Different Learning Styles

All of us learn in different ways.

Some people like to be told a list of items to buy on an errand, and others prefer to be given a list.

Some people can remember directions by listening to an explanation: "take the 1st left after the park, then the second right. Drive through three sets of traffic lights and you will see the shop on the left next to a florist".

Others need a map roughly drawn of landmarks and directions to turn.

Kids are the same. All children learn using a range of different inputs. Some children learn when they are shown how things work, absorbing the information they see. Others can listen to an explanation and file the information away, processing it and linking it to already known facts to create understanding.

The three main ways we allow information to enter our brain is

• Verbal (through our ears and hearing pathways)
• Visual (through our eyes and visual pathways)
• Tactile (through our sense of touch and sensory pathways)

Auditory learning - learning through listening and paying attention to what you hear.

Auditory Memory - remembering through recalling what you have heard.

Tactile learning - learning through feeling (working out where your tongue moves in your mouth to say sounds).

Tactile Memory - remembering through recalling the feeling of an activity (working out where your tongue moves in your mouth to say sounds/remembering how it feels to draw an anticlockwise circle for the letter "a").

Visual learning - learning through watching and paying attention to what you see.

Visual Memory - remembering through recalling and paying attention to what you have seen.

Clever Cat Educational Resources^® use all three methods to assist children to learn via their preferred learning style. Weaker pathways can be supported

• e.g. a child who is very visual, will receive a lot of support for their auditory processing using Clever Cat.
• e.g. a child who is strong auditorally will practice memory hooks with visual information to support their learning.
• e.g. a child with sound pronunciation difficulties can receive practice learning to associate the correct way to say each sound with the correct letter shape.