Welcome to our LDS Cohort Blog. Like your favorite diner, we're open 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. This is a great place to sit down with a cup of coffee, say hi to folks, and chat about the latest news.
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Email me at totten@ohio.edu if you have a post for our blog. All ideas are welcome! Lesson plans, student success stories - anything related to learning disabilities in the classroom.
A strong focus of LD training is the various learning styles of students. The word "multisensory" is used to describe the mix of auditory, visual, tactile/kinesthetic input received by the brain to process information. I am more of a visual/tactile/kinesthetic learner. A hearing screening at the age of 39 indicated I may have an auditory processing disorder. It never occurred to me that an "auditory processing disorder" might be responsible for the feeling of "overload" I start to get when there's just too much verbal information to process, like lengthy directions or lots of new complicated information (chemistry or geometry for example!).
I laughed after that screening because so many things suddently made sense! The proverbial missing puzzle piece brought some peace. Up until then I was getting by in the classroom - I learned to take good notes and stay quiet so as not to out myself when confused by complicated information; I knew I could read the book and make my notes work for me. Sometimes I recorded lectures and wrote them out longhand for reading (because no matter how many times I listened it still didn't make sense). After that screening I learned a few more ways to adapt in the classroom: sit close to the front, really focus on the speaker, and if necessary, verify what's been said (after class works best for me). I also find myself repeating things back to people - directions, amounts, names, etc.
How does knowing this about myself influence my actions as a teacher? I make sure books, handouts, overheads - anything visual - are available for students to look at while I'm talking about the topic. I might ask them to write about or draw something relevant to the topic. I also take my time talking about the topic, I repeat key information slowly and write it on the board. I find that pauses help students process information and formulate questions and/or answers.
Tell us about your learning style and how it has affected you as an instructor. How did you discover your learning style? Does your learning style influence your teaching style? If so, how?
Thanks for stopping by - enjoy that coffee! mb
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