letter track  is where a letter is designed like a car track and the child has to drive the car around the track in accordance with the way the letter is written (Available from Learn4life.co.uk)
orange Get the child to draw the letter in the air and then on someone’s back
orange Walk a finger puppet around the letter shape
orange Play word and letter bingo
orange Play a ‘Corners Game’ but use letters and words

Kinaesthetic learners – Numbers

orange     Use physical blocks or sweets for counting
orange   Make the numbers in salt trays and out of play dough
orange     Get the child to help set the table using one-to-one correspondence (1 for me, 1 for you etc)

patterns, sequence, individuality .. TOP


Points to remember:
green The most effective learners use information from all three different inputs; therefore encourage your child to try every activity
green Children will go through phases of different learning styles – babies will progress from using their mouths to hearing and touch.
green Children are learning throughout the day not just at specific learning times so although gauging their preferred style may be helpful, use this as a guide not a rule.
green And finally, the most important of all – children learn best when they are having fun and are successful.
green Only expect the play to last a short while and NEVER continue when the child loses interest or becomes tired. Above all, do remember that genuine praise is the best motivator of all so look for every opportunity to give it sincerely.
 
Enjoy learning with your child and have fun!

Text content and Bright Starters logo on this page: Copyright©Brightstarters.co.uk
Xylophone images: :  iStock© Edyta Linek





Return to all articles - Hope Hedgehog