Finding out about pupils preferred learning styles.
Pupils can work in small groups interviewing one person who is particularly strong in an area of
academic work.
Some questions which could be asked:
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What is a subject that you can learn easily?
Which topic in that subject are you most pleased with learning easily?
When you were learning that topic, what were your aims/goals/objectives?
How did you know you were learning successfully?
What were you seeing? Hearing? Feeling?
When you set out to learn something new, what are the first things you do?
When you are learning something new do you see it in pictures? Or hear words? Or is it a
feeling?
If you see it in pictures, what are they like? Are they bright? Big? Colourful?
If you hear it, whose voice do you hear? Who is speaking to whom? What sort of voice is
it?
If it’s a feeling, what sort of a feeling is it?
How do you remember the new information? In pictures? Words? Feelings?
When you find the information difficult, what do you do? What makes it easier?
When you need the information for a test or an exam how do you recall it?
Modelling helps displace the myth that successful learners happen to be ‘cleverest’. It may
be that they are simply more methodical, better organised, have discovered their preferred
learning styles or are processing the information in their preferred intelligences.
Techniques for Learning/Revising. You may like to teach your pupils the following
strategies/techniques:
Index cards
Key words can be written on index cards to summarise a topic or stage in a process. On the
other side a coloured visual or symbol of some sort can be used to help recall. Turn them
over and attempt to summarise the content. By mixing them up and then sequencing them,
stages in processes can be learned.
Post its
Stick post - its with key vocabulary written on then around the study, bedroom and hallway.
Again they can be ordered and re-ordered on a flat surface. Good for preparing essays!
Posters
Dramatic and colourful posters which visually summarise important content can be placed at
eye level or above.
Review to music
An enjoyable, easy way to memorise essential summary information. Music with 60-70 beats
per minute is especially good for inducing an Alpha brain wave stage – for long-term memory.
Dramatic monologue
Parts of the text or the summarised key points spoken aloud can help with recall, particularly if
the voices are outrageous!
Get a manager
An arrangement whereby someone other than the teacher agrees to listen to, test or
interrogate the learner at a pre-agreed time.
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Walkabout
Make recall distinctive by memorising new information in an unusual location. Different
chapters in a book can be learned in different rooms. Put index cards on the floor in
sequence and walk between each, memorising as you go. This helps Kinaesthetic recall.
Raps, rhythm or rhyme
Put something in verse or to music and make it rhyme and it becomes easier to remember.
Accompany it by a suitable movement or gesture. Good for dates, kings and queens,
mathematical tables and formulae, periodic tables, lists of facts.
Visualisation
Place the information into your visual memory by making it bright, colourful, moving, attached
to a person, place or object and big. To remember difficult spellings, visualise the word in
bright, bold and colourful units chunked together. Store them as a picture in the upper visual
field. You should be able to ‘see’ it there when you need to.
Ridiculous applications
The unusual and outrageous are immediately memorable. By taking the information out of
context and giving it ridiculous applications it ‘sticks’. Try to imagine the Queen and the Pope
hitting each other with feather pillows in a boxing ring whilst shouting out differing views about
The Reformation!
Highlighter pens
Highlighter pens can be used to highlight key words so that they stick out on subsequent
readings. In languages, use different colours for different parts of the sentence.
Memory Maps
Memory-maps can be displayed, shared, added to, built up and cut up. They are nonhierarchical and connect left and right brain through their use of strong visuals, patterning and
keywords.
Faces and places
A memory technique which relies on attaching or tagging some information to a place or face
the learner knows really well. In recalling the face or place, the information accompanies it. A
similar technique is to take the information and break it down into basic elements and then
build up a story around each of these elements connecting them in as colourful, humorous
and outrageous a way as possible.
Build maps
Old wallpaper, the backs of posters and discarded Christmas paper can be scavenged and
put into use as a summary map of a whole syllabus for a student to pin to his or her bedroom
wall. Any combination of memory mapping, flow-charting, key-wording and highlighting which
is bright and visible will be effective.
Insist lists
List of essential information placed on pocket-handy card and kept with you at all times.
The final stages are: Show You Know and Review it or Lose it. Show You Know involves
the teacher and learner finding opportunities to demonstrate their new knowledge and
understanding either for their own satisfaction to agreed standards or to someone else.
Recall
Without immediate, then regular, review of new information, recall can drop by as much as
80% within 24 hours.
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