To think that schools should be more accomodating to visual spacial learners

[kissmyassdotcom]

Both Ds 9 and Dd 5 are VSL. No matter how much their school make them copy out the same bloody spellings over and over, they still don't seem to get that it doesn't work for them.....and never will. They constantly point out how they "know what they are capable of by the way they speak" but continue to expect them to do the impossible by teaching them in ways that will never help them reach their potential.

They expect them to sit still, listen and learn with the occasional drawing on the whiteboard. I have now come to the conclusion that my DC will NEVER learn ANYTHING in a school environment which involves more of the learning styles which have absolutely no impact on them what-so-ever other than completely killing their self esteem and motivation to do well.

After 4 years of hunting (and many failed attempts with other strategies) I have finally found a way to teach both of my DC to spell and they only had to write the word once and why? because I have used their preferred learning style rather than expecting them to fit in the one size fits all category. So far this same technique has also helped my DS to learn some of his multiplication facts too, after he has spent the past 2 years trying to learn them!

AIBU to expect schools in this day and age to recognise the stronger VSL and supply them with an alternative curriculum to help them to succeed???

That which is asserted without evidence...

DancingDinosaur, what is the connection you are trying to make there? You and your DD read a huge amount, but needed extra help to become good at spelling, is presumably what you're saying. This supports the 'learning styles' theory how?

Visual: read this
Auditory: listen to this
Kinaesthetc: write this

:o

Thinking back to the OP and struggling to see how writing out spellings isn't visual and sensory. Doesn't mean that doing this will work for them, but it does mean the learning styles theory is utter utter bollocks.

The connection being that you are insinuating that there are no different leaning styles, people just need to read more, just like you did I'm saying thats a load of shite.

Some people find different approaches work for learning different things.

It may be that child likes a visual, colourful way of learning spellings but may prefer a written way of remembering facts.

I think it's wrong to say that a person only has one learning style. That is limiting. I think it's reasonable to say that a person may use one learning style for one area but a different one for another. To say "DS / DD likes to learn visually" may be true for some situations but wrong for others.

I like to learn by doing some stuff. But some things I like to learn by reading and highlighting. Other things by listening and watching videos on YouTube.

All depends on what needs to be learnt. Sometimes text works fine. Other times, I need a diagram and lovely pictures.

Learning styles are uncredited nowadays. Too much of a 'I'm a visual learner so I can't do writing' crap and not enough trying a range of styles

www.danielwillingham.com/learning-styles-faq.html

Here is a link to some FAQs about learning styles.

Excerpt: How can you not believe that that people learn differently? Isn’t it obvious?

People do learn differently, but I think it is very important to say exactly how they learn differently, and focus our attention on those differences that really matter. If learning styles were obviously right it would be easy to observe evidence for them in experiments. Yet there is no supporting evidence. There are differences among kids that both seem obvious to us and for which evidence is easily obtained in experiments, e.g., that people differ in their interests, that students vary in how much they think of schoolwork as part of their identity (“I’m the kind of kid who works hard in school”) and that kids differ in what they already know at the start of a lesson. All three of these have sizable, easily observed effects on learning. I think that often when people believe that they observe obvious evidence for learning styles, they are mistaking it for ability.

That sounds like an unimportant difference in semantics. What does it matter?

The idea that people differ in ability is not controversial—everyone agrees with that. Some people are good at dealing with space, some people have a good ear for music, etc. So the idea of “style” really ought to mean something different. If it just means ability, there’s not much point in adding the new term. (Some of the other style distinctions could be matters of ability too: some people might be good at keeping track of details, whereas others are good at grasping the big picture. I don’t know if they’ve been studied that way.)

OP, honestly, Gardener, the man who did the original research on learning styles has spent many years discrediting the overly simplistic use it was put to. His VAKPRAT etc (there are about 16 of them) is NOT prescriptive of how we learn.

Oh, and short term memory does not last for 10 minutes.

From your posts it seems as though you have been exposed to some very poor science, which is sad as you seem determined to get the best for your kids.

Please stop bemoaning this one idea. We all have ways we prefer to perceive our surroundings, ways that information is more likely to be maintained long term, but it is rehearsal, revisiting that information, that concretes long term retention.

For example, even the most visually sensitive person will remember song lyrics.... why? Because they are oft heard, sung, enjoyed.

If you persist in only offering information along one sensory input then learning will be disrupted. This isn't even new, Baddely and Hitch published in 1974!

Ubik... yes, Gardener did include people who see the big picture, those who need to understand the theory before they could 'do' something, others who needed to 'do' in order to understand.

