Everybody learns in different ways. Have you ever sat looking at a page in the book, just staring at the words and nothing is going into your brain? Well, that might be because visuals are not conducive to your Learning Style.
It’s beneficial to know what style we are so that we can hack our brains to study and learn better. By using techniques that are best suited for us, we can learn and process new information more efficiently.
Keep reading to learn more about how I teach this lesson on Learning Styles at the beginning of the year:
- How do you think you learn best?
- Learning Style questionnaire
- Questionnaire analysis
- Learning Style reflection
- One Pager
- Why I love this lesson
- Resources in Google Drive to teach this lesson
How Do You Think You Learn Best?
How do you think you learn best? is the essential question of this lesson.
The three most common learning styles are Visual, Auditory, and Kinesthetic. Google, “3 learning styles,” to read more about each one and also to find self-assessment quizzes.
My learning style can be described as a Visual Learner. I need to see things to learn. Drawing diagrams and pictures helps me learn new information. Another strategy is marking up my notes by underlining, highlighting and adding details. I prefer quiet spaces to do my work. Noise and music can be distracting to me and I lose focus.
I wish I knew this about myself in secondary school and in college. It would have made my life way less stressful and saved me a lot of time. Looking back, I tried to memorize everything. I didn’t know how else to learn it. The teacher lectured, and then we took a test.
It was up to me to figure out how to get it to stick in my brain. I would have benefited from knowing about the strategies and study habits from this lesson. And that’s what I want to give my students: the advantage of utilizing specific tools so they can learn proficiently.
Learning Style Questionnaire
The activity begins with a student self-assessment. In the AVID survey, there are 45 Yes/No statements to respond to. Students read each statement carefully, and circle “Yes” if it describes them or “No” if it does not. There are no right or wrong responses. It’s all subjective.
Students need to imagine themselves in each scenario. The tricky thing is that the questions are nuanced. For example, #5 says, “I remember what I have read better than what I have heard.” #9 says, “I understand a math problem that is written down better than one I hear.”
Even for me by the end of the survey I feel a little confused, almost like deja vu. Sometimes students just aren’t sure if they agree with the statement or not. There are a few that I need to explain again and again.
Over the years I tried 2 ways of administering the questionnaire:
- One way is to read each statement aloud to the class and give them time to mark each response. This works great for the trickier questions. Students can ask questions and clarify the meaning of statements that are confusing to them.
- The other way is to do the first few together. Then let them continue and do the survey on their own. As in, I Do-We Do-You Do. This is my preferred method. I go around a lot while they are taking the survey to clarify the meaning of problematic statements.
Questionnaire Analysis
The Analysis is one of my favorite parts of this lesson. It’s really simple. Except when students don’t read the directions! This is another great opportunity for I Do-We Do-You Do.
Each numbered statement is designated in the categories of Visual, Auditory, and Kinesthetic. (Also included is Individual, Group, Oral, and Written. Interesting to know, but these characteristics are not really addressed in the materials after this point).
In the Tally Chart, Students put an “X” in front of the numbers they answered “Yes” to in the survey. If they answered “No” they leave it alone. At this point it’s not evident what the results of the survey are.
Next students count up the X’s in each category, and enter them in the table. They do a little math and use the totals to shade in some bar graphs.
The bar graphs give a clear visual of their results. They can now see the most dominant learning style(s) for them.
The three most common learning styles are visual, auditory, and kinesthetic. The survey reveals students’ dominant learning style, however they can be any combination of the three.
The results are so clear that students naturally start to compare and discuss the results at the their tables. I can glance at their papers and instantly see what their learning style is. I can also see who needs more time.
Learning Style Reflection
Now that students know their dominant learning style(s), they read about them in greater detail. The AVID lesson comes with 2 support documents for this:
- First, we look at short written descriptions of the 3 learning styles. We circle key terms and underline the main ideas. Drawing and marking up notes are strategies for processing new information. These and many more are explored later in the activity for each learning style.
- Second, is a table of the 3 learning styles. It includes countless study habits and strategies that are specific to each one. To me this is the most valuable resource of the lesson. Students highlight the strategies that work best for them:
Students use the information to write a short reflection about their learning style and respond to the following prompts:
- My learning style is:
- My learning style can be described in the following way:
- Based on my learning style, some of my study habits are:
- Since not every classroom may foster my learning style all the time, I can still do well in each of my classes by doing the following:
If you don’t have the AVID resources, I suggest researching study habits of the 3 learning styles. Create descriptions and a table like it for your lesson. Alternatively, students can do online research to discover the study habits for themselves. They can organize the information in their own table. This table will show which study habits work best for them. It will also reflect their learning style.
