Nora Wheliss

ESSAY: NORA WHELISS

WHAT ARE LEARNING STYLE DIFFERENCES IN CHILDREN WITH A FOCUS ON CHILDREN IN GRADES 4TH- 6TH?

For the service scholar project, I chose to use my love for children to inspire my service work. I worked with three different organizations that focus on different parts of early childhood development and education. They were Nashville Dolphins, WPC Children, and Preston Taylor Ministries. Within each organization, I was placed in a leadership role for some type of teaching opportunity for the kids with whom I was working, whether it was reading, swimming, or outdoor activities. Within these experiences, I was able to observe the different learning and teaching styles that each individual favored, and I wanted to see if their background or activity helped to determine the learning style that most benefited them. There are four main types of learning that kids use. Those are Visual, Auditory, Tactile, and Kinesthetic. Each of these learning styles was represented in different ways in the experiences with the kids. (Gardner)

The first is visual learning. (Gardner) Children who use visual learning learn through seeing, they learn through the ideas of observation of parents or teacher’s body language and facial expressions. (Edwards) They are more likely to understand concepts through demonstrations and descriptions. They often are the ones with the brightest imaginations. In learning situations, too much action or movements tend to distract them. (Pennington)

The second is auditory learning. Auditory learners learn through listening. Children who are auditory learners tend to learn the best when they are able to talk through different concepts. (Gardner) Verbal instruction is typically more informative than written instruction for auditory learners. (Edwards) Often the biggest problems for auditory learners occur when they are in loud circumstances, quiet learning spaces tend to work best for auditory learners. (Pennington)

The third type of learning is tactile. Tactile learners learn through touch. Kids who are tactile learners tend to learn best when they have a project they can do with their hands. Tactile learners tend to prefer drawing to aid their memory and learning. Their primary learning struggles occur when listening to a class lecture, when writing extensive essays, or when reading for long periods of time. (Pennington)

The fourth type of learner is the Kinesthetic learner. Kinesthetic learners learn through moving and doing. (Edwards) Kinesthetic learners typically learn best when they are able to move around and experience hands-on approaches to learning. Their main struggles occur when they are told to sit down for long periods of time without experience in the actual process of the topic they’re trying to comprehend.(Gardner)

With the Nashville Dolphins, the kids fall under multiple sections. Many are visual learners, meaning it is most beneficial to them when the volunteers demonstrate the proper swimming techniques to them, allowing them to visualize what they are trying to learn how to do. (Pennington) Very few of them were tactile learners, it wasn’t very helpful to draw a picture of someone swimming in order to help, but it would

still be fun! Also with a majority of the kids being non-verbal in their communication techniques, talking through concepts wasn’t typically helpful either. Almost none were auditory learners. We could repeat the proper way to execute a swimming stroke as many times as we wanted, but they typically would not be able to comprehend what we were trying to teach them. A majority were kinesthetic learners, when they had the opportunity to try out a swim stroke and have adjustments during the process, they were much more likely to understand what they were supposed to be doing. Overall through working with the Dolphins I learned that the kids responded best to kinesthetic learning techniques. Getting the kids in the water, and just getting them to start swimming with corrections almost always was the best way to teach them the proper skills needed to be safe in the water.

The Nashville Dolphins organization works to teach children with disabilities how to swim, to inspire physical activity, and to further brain development. As a part of this organization, I worked as a volunteer in the learn to swim program, where I was in the water with the kids for 4 thirty-minute sessions every Wednesday night. In the sessions, we would work one on one with the children who had disabilities often associated with down syndrome, or autism verbal and non-verbal. It was a great chance to be able to learn about the kids specifically and the different techniques it took to teach them. It was a lot of repetition and multiple different explanations of each task. The process of just getting into the water was sometimes the hardest part of the lesson for some kids because the thought of the cold substance sitting in front of them was nerve-wracking, and it was understandable if they needed to take it slow and just get their toes wet before fully getting into the water. The main reason for the fear of water is some of the kids aren’t used to the concept of being fully submerged and due to this fact one of the main focuses for many of the lessons is trying to get the kids to put their chins then, mouth, then the nose, and eventually full face and head into the water. The overall benefits of the lesson are well represented particularly as it connects to children with down syndrome. On average they experience a slightly delayed development rate to the typical child, and the active activity mixed with the educational standpoint and social interaction work to improve their mental capabilities making it very beneficial. One of my favorite parts about working with them is the celebration, making it down the length of the pool is a major achievement and usually results in high fives and large smiles, from children who are working so hard and putting all their focus into the task at hand, causing the sense of relief and celebration to be so great once they finally figure it out. I have mostly noticed through this experience that the main educational devices for children with disabilities are repetition, slower pace, and different types of explanations for each specific action.

