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Understanding Our Children’s Preferred Learning Styles for Academic Success

When I tutor students in the Goggle classroom, I listen and watch them carefully as they describe how they prefer to learn when reading and writing. For example, one student may describe how she gains lots of information about a story by looking at the pictures in the story first. Another student may want to write down his answer about what he just read before summarizing the story in two sentences. A third student may prefer drawing pictures or acting out the story before discussing or writing a story.

Most teachers consider students’ various learning styles when working with individual students. Below are five primary learning styles described in Data Driven Differentiation in the Standards-Based Classroom by Gayle H. Gregory and Lin Kuzmich:

1. Linguistic learners like to write, play word games, learn vocabulary, debate, and create jokes.
2. Musical learners love to sing, create tunes and rhymes, and make a song as part of a solution.
3. Logical/mathematical learners problem solve through abstract reasoning with numbers, formulas, patterns, puzzles, and data.
4. Visual/spatial learners draw pictures, solutions, and models with color and media.
5. Body/kinesthetic learners use gestures, actions, and act out to demonstrate learning.

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