Improve Your Kids’ Grades Fast!
Some time ago, I posted an article that talked about the idea of “learning styles”. For those who don’t know, different people will best absorb information they’re presented with using one of three processes- visual, auditory and kinesthetic. Which could also be called reading, listening and doing.
I recently came across a book by best-selling author Pat Wyman that suggests one reason some clearly intelligent students will do poorly in class is that the visually-oriented teaching style used in most classrooms doesn’t line up with their learning style, if they happen to be people who’d learn more effectively with one of the other 2. It makes sense if you think about it…
Most lessons are presented in a text book or on the chalkboard to be read, which is great for the visual learners but less so for the others. To make this worse, in-class reading assignments are frequently accompanied by the instruction to “read quietly” (at least they were when I was in school), which further hampers the students who’d learn more if the lesson was delivered out loud. There’s nothing to help the kinesthetic learners here either.
So, her approach to helping students improve their grades is to teach them how to absorb more through visual means without trying to “make” them visual learners. She’s basically taking what comes naturally for these kids and adding to it.
If this sounds interesting to you, you can check it out here. And take a look through her newsletter selection while you’re there. There are a lot of them, addressing a number of concerns, and they’re all free!
