Learning Styles Blog Post

After reading about learning styles, I was able to sit and think about how I learn best. I think this is a difficult question because each of these learning styles are ways that I can learn. I was a little difficult for me to decide which learning style was best. After doing some research I settled on which learning style suited me best.

I feel that I align most closely with the Verbal/Linguistic Intelligence learning style. The most effective learning strategies that I understood, and helped me learn were stories and lectures that my teachers used. I read a lot, but I don't have great reading comprehension, or retention. But I remember details, stories and anecdotes from professors years back. I remember stories from history class in high school - and I seem to really enjoy lecture. I also like discussions, logical point by point debates, and I am a stickler on language and grammar. I found it interesting that when explaining this learning style, it said that many of the people with this style were teachers. Guess I'm in the right field!

There were a lot of learning strategies that I think were less effective when I was in school. I never really liked Bodily/Kinesthetic learning style. I do use some hands on activities, and I have learned by doing them, but I find it very frustrating. When approaching a difficult task, I would rather be taught how to do it, and explained. If this is done, I can then do what I need to do. I don't like being left to figure out an activity, even if it is hands on. I find it funny that it says people with this type of learning style have good balance and hand eye coordination. I think I'm a pretty clumsy person, and that might be a good reason why I don't like this learning style.


As a teacher, it's very difficult to identify each students best learning style. I think it's also tough to ask students how they learn best. I think students need to be older to be able to understand how they learn. If a teacher could identify each student's learning styles in a classroom, it would still be difficult to teach to specific styles. You'd simultaneously have to teach in 4-5 different ways. This is almost impossible, so there's a few things I do in my classroom to help students learn - even though I'm not hitting each style in class. First, I try to use different styles each day. I'm not going to lecture every day, and I'm not going to show movies each day either. By instructional diversity, I can teach in different ways and open up new ways to learn to students.

I also try segmented instruction in my classroom. I lecture, we read, we have group activities, we have discussions. If I can do all of that in my classroom in a day, we've covered a few separate learning styles.

Lastly, I try to teach to different learning styles by providing extra information for students. I have a class web page (I've used one before - now it's being re-created) and it has games, interactive quizzes, links to videos and charts. My website compiled information in different ways and allowed students an opportunity to use different learning styles - even if I can't teach in all of the styles, all of the time.

So as you can see, I think our focus should be to teach using a variety of styles, and provide additional information for students for them to learn in the best way possible.