Visual, Auditory and Kinesthetic Learners - Help Your Child Learn Better

Gone are the days when our teachers lectured us on particular topics and a few front benchers actually understood the concept, while the rest of the class stared sluggishly at the black board or just pretended to look attentive. Education itself is experiencing a phase of transition from a product oriented system to process oriented system. Each child is different, so are their learning needs and it is incorrect to expect them to learn in a similar manner ,like everyone else in the class. To bring the best out of children and help them in their learning process we need to be more aware.

Identity their learning styles

All children don’t learn in a similar manner, so the traditional system of teaching might not be effective for all the students in a class. The past decade has brought about some mind boggling findings in field of education, which has compelled teachers, educators and educational institutions to take a second look into their teaching methodologies. According to researchers "learning styles" are simply ways in which individuals perceive and process information. Individuals are categorically divided in to three learning styles; visual, auditory and kinesthetic. Visual learners learn more effectively by sight. The visual learners are geniuses at board games and memory devices. To help visual learners learn effectively provide them with picture books, which would help them to create mental images.

Use of colored pens, computer graphics and drawings while writing help to motivate visual learners in their writing assignments. Similarly, auditory learners retain information based on what they hear. Auditory learners respond well to auditory stimuli, so they can be encouraged to create word problems, dictate stories and read aloud or using sensory aids like the tape recorder. The third category of learner namely tactile or kinesthetic learners prefer learning through hands on experience. They learn better by doing things themselves rather than just listening. If your child is a kinesthetic learner, then using hands-on-activities like experiments and encouraging him to take up art and science projects would help him realize his true potential.

Develop the predominant intelligence

According to the theory of multiples of intelligence proposed by Howard Gardner in 1953,a child who masters multiplication tables easily is not necessarily more intelligent overall than a child struggles to do so. Lets accept the fact that not everybody is gifted to be the next Isaac Newton or Einstein and we are equally in need of people like Milton, Mother Teresa and Sir Winston Churchill. Gardner opines that human intelligence has seven facets namely; Bodily\ kinesthetic intelligence which is predominant in athletes, dancers, actors, surgeons, builders and soldiers. People with interpersonal intelligence communicate effectively and empathize easily with others and often excel as politicians, teachers, social workers and in similar professions.

Children with verbal-linguistic intelligence display a facility with words and languages. They are often skilled orators, writers, lawyers. However, people with logical-mathematical intelligence, become successful engineers, scientists, economists, mathematicians and the naturalist has to do with nature and natural surroundings. Great philosophers, psychologists, theologians with intrapersonal intelligence are usually introverts and have strong self-reflective capacities. If your child has visual intelligence, then he might do well as an architect, artist or engineer. As parents and teachers it is our primary duty to identify our children’s capabilities in order to help them excel in their learning journey and ultimately succeed in life.

Develop love for learning

Our education system has always been product oriented, as consequence most of us learn to clear exams. The love for learning has to be cultivated in children order to help them excel in whatever they do. And this can be done only by making learning fun and use of minimum pressure. Have you ever realized that just because your mathematics teacher was a tyrant you have grown up hating the subject itself? Don’t force children while reading or writing, because these are skills they are bound to learn as they grow up. But forcing them to hold the pencil properly or spelling a word correctly will delay the process further and create disinterest for the task itself. Instead let them go by their own time, manner and pace of learning. Try to make learning enjoyable through toys, visual aids, songs and give them ample opportunities to explore by themselves.

Accept the reality

The greatest hurdle in your child’s learning path are learning disabilities. A probable reason for poor performance could be that your child has any form of learning disability. A much hyped one is dyslexia a neurological problem, where the child has difficulty in receiving and processing information. The other two dyscalculia a condition in which the child confuses between mathematical symbols and has difficulty in processing mathematical information, and disgraphia-a nervous deficit in which the child has difficulty in writing are less known. Accept the reality ,when your child suffers from a similar condition and don’t hesitate to take help. With a little support from you and the help of a special educator your child can also do well.