Preston Taylor ministries is another organization that I have had the privilege to work with. This organization works with underprivileged kids in the Nashville area. Their main focus is to bring kids into a community with faith and fellowship in an effort to get more kids off the streets and into better communities. It also works to teach them how to read to improve their education and life chances. When working with them, I got to work on their reading skills, whether it was reading to them, listening to them read, or switching off pages. The overall experience is beneficial to them and allows the opportunity to get to know more people in the community. On top of reading with them,

we also have the opportunity to play games and share a snack with them, furthering the community aspect of the experience and allowing us and them to have an experience of getting to know some more people that we might not know without these opportunities. In this case, the learning opportunity comes in the setting of being able to work through an important life skill, as well as building community and just having fun with the group as a whole.

At Preston Taylor Ministries I was able to observe that there are also different learning styles that are more beneficial depending on the kid, especially as it pertains to reading. The first technique that we typically use with the kids when we are reading with them is visual. If the volunteer is the one reading to them then pointing at the syllables as they are reading is more beneficial to the kid, allowing them to see the process taken to sound out the syllables; it is a better way to visually observe the process to help read a book. (Edwards) Kinesthetic learning is the primary tactic used to help them learn how to read. Simply sitting with the kids and letting them work through the pages of different books, with them getting a couple of words, and needing some help with some of the others. The process works because the best way to know what they can do is to see them try to do it and see how much skill they actually have in the topic _ of reading. We also use kinesthetic learning in order to learn how to play the different games in the afternoon; we typically will demonstrate how to execute the activity, but sometimes we just get right into playing something such as capture the flag. We also practice some visual learning, with the idea of being able to demonstrate behavior while sharing a snack with each other. Overall if you were to analyze one day with the kids at Preston Taylor, we use all the different types of learning to further their experience and to work on furthering their reading, community, and social skills, while getting to know the greater Nashville community.

The last group I worked with was, as a volunteer counselor for a camp with 4th and 5th graders from Westminster Presbyterian Church. The camp worked to expand the boundaries of outdoor activities for the kids, to learn about outdoor skills, and grow together as a community. One of the main purposes of this camp was to work on learning how to establish boundaries but also to learn how to comfortably stretch your boundaries for something that could end up being fun for them. But most importantly, it was an opportunity for them to learn about themselves and to learn techniques for future endeavors.

The final opportunity to observe the learning techniques in children was on the Westminster Presbyterian Church’s Outdoor challenge trip over the summer. As a volunteer camp counselor for this experience, I had the opportunity to join the kids in some of the activities, teach them how to participate, and work together with new people in new activities throughout the week. The majority of the week demonstrated kinesthetic learning. Most of the activities were learned through doing different activities such as the high ropes course which only had so much that you could explain. The main verbal teaching happened when we were filling the kids in on the safety precautions for the activities, but once they were in the moment, they had to figure things out for themselves. On another day, the main activity was rappelling. With rappelling, it was crucial to be able to utilize auditory learning skills because when the

kids were on the side of the cliff, they had to be able to comprehend the instructions being given to them in order to complete the task at hand. Throughout the week as a whole, I mostly was able to see that there were many different learning techniques that were needed in order to be successful in the different activities throughout the week. When comparing the Nashville Dolphins, Preston Taylor Ministries, and Westminster Presbyterian Church’s Outdoor Challenge,, it is impossible to generalize about the overall learning circumstances and recommendations for each general organization. Overall the organizations were well divided based on the kids present in the organizations, most showed that kinesthetic learning tended to provide the best learning opportunities, due to the benefit of hands-on approaches to learning. With the Westminster Presbyterian Church’s Outdoor Challenge the use of auditory learning was necessary for the success within the learning environment for the different tasks provided. Within Preston Taylor, Visual and Kinesthetic were crucial to the process of learning how to read. But when it came to the games auditory learning was also very important for the success of the overall activity as well as visual learning with acting based on example. The Nashville Dolphins learning experience was the most complex when it came to learning styles, mostly due to the need to cater each lesson to the particular child whom you were working with. Some benefited most when they could see a demonstration first then they could attempt to execute it themselves. Others benefitted most with the kinesthetic approach allowing them to just get in the water and attempt the different movements first, then to later be corrected towards the correct movements for the swimming strokes. Mostly they were just eager to learn no matter what the technique was that the volunteers were using. Overall the experiences were able to demonstrate the idea that the background and state of the location of learning do not affect the way that the child is able to confer different information, it is more about the individual person, their experience, and ideas, and the manner in which the information is being presented.

Work cited

Collin, C., Benson, N., Ginsburg, J., Grand, V., Lazyan, M., & Weeks, M. (2012). The Psychology Book: Big

Ideas Simply Explained (First Edition ed.). DK Publishing. Edwards, L. (2002). The Creative Arts: A Process Approach for Teachers and Children. Upper Saddle River,

NJ: Merrill Prentice Hall. Gardner, H. (1993). Multiple Intelligences: The Theory in Practice. New York, NY: BasicBooks. Pennington, Molly. “How to Identify Your Child’s Learning Style.” Noodle, 6 Jan. 2015, www.noodle.com/ articles/how-to-identify-your-childs-learning-style. Accessed 23 Feb. 2022.