It is because his work was so much 'common sense' that it got hijacked. His original research is very interesting (and valid) it is just the educational use to which it was put that is discredited.

I think motivation must play a massive part in learning and retention. How interesting someone finds something / how useful.

Is there a motivation hormone? Something in the brain that makes you retain knowledge and understand how to apply it?

If we could find the trick to understanding how people retain facts, knowledge and how they understand things, that would be great. I suspect it's different for many people though.

Morethan how did you get onto teacher training with no maths or English qualifications? Min requirements are C grades at Gcse, followed by A Levels plus degree level knowledge of your subject

Good schools use varied techniques to teach children with all sorts of learning styles. Taking spelling as an example they will teach children various strategies to learn spellings and the child then can use which ones suit him/her best. So, they might bubble write spellings if they are a visual learner so they can remember what the word looks like. They encourage 'sounding out' as you described, which breaks the word down into it's sounds so they get the letters in the correct order. They encourage the 'magic ten' of writing spellings out 10 times to reinforce visual learning. They encourage finding little words in a word like 'there is a rat in separate' and remembering little rhymes to help remember letter order. But bottom line, your children do need to practice their spellings because they are memorising them. Parents should help them do this everyweek. And reading is key too, because lots of reading trains the brain to find spelling patterns.

A good school will already be doing all of these things already. It would be unfair to teach all the children just one way all of the time. Good teaching staff work very hard trying to find creative ways to teach.

Yes the bubble writing thing drives DD1 up the wall

My daughters' lessons at primary school are so much more interesting than mine were in dome ways. They do active maths and iPad maths games and script films, make comics, write stories.

Oh yes - looking back at my school days, I bet there were many people who didn't learn as much as they could because it was chalk and talk.

Lots of chalk and talk. I can't really think of one teacher who didn't do that. No one stood on the desk and recited poetry.

Surely 'learning styles' is just a pseudoscientific way of rehashing the obvious fact that people have different aptitudes? Someone might be a genius with fixing machinery but rubbish at spelling, etc. Not different 'learning styles', different aptitudes. And the only reason for renaming aptitudes learning styles is to soft-pedal the equally obvious fact that not all learners are academically apt. They may have other aptitudes, but in terms of academic study some kids are far stronger than others. 'Learning styles' looks to me like a way of avoiding saying 'X is better than Y at academic learning', as instead you can say 'Y has a different learning style', which presumably helps salve the ego when parents get competitive at the school gates.

The trouble with all this is it encourages woolly thinking. Academics is not the be all and end all; I've met enough idiots with Firsts for that to be equally clear. But instead of seeing academic ability for what it is, and allowing space for other forms of achievement within education too, we make academic achievement the goal for everyone (including kids who are not academically apt) and invent some neurobollocks about learning styles so that the less academic learners can ascribe their lack of progress to poor provision rather than lack of ability. Surely it would be better to be honestly pluralistic about the goals of learning than wishily-washily plural about its methods?

Someone might be a genius with fixing machinery but rubbish at spelling, etc.

The problem being that if a child is rubbish at spelling and getting things down on paper, then he might well struggle with showing he is a genius at a particular subject, as he can't demonstrate it in the same way as many other children can. Untidy writing and poor spelling do not get the childs ability across very well.

Untidy writing and poor spelling do not get the childs ability across very well

Indeed - some people probably can't see beyond that and judge the child as having a low ability because of that. Being a poor writer and speller does not mean you aren't perfectly able in that subject - I had one boy in my class who was slow at writing, didn't write much stuff down but he knew his stuff when you asked him.

DancingDinosaur, I was pointing out that my sister and I also have greatly differing abilities when it comes to seeing a word and being able to spell it straight away, and that there is a big fuck-off glaring reason why that might be, beyond genetics and 'learning styles'. I was pointing out the error in the OP accrediting the difference to her apparently being a 'picture learner' and her sister being a 'print learner'.

Of course two people who read 100 books are not necessarily going to be able to spell as well as each other just by virtue of the reading. There are other factors (none of which are 'learning styles', incidentally). But both Person A and Person B are likely to be a hell of a lot better at spelling after reading 100 books than they were after they'd each read 2.

Pardon my ignorance. Why can't a VS Learner sit still to learn things? And if they can never learn by sitting still, how are they going to get on in rest of life?

It sounds like maybe they need to work on developing the regular learning style in parallel with being taught in ways that help them learn best.

Kiss Glad you found it too! It's marvelous eh? So obvious! My DD1 is top of the class in year 6...she gets 14 out of 14 every week and is always excellent in general writing in terms of spelling and her sister who is in year 2 has over this term had 6 out of 6 correct and it's brilliant for her confidence.