What’s your learning style? Do you prefer learning in a group and in an interactive setting? Or one-on-one? Do you retain information best through lectures, or visuals, or simply by reading books?

As this quote says, “involve me and I learn,” it stands true for me. Though not sure if Benjamin Franklin said it or if it was borrowed by Xun Kuang’s works, this is a quote that answers what my learning style is.

The Two Letter Word

From when we are born, we are often told the two letter word, N.O. Do not get on top of the cabinet. No, get that out of your mouth! No, you will not play video games passed midnight (ha,this brought back memories). No, no, no, no!!!

Do we listen? Sometimes. Our human nature wants to know what is going to happen. Why are we told to do certain things and not others?

While growing up, we explore and venture to situations we are unaware of because we want to experiment and figure out what will happen if we touch the griddle on the lit stove. If told, “don’t touch that,” we are curious and want to find out why.

This is where the section of the quote, “tell me and I forget,” comes to play. We can go on saying the same thing over and over to someone, especially our children, but they will not comply because they want to get to the bottom of it, why are they NOT suppose to do something but do the other?

Teach Them

Instead, teach and involve them in what you are trying to teach them. If you don’t want them to touch the griddle, let them feel the heat by putting their hand over the griddle (not on it) and let them feel that it is hot and if they touch it, they will burn their hand and cause injury and pain. Explain this pain in a way they understand, for example, if they have fallen or gotten hurt in some other way, then let them know it will hurt them as when they fell and cause an “OUCH,” reaction.

There are various learning styles, such as the visual learner, tactile learner and auditory learner, just to name a few.

As for yours truly, I am a visual learner. Seeing and doing what is supposed to be learned is my learning style. I can listen to a lecture but actually putting it to play sticks more in my brain than just going in from one ear and out the other. Which is why when children go to school, either a local one or home-schooled, they hear, say, see, feel and write the alphabet or their name to use their senses and grasp what they are being taught.

Ways of Learning

Hear

Hearing the ABCs together as a class, hearing their name, listening to others pronounce their name, etc.

Say

singing the ABCs in a group or by themselves while watching an educational program (Sesame Street), enunciating their name or their friends’ names.

See

Teachers usually have the ABCs on long narrow posters bordering around the classroom walls or posters like the one below. They also see their name on squared pieces of laminated paper that shows their assigned seating, backpack holder, supplies holder and the such.

Feel

In other occasions, children use their sense of touch by using different textures in their names, like sand-paper in the shape of their first letter of their name or glued on cotton balls. They get to feel the roughness or softness while tracing the curves or lines of the letters.

Write

To recap all the learning they have done, now is the time to do it by having them write out their name or the letters one by one (usually one or two per week and not all the alphabet at once). Repetition, repetition, repetition. It might be tedious for us but it is a way for them to grasp what it is you’re trying to teach them. Also, using hand over hand to trace or write helps them understand the concept of writing.

My Learning Style

As far as the question, do you prefer learning in a group or one-on-one? I would say that it can go either way. Preferably, one-on-one in the case that I have a “dumb” question, (which they say the only dumb question is that which is not asked) I will only know if it is dumb or not.

Being the quiet type and usually not liking to speak up when in a group setting, sometimes I would remain in a state of oblivion to something I didn’t understand. But, if it’s in a group setting, as my professors used to say, “maybe the question you have might be what someone else is thinking of asking too.”

Plus, with a one-on-one there is only one mindset and the way you are thinking might be incorrect. Learning in a group, there are many different ways of thinking and someone else might explain it in a way you better understand it and as they say, “two brains are better than one.”

Yes, there were times that we had group projects and there was always the one that depended on everyone else to do the work for them and didn’t get much input into it and still got a grade for just being part of that group.

It was really frustrating but it was also rewarding when our group was chosen for being the greatest and all worked equally in the project and we didn’t have to take the dreadful final exam (which happened when I was in college taking one of the most difficult classes ever, yahoo!)

Conclusion

With this, I close by saying that we all have different learning styles and if you have children, try to learn what their preferred learning style is so that you can help them learn better and appropriately. Whether it is being a visual learner, auditory learner or a hands-on learner, we are all capable of learning the same thing but in different ways. No one child is the same as the other.

P.S. What is your child(ren)’s learning style? What is your own learning style? Any other activities or ideas that you do with your child to help them learn?