Student Learning Styles
How are you able to effectively create lesson plans that adhere to the various learning styles of your students?
Since I am a clinical nursing instructor, my classes do not take place in the traditional setting in a classroom. Instead, my students gain experience in various health facilities and really focus on practicing their assessment and nursing skills. Therefore, creating an approach that includes a diverse array of approaches (e.g. auditory, visual, listening, tactile, etc.) has been challenging. In order to compensate for the various learning styles of my students, I definitely get to know my students on an individual level because my classes are smaller. I use ice-breakers and general questions to learn about my students on both an academic and personal level. I feel fortunate since my students are very vocal and getting them to open up for me has not been an obstacle. In my field of teaching, it is integral that I have an in depth understanding of where my students excel and struggle. For instance, if my student is having trouble with assessments, it is my responsibility to not only assist them through each patient base but to give them extra assessments so that they do not fall behind in building a core skill in the field on nursing. In addition, I have my students work in pairs where I encourage students who learn in different ways to observe one another. I'm also available for students to contact when the clinical nursing session did not elucidate the concepts being learned in their didactic classes taught by other instructors.
My classes are mostly projected based so it is not too difficult to see my students different learning styles. What I have noticed is that I have to repeat myself to the younger students. Older students seem to follow along better.
Developing an understanding of how students like to receive and process information is critical. Depending on the subject matter often this can come through directed but simple conversation.
in order to reach the students with different learning styles I usually combine the methods of teaching ,I have noticed that a great number of students are visual learners with the rest having a mixture of styles. using the board has been of great help for me, using diagrams in my class of medical terminology, anatomy and physiology help me to convey the message, once they learn un diagram I give it to them before starting to teach them for 10 minutes or so for them to label to memorize what they learned in the previous class and asking them questions related to the diagrams ,or asking them to come to the board to show me what they learnt help them reinforce the material and give a feedback of what they understood.
It is true that every student learn in a particular way. I believe the most effective lesson plan is one that is tailored to fit the learning style of that particular student. From experience, I found that the vast majority of students are visual learners. Hence, my lesson plans are usually designed in such a way to incorporate a lot of power point presentations, pictures, models and handouts.
Jennifer,
Great post. I have noticed that students seem to be more engaged when they are assigned projects that enable them to "move around" the classroom and work with their classmates.
Tremayne Simpson
Tammy,
Thanks for sharing our experience with the group. It is great to hear that a veteran instructor is enthusiastic about bring in new innovations for instruction. Have you noticed a difference in student engagement?
Tremayne Simpson
I try to include some sort of hands on activity with every class. For example I write word parts on index cards and put definitions up on the board and students, in groups, have to take the word parts and create medical terms that match the definitions. It gets them up and moving, interacting with other students, and hands on.
I teach mostly hands on classes, I teach massage and the different modalities. So I like to just demonstrate the technique first and then have the students jump in and work on each other as I go from table to table and watch and give hints, we all have a different "style" for massage therapy and I find that to be very useful to see their learning styles.
John,
Although I am sure that it is a challenge, it is great that you are able to incorporate all of the learning styles within your lesson.
Tremayne Simpson
After teaching for more than a few years I have learned how different students approach learning. Some are hands-on, other listen better than read to lessons, some are great at collaborative learning, while others prefer individual. I have incorporated these learning styles into my lesson plans to accommodate these differing styles. I use readings, videos, hand-on projects, peer groups, as well as individual work assignments.
A majority of my classes involve hands on procedures. Creating lesson plans for this is both fun and exciting to me. First I like to explain the procedures that the students must complete for the auditory learners. After explaining the material I move on to demonstrating the procedures myself to allow visual learners to gain an understanding. Finally, I provide practice time for the kinesthetic learners to practice with hands on experience. After I have gone through all three of these steps I allow plenty of time for students to ask questions about what they do not understand or why procedures have to be done a certain way. This helps to ensure that the material is completely understood before assessing my students.
I try to include a variety of learning styles in each term. If I am teaching phone eticate, I will have a written assignment, small hands on assignment and a discussion. We may not be able to accomidate every learning style in every task, but we try to have a few.
Roberta,
What methods do you use to incorporate various student learning methods, within your course lesson?
Tremayne Simpson
I agree - knowing that students learn from all three types (auditory, visual and movement) helps when planning lessons and implementing all 3 into the course lessons
Using a variety of resources that use multiple intelligences insure that you reach the different learning styles of your students.
The program I teach in does a learning style assessment on all students who are accepted into the program. This gives all instructors some insight into the learning styles of the students we have and allows us to work toward reaching them. I also ask students to talk abut their backgrounds, what got them interested in this field and what their career goals are in the first class I have with them. I try to use the information that they provide in my lesson planning.
I find teaching hands-on classes help the teacher to address the various student learning styles by lecturing, show and tell activities, demonstration and return demonstration.
I make sure to have a variety of teaching modalities in an effort to reach all learning styles. Interactive powerpoint, class discussions and using real life examples. I will also have students break up into groups for collaborative learning and have them do class presentations.
