{"id":1826,"date":"2010-04-13T11:03:45","date_gmt":"2010-04-13T18:03:45","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.janice-campbell.com\/?p=359"},"modified":"2019-09-04T18:25:37","modified_gmt":"2019-09-04T18:25:37","slug":"learning-styles","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/doingwhatmatters.com\/learning-styles\/","title":{"rendered":"Learning Styles: Do They Make a Difference?"},"content":{"rendered":"\r\n

In the How to Homeschool a Boy<\/em> series (the three previous posts), I talked about some of the things I learned through the homeschooling years. One of the first things I learned about was learning styles, or preferred ways of taking in information.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

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\"Learning

Can learning styles be a roadmap to better teaching?<\/p><\/div>\r\n<\/figure>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

A slow start<\/h1>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

Because I was educated in relatively traditional public schools, the only method of in-school learning I’d been exposed to was textbook\/workbook-based. That meant that when I began learning about homeschooling, those were the sort of educational materials that looked familiar. The first year of homeschooling I saved up and dutifully purchased a horribly expensive complete one-year curriculum \u2014 textbooks, workbooks, teacher’s manuals (all designed for classroom use).<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

Just a couple of months in, it was clear that the material was not only cumbersome and time-consuming, significant chunks of it were simply not working. My bright, happy little boy who had been so excited about starting school was starting to dread each day and even dislike history, which he’d formerly loved. Something had to change.\u00a0<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

Scrapping what didn’t work<\/h2>\r\n\r\n
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This is the books we used to teach all our boys to read. Our grandchildren have used it too.<\/p><\/div>\r\n

\"\"There wasn’t a lot to read on homeschooling at that time, but I knew that there was no way we could do twelve years of school using these materials and methods. Looking back to my own school years, I remembered that the primary way I’d learned anything was through reading real books, writing, and doing projects. I put all but the math from the expensive curriculum on the shelf, started Teach Your Child to Read in 100 Easy Lessons,<\/em><\/a> and mapped out a literature-based plan for studying history and science.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

It was at that point that I came across information about learning styles that \u00a0made me feel even more confident about moving forward without textbooks and workbooks. Although I preferred to learn mostly through seeing, I discovered that not everyone does. Some students learn more easily by hearing and others by doing (learning styles or preferences can get more complicated than that, but these three aptitudes are a simple starting point). To me, learning styles were like looking at a road map \u2014 a reminder that there are often alternate routes to the same destination.\u00a0<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

Learning styles in real life<\/h2>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

Looking back at the previous posts on teaching boys, you might notice that there were differences in the things that each boy asked me to share.\u00a0One asked me to see something interesting he had found (keyword is SEE); another wanted me to see what he had done and watch what he could do with it (keyword is DO); and the other wanted me to hear something that inspired him (keyword is HEAR).<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

Those keywords correspond to specific learning styles or preferences:<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n