Concrete vs. abstract
If your child learns in an atypical way you can't do much to change that fact, but you can help her learn to capitalize on her strengths as well as cope with her weaknesses. Carefully chosen strategies can sometimes transform those apparent weaknesses into strengths. You, the parent, can play an important part in the work to convert failure into success.
As you read this information keep in mind that a child's brain is continually developing. The strengths and weaknesses your child shows when she's five may be quite different than her strengths and weaknesses when she's ten or fourteen. The way children--all children--learn changes over time. As a child grows and matures his or her brain grows, develops and matures. A child's brain makes some quite dramatic changes over time.
One result of this growth and development can be that a child will appear to have a strength at one time, but if tested three or four years later that same skill may be judged a weakness. The reasons are complex. The important thing to know is that a child's strengths and weaknesses aren't carved in stone. As time passes the way your child learns best may change significantly.
Many ways to get there
Effective teaching usually combines several approaches, or multi-sensory instruction, so the child uses more than one sense at a time while learning.
Multi-sensory approaches work well because of the way our brain is organized. When we learn, information takes one path into our brain when we use our eyes, another when we use our ears, and a yet a third when we use our hands. By using more than one sense we bombard our brain with the new information in multiple ways. As a result we learn better.
According to the noted educator Sandra Rief(1), students retain
So--in spite of everything you'll read here about learning styles--avoid thinking about them too rigidly. We tend to talk about learning styles as if they're all one thing or another. By focusing too closely on the child's current strengths we may overlook her ability to benefit from methods using combined approaches.
Learning specialists usually describe struggling students by emphasizing their weaknesses, but the weaknesses of one child may be the strengths of another. When looking for ways to help a student, strengths are just as important as weaknesses, but too often they are not given much attention.
We will not make that mistake, because effective learning is most likely to happen when both strengths and weaknesses are considered. It's also important to help each child recognize his strong points for the sake of his self-esteem. It is hard to over-estimate the value of acknowledging strengths: consider the number of times a struggling child's shortcomings will be pointed out to him.
This is why it's important for parents and teachers to know why they choose the techniques they use. No one approach is right for everyone, and not choosing carefully is just a shot in the dark.
Excerpt from Taming the Dragons: Real School Problems. Copyright 1995, Susan Setley. To order call Starfish Publishing Company: (314) 367-9611. All rights reserved. This material may be downloaded from the website and distributed *only* if copyright and publisher's phone number are included. Do not include this information in any other publication (printed, electronic or in any other form) or at any other web site without the author's express written permission.
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TAMING THE DRAGONS: REAL HELP FOR REAL SCHOOL PROBLEMS. Copyright Susan Setley, 1995. All rights reserved. For ordering information call Starfish Publishing Company (314) 367-9611
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