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  • At the beginning of the school year I try to grasp how my students learn best. I try my hardest to make sure all of my students can be stimulated.Visual, auditory, kinesthetic learners can bore easily when a class is focused to one of the others, and it is hard to reach all of them at once. As a new teacher i'm still going through trial and error but some of the activities i've used has gotten a rise of interest from my students. 

    Mythbusters activity: I took from the popular television show and found historical myths regarding President Lincoln, and then I provide documents that can prove, or bust those myths. The visual students are able to discover the myths and historical information by reading and digging in deep to the character. While the auditory learners will gather the information from the presentations. The hands on students will get their hands dirty by creating the presentation to prove or bust their group's myth. 

    Tea Party Activity: Students take on the persona of a Progressive movement big wig and come to the tea party prepared to represent their character's reform and challenge another reformers issue in order to sway Congress (Me) for funding. Students are able to learn through research, character play, and listening to the role playing. Many students have a blast with this activity. 

    I am more of a visual learner, but I hope as a I advance in my career I can better reach all of my kiddos. 

  • I have taken different types of learning style quizzes every year over the last 6 due to being a mentor.  The first time we meet each other is in a group setting and we take the quiz to make sure we know how the mentee/mentor is approaching things.  It has helped me over the years knowing my mentee is coming at a problem totally different than I am.  My learning style varies year to year.  Interpersonal Learner is always in the top three.  Basically states I like people and to talk.  My friends would most likely agree with this. LOL

    I feel that my students haven't fully formed their learning style when I get them.  With this in mind I watch them very closely and rearrange groups to challenge them.  I am hoping to show them the different ways to look at things while, also, hoping they might pick some of these different ways up.

     

  • I had a similar experience to Lisa, except that my results differ from the tests I took before I had children.  I had to laugh at some of the questions about how much time I spend with leisure activities.  With two children under 3 I had to ask myself if the Mercer Mayer and Dr. Seuss qualify as "getting lost in a good book"!  I came out as a primarily linguistic and interpersonal learner and I can certainly see that in my teaching.  I often forget that just because I wrote down what to do or the information is readily available in written format doesn't mean that it will work for all of my students.  

    Most of my work to address multiple intelligences has been about giving students a variety of options in how they present their research such as using iMovie or writing a narrative poem instead of writing a traditional essay.  I think that I could definitely incorporate more interpersonal and intrapersonal elements to our research process through discussion and reflection, but I really struggle with how to incorporate things like kinesthetic intelligence into a process that requires so much interaction with written materials.     

  • This truly supports how I problem solve.  I have been doing alot of sole searching in light of recent events in my life.  The first step to clarity is to move outside on my bike or to my favorite spot in the wooded area near my house.  (Naturalistic learner).  I also often move my class outside for writing and science activities regardless of the time of year.  I thought your comment about studying a historic event in a microscopic way as a Naturalistic Learner was interesting and may help me clarify my own reasearch

    My second strongest also explained me well.  I make lists on things to accomplish and I often write a paper let it set and revisit it. I need quiet processing time (Intrapersonal)before I finalize anything.  I change my work environment for my students sometime its active work with a lot of verbal interactions, hands on activities or historical reinactments and other times my classroom is very quiet involving individual, thoughtful work with in the classroom.  I have used personality quizzes in the past to have students compare learning styles and help them understand their own needs as a learner.

    Relating to research, understanding how students learn best is a big help. Some student will need to start larger and narrow the focus.  Some will need time to verbalize, explain and discuss to narrow the focus and others will need experimental time researching, these student sometimes appear off task because they flow from one thing to the next but that is necessary for them to focus in on a topic.

  • SourceURL:file://localhost/Users/f242190/Desktop/Your%20Learning%20Style%20Results.doc

    Lesson 11

    I can relate to Lisa’s kinesthetic learners! I hold many group lessons and project based assessment assignments. Shakespeare plays are meant to be seen (before/during/after background building---I try to sneak it in without them recognizing it). I do a journal assignment at a local lake, NO TALKING, but lots of observation and writing in handmade folios. Then each student contributes a word or phrase from his or her observations, and we create a group poem or short story. Then there are times when I like working independently…

    This will be great for students to do during orientation week. Knowing their likes and dislikes early on would be such an asset. Some students are easier to read than others. In my classroom I have the ability to let the “logical interpersonals” get right to it, while I have a conversation with the linguists on possible ideas to help talk it out.

