Learning Styles

We are all equally different... or so I tell my students. As a teacher when I walk into a classroom, I know that all of my students have different strengths. I always seek to find these strengths and try to build lesson based around them. It is my view that by doing this students will improve in many areas.

A number of years ago I began looking at various Learning Style theories. I was particularly attracted towards the work of Howard Gardner and his Multiple Intelligence theory. His work states that there are 9 intelligences.These multiple intelligences can be nurtured and strengthened, or ignored and weakened.




I used to give MI Test this test to my students to demonstrate the different types of intelligence they have and to reflect on how different activities in the classroom could be built around these styles. I recently did the test again to examine mine.

These results show my strong intelligences are musical, visual spatial and interpersonal. This is very accurate, especially when it comes to learning. I often have music playing when I am doing an activity and I examining new ideas through pictures - the recent rise in infographics are brilliant. They seem to jump out at me and I can understand the concepts. Logical scores very low - also very true as I do find working with numbers to be a problem at times (I hope they make more infographics in this area).

As teachers, I believe that we must identify and make use of our students different learning styles. By using these styles and developing multiple intelligences, we can unlock so many doors.