Student led activities and demo's
Hi Jenny- Thanks for your post to the forum. You have some great ideas for engaging your kinesthetic students. Thanks for sharing! Best wishes for continued success in your teaching career. Susan
As an interpersonal communication instructor, I find we spend a lot of time in discussion and so I have to be careful not to skew the class too far toward only auditory learners. One approach I have used to adapt to kinesthetic learners is to have students write ideas on notecards/post-it notes and post them on charts on the board. This way they are physically engaging with the material and also getting up out of their chairs and moving around for part of the class period. Often I find that discussion improves and seems to be a bit energized from this kind of an activity.
Activities which enable students to manipulate objects. Hands-on learning would be most effective
Hi Jennifer- Thanks for your post to the forum. Great job at adding activities that will appeal to your kinesthetic learners. Best wishes for continued success in your teaching career. Susan
Susan,
I teach geology classes, so it is very important that I get the class out into the field as often as possible. We go out, not only hiking, but examining rock formation, collecting fossils that they then have to identify, and present to me for a grade, but also labs that involve the description and identification of rock, and mineral samples. I also play a game of "Truth or Fib," which gets them up, and writing o the board. I will say that I teach night classes so I am unfortunately limited by darkness in terms of getting them out into the field as much as I would like, so I am always looking for ideas, and new ways to get them physically involved.
each week the students are required to learn ten drugs and their uses. Before they are quizzed on these I have the students draw one of the drugs from a cup and come up to the board one at a time and placing information about the drug on the board. We do this until all information about the ten drugs is on the board. This gets the students moving around and helps them to recall the info before the quiz.
Hi Kara- Thanks for your post to the forum. I loved your idea of having your students become the "blood" - very creative! Best wishes for continued success in your teaching career. Susan
Hi Jeffery- Thanks for your post to the forum. Especially for kinesthtic learners, being able to "do" the task is essential to actually learning it. Best wishes for continued success in your teaching career. Susan
I prefer to walk them through a guided demonstration where i tell them how to complete the task but have them actually perform it and answer any quwestions along the way.
I try to get students up and moving around the classroom. One example is when teaching flow of blood through structures of the heart and around the body. I have the students act as the "blood" and have various structures labelled throughout the classroom and then have them move from structure to structure in the correct order.
Hi David-Thanks for your post to the forum. Especially in the culinary field, I agree that one-on-one feedback is important. How can a student know if they are holding that knife wrong until you show them (or they slice a finger!). It takes effort to give that attention , but is well worth it. Best wishes for continued success in your teaching career. Susan
I find it's useful to engage the students one on one when they are trying out new phyical challenges. When they have a new knife skill to learn or a new cooking technique to master, and they can get immediate feedback, constructive criticism and assesement, they seem to more easily master the subject matter. When I can't be right next to them to provide a critique of their actions, the development is slower. They like the hands on approach to our culinary classes and they crave immediate feedback.
Hi Vicki - Your learners are surely primarily kinesthetic. Including as much "hands-on" as possible in your lectures will really help to keep your lectures "juicy"! Susan
As a Culinary Instructor, I find that most of our students work very well in the kitchen and can earn very high grades. However, they often get bored during lecture because they prefer to be moving around and doing things. Students respond well to Jeopardy style games rather then a dry lecture.
Hi Tom - Thanks for your post to the forum. You are doing a great job at brainstorming ideas to accomodate your kinesthetic students! Best wishes for continued success in your teaching career. Susan
Hi Jayson-Your classrooms are a great marriage of technology and hands on instruction. Best wishes- Susan
I've had students "act out" Bible memorization. They choose actions for the words and perform the memory verse in front of the group.
I'm hoping to incorporate more activity into my computer programming and math courses but the abstract concepts are difficult. One idea mentioned here was using exaggerated movements in a demonstration. I've done similar things when teaching a list of facts. I have a visual representation on the board and then jump around to point out the important points.
I think I'll try inviting the students to the board to demonstrate what they've learned by pointing to the parts as well. Abstract concepts can be very hard to teach to kinesthetic learners, but our efforts will help this group of students who are often challenged in traditional classrooms.
I teach at LCB Austin and feel that we excel at catering to the needs of our students by incorporating as many tools as possible to accomodate different learning styles. Of course, there is a text - most of our students have numerous cookbooks, but no real instructional material such as our textbook - and we ask that our students to read selected materials prior to class. We have flat panel TVs, on which we render images of the finished dish, view powerpoint lectures, or display the camera feed from the cooking demo station. And finally, the reason the students come in the first place, they reproduce the items they witnessed during the cooking demo and submit them to the chef for evaluation and feedback.
Demonstrations are a good way to approach kinesthetic learners.