     

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    The results don't surprise me in the least. With an 81% in interpersonal, I do well in organzing groups and making sure that what happens needs to happen. Also, from an archivist's standpoint, one of the most important things we do is what we call a "research interview." It's basically a "help me help you" type of conversation. What are you working on, why are you doing it, what have you already covered, have you thought about this, all points of interpersonal communication.


    The dual 67% in linguistic and kinesthetic amuses me, because I do move back and forth in my understanding or explaining of something. If I don't get what you are telling me, or I see that someone isn't getting what I am telling them, I will immediately move to showing. Also, every one of my workshops has a hands-on portion, which comes after discussion and before wrap-up.

     

    I fail at music, math and logic, which is why I did not get 100% on my ASVAB test. From a research perspective, I am not sure how I would integrate that into what I do, other than to teach songs about relative balance and box sizes. Rather like Conjunction Junction, but for legal and letter size and PH and acid. I have no idea how I'd pull this off, but I have friends whose brains are wired this way, and I've asked for weirder things.

     

     

     

    Carol, don't feel like you weren't thinking about learning style, regarding the lesson material. You and I have had hours of conversation on content delivery at this point, and remember that we are sorely restrained with file formatting, software packages and download speed. We kicked around videos, Sharepoint, Jing and 100 other thoughts regarding delivery and response. You're a great lesson lesson writer and I know that I am very grateful to have learned so much from you.

     

    --Robyn

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  • Wow!  Are we allowed to laugh at ourselves?  I have "found out" that I learn best through talking.  I am pretty sure anyone who knows me will be momentarily shocked by this news. Okay, I remember teacher comments on report cards that say I talk a lot! This does not help me narrow down subjects.  In fact it causes just the absolute opposite problem.  Like talking, I want to know it all, see it all and am basically interested in it all.  I love the puzzle of it, the history of it and the why of it.  Trying to pin point what it is, is my problem.  This is why teaching kindergarten is perfect for me.  With 20 five year olds all topics are covered. LOL

  • I'm feeling very tired today, so was pretty down the middle for most of the quiz, resulting in a very different outcome than I had when I took these kinds of tests in college - what I got from this is that, while my students may start out with one learning style, that may change from year to year (or even from day to day!).  I think this means that it is important to teach to a variety of learning styles for all students, and give students opportunities to choose what type of assignment they would like to complete - I tend to do this a lot with projects and assignments, but have never thought about it for the research process, which is such an important and overarching aspect of history classes!

    Usually when research takes place, it is in front of a computer or book, in a relatively quiet place.  This probably works great for intrapersonal learners, but may not work so well for bodily-kinesthetic learners, who may retain research information better by participating in some kind of reenactment (like a Civil War battle reenactment).  I definitely agree with Carol that musical learners likely retain information better if they are able to listen to music while researching, but also may find themselves drawn more toward the role toasts and songs played during the American Revolution.  Finally, to cater to my interpersonal learners, I like to give my students opportunities to bounce ideas off of their peers and to spend time giving and getting feedback from their classmates who may be researching a similar topic.

  • I'm not sure "narrowing down topics" was a great portion of the title for this discussion.  What could I have been thinking?  We really covered that last week. 

    At any rate, I was determined to try to approach all of YOUR learning styles in this online class this semester and have failed to some degree.  It wasn't because I didn't want to ... I absolutely did!  First of all, I didn't test you early enough in the semester to figure out what I have been leaving out, a condition that will certainly change in semesters to come!  Secondly, I just didn't have the skills (yet) to introduce everything I wanted to into an online format.

    But there have been many changes.  When I took the test, I discovered that my learning styles were 1) Intrapersonal 2) Linguistic 3) Interpersonal 4) Visual-spatial.  I realized that I wasn't even taking advantage of my OWN strengths in our past online lessons, let alone allowing for yours.  I didn't understand in past semesters how much some students need to discuss topics with other people (and it makes it MUCH more fun for me as well!).  As a result, the discussion board became MUCH more important this semester than it has ever been in the past. 

    Also, I have changed several of the ways that lessons were presented.  I used to lean WAY to heavily in Power Point presentations designed to look like textbooks with lots of illustrations.  Obviously, this was from my own learning style, not yours.

    So ..... now I think there are ways we can use the learning styles concept to help students do research.  For instance.

    • Naturalistic Learners might be more interested if they were able to study a historic event in a microscopic way ... conducting experiments on what "might have" happened.
    • Body-Kinesthetic learners might be happiest if they were writing a script based on original materials and acted out their "characters" from history. 
    • Musical learners might just do better if they had background music in the room while they were conducting research.

    What do you think?

     

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