Knowing Your Students' Learning Styles

The first days of school are, hands down, the most important part of the school year; it is in the first days that teachers establish positive expectations, establish their classroom management, train students on classroom procedures, build a positive rapport with students, engage students in group-building exercises, etc. If we don't take  care of this foundation, our classroom structure can and will crumble right before our eyes. Before we can dive into the curriculum and carefully planned lessons, we need to spend some time taking care of the foundation and getting to know our learners; it seems painstaking and unimportant,  but trust me, it will be the best gift you will give yourself and your students all year. You can think of what you do on the first days of school as "the gift that keeps on giving," so to speak.

One of the very first pieces of information I want to extract from my students is who they are as learners. Truth is, and perhaps too often, our students themselves don't know who they are as learners. Getting to know who our students are as learners from the very beginning will help the teacher design lessons, activities, differentiate, engage students, etc., etc.. As a result, I have created this super simple and easy handout  for students to use as they navigate Edutopia's Multiple Intelligences Assessment.

Click the image to access and download this freebie!

This handout allows students to record their assessment results after taking a brief multiple intelligences assessment. It is important  to remind students that  just because they score high on a specific learning style, this does not mean that they can't or don't  learn well in another learning style. The percentages simply indicate their learning style strengths and how they learn best and most comfortably. 

On the same note, as educators, it is important to vary our delivery of content to appeal to the various learning  styles. Additionally, if you have a class that is mostly Visual-Spatial, it does not make sense for most of your lessons to appeal only to Linguistic learners. In fact, most lessons contain elements of various learning styles, not just one. Lessons like these are the most appealing and tend to be very successful because it is appealing and accessible to students of all learning styles.

Please let me know how you will decide to utilize this resource in your classroom and whether or not it was successful if you already implemented it with your students. As soon as I use it with my own students in September I will surely post an update as well. Happy teaching...and remember to stay curious!