Parents - Unlock your child's learning potential!

The concept of Multiple Intelligence and Learning styles aren't new.

Intentionally or unintentionally, we always prefer our own way of learning style when we are allowed to learn by ourselves. 

To be simple, recall your friends learning style during the semester exams. 

• Few interested in taking notes in different colors, organizing the content is an understandable way.

• Few always like to hear from their friends, they don't bother reading the text book but still would have scored better. 

• Few write in air or sand to memorize the content, prefer to walk when they learn.

• There are a few who can exactly say the page number of the topic and just can recollect the content of the page virtually. 

Here there is no supervision, no intervention, and no hard and fast rule for learning. We chose our style of learning. The ultimate aim was to get through the exams with maximum possible marks. 

Similarly, we have to allow our children to choose their learning style. I have seen parents saying, 

"I take so much pain in setting a question paper at home and always make him write all the questions as home test but still he had scored very poor marks." 

"I made him write the answers five times but still he hadn't attempted the same in exam."

We need to agree that reading and writing is not the only way to understand and memorize concepts.
Being a responsible parent,  just identify your children's learning style and facilitate the same.

Here are few suggestions:

For auditory learners:

Use your gadgets: Help your child to record himself reading a chapter or notes aloud. 

Educational songs: Take time to search for topic based songs over Web. 
True you can find educational songs if you really search for! Else create your own.
A song on Forces
A song on Continents 

Associative  words: These are letters or words that make you think of other words. Example: My Very Excellent Mother Served Us Noodles to remember the names of planets.

Pair and Share: Sit with your child and discuss the key points.

Comprehend: Ask him to talk himself  through a problem. Example: In solving a Math problem - (2*3)/6+2

Here I have to apply the rule as more than one operation has to be performed. First I need to multiply 2 and 3, then divide the answer by 6 finally I have to add the resultant number with 2.

We always insist our children to workout Math problems daily but we forget to insist them to recall the procedure of solving the problem each time.

For Visual learners:

Graphic organizers  Graphic organizers are an effective tool for Visual learners. Help your child to draw a mind map / flowchart for the lesson using various colors.

Illustrations and diagrams: Suggest your child to go through the graphs, diagrams, charts, etc., and reinforce the concepts using these.

Study wall: Paste a full size chart paper near the study table. Ask your child to post something about the chapter that he wants to recall often.

Flash cards / Charts: These are an excellent aid for visual learners. Encourage them to do posters or chart work for the topics. Here the objective is learning and reinforcing the concept rather than the artistic work involved.

I would like to share my experience in facilitating a grade 1 child in learning the spellings for common verbs. At the end of the activity I was really surprised to see the child’s creativity.

I helped the child to choose 30 verbs, I asked her to write the verbs in colour paper, stick it in a chart and to draw relevant picture for the verb. I left the room and was engaged in my chores. After a couple of hours she came to me with the chart with a feel of achievement. Though it was not very artistic, the child had put in some effort to illustrate the verb.

I asked her to explain the pictures. She started like this..

Here is a big stone near a road and a girl is sitting on it, The boy is opening his mouth to bite, and so on. I was really impressed to see the illustration for Jump – a standing figure with upright hair!

I  did not stop with that, I asked her to tell the spellings which was my objective. Without any difficulty she could do that.

For Kinesthetic learners:

Give them enough space: Kinesthetic learners prefer studying in non-sitting positions. Give them a big room to walk while they memorize or a place to lie down or stand up and learn.

Attention span: This kind of learners only have a little of attention span. Break their study time not exceeding 30 mins.

Enact / Roleplay:  Get involved in enacting a story or role-playing a concept wherever possible. You can be his audience at least.

Hands on experience: Basically kinesthetic learners have a great interest in experimenting 

or creating new things. Encourage them to participate in presentation shows, Science exhibitions, Making models etc.,

All of us have multiple intelligence but the proportion differs. Few are dominant and few are not. This proportion determines our individuality and learning style. Happy Parenting!