Sunday, October 21, 2012

Who is the Teacher?--

One way for kids to have more ownership in their lessons and retain more of what you teach them is to let them be the teacher once in a while. My daughter loves it when we I let her do this.

Sometimes after she has read a story, I have her make a test for Mom to take. She doesn’t show much mercy to me either. I had a little trouble on one test. I can still see her face as she giggled about me missing some of the questions. What I got out of this was the ability to measure her comprehension of what she read. In order for her to make a good test for me, she had to know about what she read. I was impressed with the difficulty of her questions.

You can also let an older child teach a concept they are good at to a younger sibling. Let them make the lesson plans for a younger sibling. Once in a while will not hurt the younger child.

This is a great way to increase retention of lessons being taught and create interest and curiosity before the lesson. Be sure to let your child know they are going to the be teacher before you assign the task of reading and creating a test for you or planning or teaching a lesson to a younger sibling. When they know what is expected, they will do a much better job.

Sunday, October 7, 2012

Visual-Spatial Learners

My daughter has dyslexia and is a visual-spatial learner, a right brained learner. She is bright, but definitely learns differently from me. She thinks in pictures rather than words. She needs the whole picture first and doesn’t work in sequential steps.
The left hemisphere is sequential, analytical, and time-oriented. The right hemisphere perceives the whole, synthesizes, and apprehends movement in space.
If you think you might have a visual-spatial learner in your home, here are things to look for:
  • Thinks primarily in pictures
  • Has visual strengths
  • Relates well to space
  • Is a whole-part learner
  • Learns concepts all at once
  • Is able to learn hard things easily and easy things are hard
  • Is a good synthesizer
  • Sees the big picture; may miss details
  • Reads maps well
  • Is better at math reasoning than computation
  • Learns whole words easily
  • Must visualize words to spell them
  • Prefers keyboarding to writing
  • Creates unique methods of organization
  • Arrives at correct solutions intuitively
  • Learns best by seeing relationships
  • Has good long-term visual memory
  • Learns concepts permanently; is turned off by drill and repetition
  • Develops own methods of problem solving
  • Is sensitive to other people’s attitudes
  • May have very uneven grades
  • Enjoys geometry and physics
  • Is creatively, mechanically, emotionally, or technologically gifted
  • Is a late bloomer