One Pager
Students reflect on their experience in this activity and create a visual representation of the main ideas in a One Pager. Letting the information bounce around in our brains helps us learn. Then, creating something new with our ideas reinforces this learning.
A One Pager is a creative way to summarize and communicate information. There are different ways to do one pagers, and my favorite is a simplified version of the AVID one pager criteria:
- Title and symbolic border that represents the theme
- 2 quotes with punctuations and citations that represent the concept (this one is a little tricky given the materials, some online research can provide some more interesting quotes)
- 3 graphics/images related to the main ideas
- 5 key vocabulary terms (no need to define them, just the words!)
- 2 How/Why Questions (with the answers!)
- A thoughtful personal response (sometimes I ask for a 3-5 sentence summary of the main idea)
The Materials needed are:
- Blank paper (stock paper makes them super nice)
- Rulers
- Colored pencils, markers, crayons, or pens
Students use their reflection, the descriptions of the learning styles, and the information in the study habits table for their one pager.
The one pagers are imaginative, unique, informative, and personalized to each student. My students genuinely enjoy doing them. They make excellent classroom art. One pagers are one of my favorite assignments.
This is the first one pager we do in the school year. Later in the year we will do more. They are a great response to reading an article, and they make excellent sub plans. Check out my blog post 9 Routine Assignments that are Easy to Prep and Make Great Sub Plans to read more.
Why I Love This Lesson
Learning Styles is my absolute favorite lesson at the beginning of the year. The activity reveals how we all learn differently and have different strengths. I love how my students discover things about themselves, their preferences, and their tendencies. They come to understand more about how they learn best.
They acquire helpful tools and study skills. They can utilize these throughout the school year. They can also use them in their future learning to help them be successful. This enables them to take ownership of their learning experiences. They gain control in academic situations where they might feel lost or overwhelmed.
Every year, this lesson reminds me that my students are diverse thinkers. It helps me get to know my students better academically. I need to teach in a variety of ways to appeal to their different learning modalities.
This activity and the revelations for my students sticks with me the entire year. It helps me be a better teacher by incorporating a variety of the strategies throughout the year. It is like a toolkit.
I bring up the Learning Styles with my students from time to time throughout the year. Like before a test or quiz. I remind them of the ways they can help their brains learn better. They can become more efficient and successful in their learning. Check out my blog post 12 Study Tips to Teach Middle School Students to read more.
Resources to Teach this Lesson
I use the activity pages from AVID, which are my favorite. I hope my explanations and example pictures in this blog post can help you. With these tools, you can facilitate this excellent learning activity in your classroom.
There are other versions of the AVID resources that are available for free online. Just Google, “Learning Style Survey,” or “Learning Style Questionnaire high school/middle school,” to find one. I even saw one on Teachers Pay Teachers for under $5 that had some pretty good reviews.
Here I found some handouts that can help you facilitate this lesson in your classroom: https://curr114.weebly.com/uploads/6/0/0/3/60030039/avid_learning_styles.pdf
I also I found this online article with some nice examples if you want to read more about One Pagers: https://www.weareteachers.com/one-pager-examples-english-language-arts/
And here is another short article related to Learning Styles that you may find interesting: https://www.roberthalf.com/blog/salaries-and-skills/3-different-learning-styles-and-how-to-use-them-in-your-career
Enjoy Facilitating This Excellent Learning Activity!
I learned about this lesson from my teacher friend and mentor who had over 30 years of teaching expertise. I first started doing this activity in 2018 with my high school students. I continue to do it every year, even with my 7th grade students. It’s good for everyone.
The entire Learning Styles activity takes approximately 2 block periods, or about 4 hours. Whatever students don’t finish at the end of the second block period needs to be completed for homework. Most will finish in the class time provided.
After this assignment we are ready to get into beginning of the year science content. This includes Lab Safety, Being Alive, and Systems. Check out my blog posts to read more. How She Teaches Lab Safety. Being Alive: 6 Characteristics of Living Things. How She Teaches: System, Structure, Function, Component.
I hope my thoughts and explanations are helpful. Let me know what you think about this topic by leaving a comment. I would love to hear from you! To read more about me and my classroom, check out some of my other blog posts below!
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