Reaching Each Child Individually
Peek into my teaching space….six middle-school & high-school-aged Earth Science students with differing levels of focus, innate scientific interest and preferred modes of learning. I’m incredibly fortunate to have such a small seminar size, yet I still need to differentiate my lessons in multiple ways. Hands-on activities provide built-in differentiation.
For the “itchy” student who truly can’t sit still, but their need to fidget disturbs their classmates, the kinesthetic opportunity to mold, knead, measure, cut, and glue directly feeds their higher physical sensorial input requirements. Of course, they’re going to build at least 12 things that aren’t included in the directions, but their brains are fully engaged and better able to hear and understand what I’m teaching. Three goals achieved - everyone’s physical sensorial needs have been met (my squirmer and the others), the kinesthetic learner has built a model and memory to house their new knowledge, and everyone has had to spend fewer emotional currency dollars on this lesson leaving them better-funded for the remainder of their day.
Hands-on activities are a feast for the visual learner. There are words, definitions, and illustrations written on the board, and step-by-step illustrated directions on the paper in front of them. Images of their hands creating the physical model and manipulating it are joined by images of their classmates’ models and my model. Now the student owns a mental gallery in which they can hang concepts and definitions and return to when the information is needed. Their frustration levels are lower and their retention levels are higher. Another solid win!
The auditory learners are well-served in a hands-on activity. My explanations and directions are repeated many times. The auditory learner has multiple opportunities to hear and capture the information as they listen to my initial explanations and my responses to their classmates’ questions. This material is overlaid on the symphony of background noises that are a class space - chairs moving, side conversations between students, faint sounds from other class spaces, and whatever music Nature is playing outside our windows. The learner now has a complex, dimensional soundtrack to decorate with the lesson’s concepts.
Finally, there is a hands-on activity’s long-term teaching gift to the observant tutor. Each student has built a personal memory of the activity that I can use to help them remember the knowledge. I can reference the colors or movements of the model, the process of creating the model, or the funny joke made about the model and hand each student a direct mindmap back to the information. This reduces the amount of tutor prompts which can cause students anxiety or embarrassment and increases the information retrieval speed which can bring students greater self-esteem.
When students first join the Golden Mean community, we all watch carefully - honing in on how and when the child learns best. Environment, learning style and assignment type are all important factors. Whatever the answer, we’ve found that one of the crucial keys to a successful education is appealing to an individual’s learning style. Once we understand how to best reach a child, we can begin differentiating their work with their needs in mind.
Handling materials and creating moving concept models deliver knowledge through multiple pathways - kinesthetic, visual, and auditory. Three chances for cementing a term or scientific concept through one fun, memory-building, focus-centering activity. That’s this tutor’s winning lottery number!