I love the poster idea. I will definitely keep this in mind for future use in my classroom. Thanks!
HI Barton - I was a paralegal in New York City in 1972 ( long before anyone actually KNEW how to use a paralegal!). Yes, kinesthetic would be a tough one for you although I'd bet not a lot of your students have that learning style. Thanks for sharing that activity! Susan
We like to use active demonstrations. We describe the process as the student learns the process on the equipment.
Kinesthetic approaches are the toughest to use in my field--paralegal studies. It isn't that the instructional methods can't be adapted, but the profession itself values an ability to be still and concentrate on words. So the kinesthetic part of most professional activities is incidental to what my students will be doing.
In my classroom, I will try to get students moving and creating when I see the chance. An activity I used recently was to have students team in groups of 4 or 5 to create a poster, using crayons, depicting the canons of legal ethics. The product of the activity is meant to be meaningful to visual learners, but the creation of it should also be good for the kinesthetic learners.
Hi Aimee- Thanks for your post to the forum. Seeing and feeling how the muscles actually work must indeed make your understand body motion. Great work! Best wishes - Susan
I like to have my massage thearpy student use grease penicls to trace and mark the muscles and landmarks on other students.
Hi Laura! I have some tradionally lecture-based classes that I love to get my kinesthetic learners involved with. I teach a Kinesiology course that is quite rigorous and difficult, but I have found that when I put my students into small groups and have them practice the movements and palpate the muscles we learned on each other, they get the material much better.
Kinesthetic is where I've had to do the most work. Lecturing, using YouTube and TeacherTube, assigning and providing reading all comes naturally to me.
I have an activity in my intro psych class to further the discussion of memory. I provide brown paper bags containing "stuff that smells." Playdoh, banana, baby powder, rubbing alcohol... They smell the contents of the bag and identify the first thing they think of. I think that fits the Kinesthetic criteria of working with the bags, etc... I'm not sure how the sense of smell fits the category but it gets them up and around, handling the bags, making notes, sharing, etc, so it hits on several of the learning styles.
Also in my Interpersonal Relations class, I do a "speed connetion" activity early in the term. I get everyone lined up and have them rotate at 60 second intervals getting to know their classmates. I relate it to the material they've been reading, hearing and reflecting on. There are so many levels of benefit to this activity. The students LOVE it. It creates value for them personally - getting to know each other, (especially the shy ones) as students - getting hands on experience with the material and sharing their experiences with the material.
Margie
Hi Justin - Thanks for your post to the forum. You have given some great ideas for reaching kinesthetic learners - thanks for sharing! Susan
Since these type of people are "hands on", I find it challenging to keep their attention. As an IT instructor it's a challenge at times to ensure material is delivered with the right break for interaction. I tell my classes that I can stand up here and give you the answer but I do not believe that is adequate learning. They must be able to think on their own and if they don't know something to simply start with Google. I have found this to be especially helpful when we have no significant labs during the class period.
A laboratory learning environment and giving visual demonstrations coupled with lecture is a great classroom situation for kinesthetic learners. Adding an audio/visual component to this type of classroom can add even another opportunity to reach these kinds of learners.
In the internet / digital video age, I find that audio-visual aids are a great way to incorporate video presentations, graphics (charts, graphs, and other visual aids), powerpoint presentations, and demo software and computer-related lessons.
Hi Peter- Thanks for your post to the forum. Great ideas- thanks for sharing! Best wishes for continued success in your teaching career. Susan
Hi Tammy - thanks for another post! I love marketing classes -you can be really creative in assignments and projects. Best wishes- Susan
I applied to another question on this forum earlier. But as far as what I might do is give them as many hands on type opportunites as possible. I am in marketing so it would be laying out print ads - writing tv ads - maybe even writing jingles for radio/tv.
keep them active,change up methods often
One thing I used to do in my residential classrooms is I would have my students actually practice certain tasks. Since I teach writing courses, that means I would have them practice writing things like thesis statements that we would then share out loud and discuss. This way, we would be attempting the task before they had to do it on their own in their essays. It also gave me a chance to see if they grasped the concept of good thesis writing while I still had them in the classroom.
On the first day of class i go through a introduction exercise to to indentify the students prior experiences to curve the instruction towaods there learning preferences.
Kinesthetic learners learn best by doing things with their hands, so I have them make something. In a physics course, they do labs. In a computing course, they write graphics programs that make things move. In other courses, they do projects that involve making things- demos, skits, whatever. Often you can just give them a goal and let them figure something out.
Sometimes I try to accommodate by doing this too. Other times, I think that students should also be a little proactive when it comes to reading the texts, too. They are paying for them, and it would be impossible to verbally share everything in the text during a class. They will be living in a world where there won't always be someone there to directly deliver that material, and finding ways to get them to utilize the written material will make them more resourceful.
