- Visual Learners – Someone with a preference for visual learning, including images, graphs, written instructions and more, is partial to seeing and experiencing things. This is often referred to as the type of’ spatial’ learning. When it is interpreted in a visual way, students who learn by sight understand knowledge better. These are your students who are doodling, your list builders and your notes-taking students.
- Auditory Learners-Auditory learners prefer to learn more when sound supports the subject matter. Such students would rather listen to a lecture than read written notes, and to enhance new concepts and ideas, they also use their own voices. Such forms of learners tend to read to themselves out loud. In training, they are not afraid to speak up and are great at describing things orally.
- Kinesthetic Learners- Kinesthetic learners learn by feeling or doing things, also called tactile learners. They want to get interested in order to grasp concepts by acting out incidents or using their hands to touch and treat them. These kinds of learners can struggle to sit still and sometimes excel or like to dance in sports. When learning, they can need to take more frequent breaks.
- Reading/Writing Learners- Reading/writing learners tend to learn by written words, according to the VARK Modalities theory developed by Fleming and Mills in 1992. Although there is some overlap with visual learning, by writing, reading papers or books, writing in diaries, looking up terms in the dictionary and searching the internet for just about anything. These kinds of learners are also drawn to language.
Understanding these diverse forms of learning doesn’t stop in the classroom. Teachers are empowering them for their futures by equipping students with instruments in their early years. Identifying how a child learns best can have a dramatic effect on their ability to interact with the subjects you teach, as well as how they communicate with the rest of the class.
