What is your learning style?

Visual?
Auditory?
Reading/Writing?
Kinesthetic?

I’m Kinesthetic-Visual. That means I need to interact with people and things to learn and that I need to see information in diagrams or charts to be able to process it. I have learned that about myself after 31 years of life and years of schooling- and it was just reinforced and validated after I took this VARK cool quiz (link below).

I would highly recommend this quiz for tutors as a good resource.

VARK- a guide to learning styles

Here are my suggestions for tutors in visual diagrammatic list form (with interactive components in the suggestions):

1- Take the quiz yourself.
It takes 5-10 minutes.

Find out your learning styles.
The “results” part is my favorite part because they give you your results in the learning style you are (for example, my kinesthetic results page had an interactive ball I had to move to find out my results)

You may be a mix of styles, so be sure to check out each page of your result
The results page explains INPUT, STUDY TECHNIQUES and OUTPUT.

2. Try the quiz with your student.
You most probably need to read the quiz and their results to your student.
This website is NOT designed for low literacy levels.

It would be good to give your student a reason of WHY you are doing this quiz.
For example- “Different people learn differently. Every one is different. Some people learn best when they HEAR a teacher talk, some people learn best when they SEE the teacher write on the white board, some people learn best when the DO the activity themselves. By taking this quiz- we will find out how you learn best AND what I, as your tutor can do to use that tool more.”

Maybe you can even include something you have already observed about your student like… “I have noticed when we play the word memory/matching game in our Wilson Lessons, you really enjoy it and can read the words quickly- that may mean that you learn well through TOUCH.”

3. Go through the results together
Explain to your students what their result is and what that might mean for their future lessons with you.
For example-
“Because you learn well through TOUCH, we can add an extra memory game to one class per week, but we still need to spend time strengthening your listening (audio) skills because it is important to use all our tools”

Talk about how this result could have affected their past learning experiences- this can create a great sense of relief for some students-
For example: “You learn best through VISUALS and DIAGRAMS rather then WRITTEN WORDS and our schools mostly use WORDS, so that may have made your school experience difficult- now that we know that- we can start to change things” Hearing that is really validating and encouraging.

Talk about what your results were and what that might mean for y’all working together-
For example: “I learn well through SOUND, like when I listen to a teacher talk. And you learn well through TOUCH, like when we play card games with the words we’ve learned so that means…”(and you can figure the rest out by the OUTPUT section of the results page)

4. Share!
Share your thoughts about this process with us on the blog.
Share your thoughts about this with Gardy, Rebecca, Pushti or other DLC tutors.
I would love to HEAR, SEE, READ, or INTERACT with your thoughts!

Good Luck!

Love,
Yashna
(DLC fan forever)