Posts Tagged ‘auditory learners’
Storytelling
Reading stories in books is one of the greatest things to do – it is great for learning too. But telling stories out of your head can also be a great learning tool.
Telling stories is a way to generate creativity, create understanding of sequencing and allow kid’s to express their feelings, especially on topics that might be hard to talk about. Storytelling can be done by one person, or by various people, each adding to the story as it moves around the room. Stories can be fictional, recount an exciting event or have an inspirational lesson embedded within it. Not only can stories allow creativity to flourish, it can also allow for discussions to take place. Why would you have that character do that? What other ending might change the outcome? How would you react to that?
Stories from elders can teach us great points of history and experience. Stories from young ones can give us a new angle on life’s adventures and stories about us can help us teach, learn and understand others and ourselves.
What story do you have to tell?
Music is a great learning tool for the classroom. It is especially useful for auditory learners.
Music can be from sounds of the orchestra in an actual music lesson but can also be incorporated into other subjects to help remember important details. School House Rock did a great job of incorporating music into lessons to teach about grammar, government and more. After all these years I can still remember the songs!
Sounds are as effective as songs. Having a beat to do multiplication tables can be quite useful. Clapping out syllables or tapping through spelling words can all generate a type of music into the lesson plan. Not only does it help kids remember the information, but it can keep kids moving too.
Try music with dance for a bit of exercise or a fifteen minute break. Music helps soothe the body and the dance can help get some anxieties out. Bring music into the science lesson by learning about sound waves, the ear or how animals use sound. Bring it into history by learning the background of different instruments, the biographies of various composers or the history of the different genres of music. In English you can analyze song lyrics, or write you own songs. And you can bring it into art by drawing while listening to music to feel the music and interpret it into a picture.
Combining music with each subject is an entertaining way to make the lessons more sharp and less flat!
There is much talk about family game night, a chance to spend quality time with the family. But board games shouldn’t be restricted to game night, they can be part of your school lesson plans!
Most board games offer learning through counting, matching and cooperation. There are also board games made specifically for their educational value, like phonics bingo or money matching games. Classic games like Monopoly and Scrabble have obvious educational value but games like Operation or Jenga can be great to develop hand/eye coordination and patience skills. The key to having board games enhance learning is to play them and have the child do the work. Have them count the spots on the die, then move the appropriate space. Have them find the colour that matches their own or count out the money owed. As they get older give them more opportunity to learn by letting them be the banker, or having them help a younger sibling spell words. Board games allow children to learn by doing, and by talking and by seeing – perfect to fit all learning styles. As an added bonus, playing a game can help active learners learn to sit still for a specific amount of time.
Make board games part of your lessons and see how much fun your children have learning!
Mneumonics are memory aids. They can be rhymes, acrostics, acronyms and other devices to help remember key facts. They are especially helpful to auditory learners.
Remember the rhyme about Christopher Columbus we learned in school? In fourteen hundred and ninety-two Columbus sailed the ocean blue. I will always remember the year he discovered America thanks to this rhyme.
What if you needed to know the line up of planets from the Sun? Create a sentence using the first letter of each planet to start a word in the sentence. For example: My Very Excited Mom Just Started Using New Pillows. The first letter of each word in the sentence represents the planets and all the words in the sentence show us the order of the planets. This is a good technique to help remember the order of many different things.
Acronym is an abbreviation of several words in such a way that the abbreviation itself forms a pronounceable word. For example SCUBA stands for Self Contained Underwater Breathing Apparatus. This is another way you can use to help remember important things – such as the Great Lakes – use the acronym HOMES to identify Huron, Ontario, Michigan, Erie and Superior.
Mneumonics are fun to use to show differences in similar words. Stalactites and Stalagmites are similar words, both representing formations of rock within a cave. StalaGmites has a G in it so it represents the one that grows from the Ground and StalacTites grow from the Top.
Encourage children to make up their own rhymes, acrostics, acronyms or other memory aids – they will remember them better that way.
There are no rules, that is the beauty of homeschooling. Working one-on-one with your child will allow you to determine the best way for them to learn, and then you can teach it appropriately.
If your child does not like to read, offer stories in comic book form, you can get classics, Shakespeare, even the history of the world in this form. Comics break up the words with pictures making reading easier for reluctant readers.
If your child likes hockey bring that into your lesson plan. A unit study on a specific subject that the child likes not only covers the curriculum but also inspires them to learn because they are learning about something they are interested in.
If your child is an auditory learner, work in some audio books, computer games and music to the lessons so that they have the best chance to learn. Likewise, visual learners and kinesthetic learners can be taught to their learning style.
If your child is struggling with a concept, or is not liking a particular subject, tweak it so that the lessons will be more interesting, or easier for them to understand.
With homeschoooling you can take the time to determine how best to teach lessons to your child. You can cater to their interests, their likes and their dislikes. You can make education fun and important to them – that should be the only rule!
Downloadable ebooks are a great way to have instant lessons! Find the book, add it to your cart, download and print!
Downloading workbooks is time-saving, money-saving and paper-saving because you need only to print the pages you want. It gives you a great opportunity to fill in lessons with ready-made worksheets, templates and more. Even novels can be downloaded which can be great when there is a hard to find or popular book to be read for that lesson. Sometimes it is worth downloading a book to see if it is worth buying it for keeps. Audiobooks can also be downloaded to a computer or MP3 player, allowing for stories on the go, or to help the audio learner. Downloadable ebooks make quick and easy lesson plans with just a couple of clicks of the mouse!
Knowing your child’s learning style is important so that you know how to teach them the best way they can learn.
Some kids need to hear the lessons (auditory learners), some need to see it (visual learners) and some need to be involved in the lesson (kinesthetic learners). Knowing which style is their strongest will help you know how to teach each lesson. Although it is good to teach each learning style so that kid’s can strenghten each one, it is best to teach to their learning style on subjects they are less familiar with or struggling with. To find out the learning style of your child, just fill out a learning styles questionnaire about them.
It is great when students can move on to independent reading, but how do you know they are understanding what they are reading?
Reading aloud is still important to do even after the student has acquired independent reading skills so you know they understand what they are reading. You can take turns reading a story aloud to make your child more comfortable. Or have a storytelling session, have your child read aloud to you and the next day do the same for him/her. This can be further developed into creating stories as each person can add to the story as it is told. It is a fun way to make sure what is read is understood.
An auditory learner is one that learns better with hearing. The more sounds that can be brought into the lesson, the better this learner will understand.
Sounds can be from reading aloud, books on tape, movies on DVD or video, computer games and more. Music is also a strong teacher for auditory learners which means rhyming, rhythm and beats can help enforce lessons. Singing multiplication tables, rhyming poems about history or stomping out spelling words are all great learning devices for auditory learners.