This second post is from 2015:
Today since it is October – and I do this activity for a few days every October – I didn’t teach and broke out a learning styles inventory.
The inventory is simple and thus perfect for a group of kids. When I try to guess their three numbers (I am often right or at least I know what their distribution is) walls crumble between us. It is in my guessing each one of their patterns and esp. their dominant learning style that the relationships are forged.
Of course, I relate it to how we run our class. If I child is a dominant tactile/kinesthetic learner in my auditory class, I tell them that I respect the fact that they are a tactile learner in an auditory class but they must respect that my class is auditory.
When they know that they are not an especially auditory learner, it somehow makes things better – they can put a reason to their not being able to focus as well as others in class.
I usually guess their numbers fairly closely, because it is clear if a kid is tactile/kinesthetic (they fidget) or visual (they have a bit of trouble moving the instruction into their ears) or auditory (they are the ones who just relax and put the class on cruise-control).
This inventory is something I usually put off until later in the year, until I’ve been able to study how each of them learns, but I tried it today and it worked. It built more bridges. The classes are more personalized. They get it now about how the class works more than before. You may want to try it.
Just remember that in 300 people in any population roughly 100 would be visual, 100 auditory and 100 tactile.
Also remember that even in foreign language classes, schools have beaten the auditory and tactile kids to a pulp with the ridiculous amount of visual instruction they do (“Look at this, now read this, now look up here and read this, now write this, now fill out this sheet, look at the SmartBored”, etc.).
I would guess that since schools are so visual, and books (even books used to teach languages) are so visual, that many foreign language teachers (those 4%ers from high school) reject TPRS for that reason – they want it all to stay visual with the verb conjugation charts, etc.
The results can’t be too exact. In one small class 70% of the class was tactile but only two of them presented that way – they others had learned to quell their need to fidget. The worst of it falls on the shoulders of the tactile boys, as we all know. So when you at least acknowledge that in class, it is huge for them.
Another caution when you process this with the class – and a big one: don’t let the catty girl who heard her mom say that we need more games in class because when they play games they learn – don’t let the conversation go near that. A few snots will use their learning style to press us for making the class like their elementary class was, where they played games about fruits.