Are you more left-brained or more right-brained? Are you more auditory or visual? How about your children? Check this out:
Auditory-sequential
learners:
The left brain-hemisphere is sequential,
analytical, and time-oriented. Imagine my shock to learn that many girls and
women are using more of the left side of their brain. So much for the myth of
being ‘illogical’. No wonder we like to analyze relationships with our
girlfriends!
Auditory-sequential males would likely
focus on the left side of their brain most of the time. But A-S females may
have the added benefit of networking with their right side often. Hence,
decorating the house with crafts and such. No, I am not saying one gender is
better than the other, just diverse in processing. Problem-solving abilities
are equal in men and women, though solutions may be approached differently. I
saw this in the corporate world often.
Even auditory-sequential learners can
benefit from hands-on learning. As discussed in Vol. 7 of my It's Not Rocket Surgery!, when I worked as a
chemist on solid rocket motors (SRM), I volunteered every year to run several
Expanding Your Horizons (EYH) workshops for middle school girls. To get them
excited about math and science, my team taught the girls to make their own
lotion with lab equipment. It was always one of the most popular workshops.
There is nothing better for girls than to be mentored in math and science by
successful women scientists and engineers. Plus I loved to show them my family
picture with 15 children so they could see that they don’t have to give up
motherhood to use their brains, or vice versa. Mrs. Barton, my algebra teacher
and mother of four, mentored me, and I want to pass her good example on.
Visual-spatial
learners:
The right brain-hemisphere perceives the
whole, synthesizes, and apprehends movement in space. More males tend to be
visual-spatial learners. According to Linda Kreger Silverman, Ph.D.,
visual-spatial research has been “validated on 750 fourth, fifth and sixth
graders. In this research, one-third [33%]
of the school population emerged as strongly
visual-spatial. An additional 30% showed a slight
preference for the visual-spatial learning style. Only 23% were strongly auditory-sequential.
This suggests that a substantial percentage of the school population
would learn better using visual-spatial methods. [With The Godfrey Method phonics!]
[It also
shows that about 53% of children learn fine from auditory-sequential learning.
In fact, whole-language has caused many
more problems than it has solved, if any.]
“Visual-spatial
learners are individuals who think in pictures rather than in words. They have a different brain organization than
auditory-sequential learners. They learn
better visually than auditorally. They
learn all-at-once, and when the light bulb goes on, the learning is
permanent. They do not learn from
repetition and drill. They are
whole-part learners who need to see the big picture first before they learn the
details. They are non-sequential, which means that they do not learn in the
step-by-step manner in which most teachers teach. They arrive at correct
solutions without taking steps, so ‘show your work’ may be impossible for
them.
“They
may have difficulty with easy tasks, but show amazing ability with difficult,
complex tasks. They are systems thinkers
who can orchestrate large amounts of information from different domains, but
they often miss the details. They tend
to be organizationally impaired and unconscious about time.
“They
are often gifted creatively, technologically, mathematically or emotionally.
You can tell you have one of these children by the endless amount of time they
spend doing advanced puzzles, constructing with Legos, etc., completing mazes,
counting everything, playing Tetris on the computer, playing chess, building
with any materials at hand, designing scientific experiments, programming your
computer, or taking everything in the house apart to see how it operates. They also are very creative, dramatic,
artistic and musical.
“I’d
like to share with you how the visual-spatial learner idea originated. Around
1980, I began to notice that some highly gifted children took the top off the
IQ test with their phenomenal abilities to solve items presented to them
visually or items requiring excellent abilities to visualize. These children were also adept at spatial
tasks, such as orientation problems.
Soon I discovered that not only were the highest scorers outperforming
others on the visual-spatial tasks, but so were the lowest scorers.
“The
main difference between the two groups was that highly gifted children also
excelled at the auditory-sequential items, whereas children who were brighter
than their IQ scores had marked auditory and sequential weaknesses. It was from these clinical observations and
my attempt to understand both the strengths and weaknesses that the concept of
the ‘visual-spatial learner’ was born.”
Most
public school classrooms are very one-sided, catering to the
auditory-sequential learners. Both types of learning are necessary for
well-rounded children. Children only have two brain hemispheres, and we are
doing an excellent job teaching one of them (left). Visual-spatial children need a much different
curriculum and probably even a different learning environment. When parents and
teachers become more aware of how to teach the other (right) hemisphere, we
will have happier students, learning more effectively.
http://thegodfreymethod.com
No comments:
Post a Comment