We've all heard about different learning styles. You may have even taken an online test to help you determine whether you are primarily visual, kinesthetic, or auditory. Knowing how you best intake information can be helpful not just in education, but for the whole of life. However, there are a few 'learning styles' we all share that should be taken into account in any educational environment.
1. Prioritizing play - Learning is optimized for children and many adults in an active, play-based learning environment. I think we would all agree that boredom is the death of learning! When schoolchildren are actively engaged in completing a learning task, it is more likely that the knowledge acquired will be retained by the brain. Numerous pedagogical studies have proven this principle over the years; trawl through your search engine to find many pages of relevant results. Children that are primarily kinaesthetic learners should have an extra emphasis on this kind of active learning, though all learning styles can benefit from it.
2. Shrinking Stress - If boredom is the death of learning, then stress is the enemy of education. Neurologically, stress elevates your levels of cortisol and adrenaline which in turn reduces peripheral brain activity. You may have heard of this effect before: when the brain interprets there being a threat or risk of some kind, it shuts down all higher functioning and addresses the stressful situation at hand through the classic fight, flight or freeze response. All kinds of knowledge acquisition involve higher brain functioning, so any activities which create anxiety in the classroom environment will actually prevent learning. If a child is overly anxious, then it is important to focus on increasing his or her confidence through short learning exercises where failure is an unlikely outcome.
3. Emotion is a powerful player in developing memory. In fact, memory retention is one of the key roles of our emotions. When your emotions are not engaged, your memory retention level is much reduced. So the old Victorian routine of creating an environment of extreme fear in the classroom would have reduced the ability of the students to perform due to stress, but counteracting that, it might have helped them remember some knowledge taught. However, we don't recommend employing scare techniques as a strategy!
Positive emotions allow high performance AND good memory retention as well as they reduce stress.
1. Prioritizing play - Learning is optimized for children and many adults in an active, play-based learning environment. I think we would all agree that boredom is the death of learning! When schoolchildren are actively engaged in completing a learning task, it is more likely that the knowledge acquired will be retained by the brain. Numerous pedagogical studies have proven this principle over the years; trawl through your search engine to find many pages of relevant results. Children that are primarily kinaesthetic learners should have an extra emphasis on this kind of active learning, though all learning styles can benefit from it.
2. Shrinking Stress - If boredom is the death of learning, then stress is the enemy of education. Neurologically, stress elevates your levels of cortisol and adrenaline which in turn reduces peripheral brain activity. You may have heard of this effect before: when the brain interprets there being a threat or risk of some kind, it shuts down all higher functioning and addresses the stressful situation at hand through the classic fight, flight or freeze response. All kinds of knowledge acquisition involve higher brain functioning, so any activities which create anxiety in the classroom environment will actually prevent learning. If a child is overly anxious, then it is important to focus on increasing his or her confidence through short learning exercises where failure is an unlikely outcome.
3. Emotion is a powerful player in developing memory. In fact, memory retention is one of the key roles of our emotions. When your emotions are not engaged, your memory retention level is much reduced. So the old Victorian routine of creating an environment of extreme fear in the classroom would have reduced the ability of the students to perform due to stress, but counteracting that, it might have helped them remember some knowledge taught. However, we don't recommend employing scare techniques as a strategy!
Positive emotions allow high performance AND good memory retention as well as they reduce stress.
About the Author:
Learn more about dyslexia and what causes reading difficulty. Stop by the Oxford Learning Solutions website where you can find out all about the Easyread System and how synthetic phonics can help.
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