Learning Styles

All learners, children and adults, have preferences for how they best learn and retain information. Essentially everyone shares some aspects of these preferences:

  • Visual preference
  • Kinesthetic preference
  • Auditory preference.

Learners get the most out of any learning activity by maximizing their preferred learning style.

Characteristics of Kinesthetic Learners:

  • Move / fidget a lot
  • Very tactile... touch everything,
  • Like to take things apart and experiment
  • Have difficulty visualizing
  • Point and gesture when speaking

Characteristics of Visual Learners

  • Need to see the big picture before working on specifics
  • Respond to visual stimulus like maps, pictures, video
  • Like show and tell
  • Prefer written step by step directions
  • Need to be shown "How" in order to understand

Characteristics of Auditory Learners

  • Learn well in traditional teach centered classrooms
  • Learn well from using rhyming patterns
  • Prefer talking and discussion to writing and reading
  • Have difficulty visualizing
  • Good at remember the content of discussions