Week 9: Getting Closer to the End

Another busy week marked with the deadline for the final project. After weeks of dedicated work on the issue of motivating my students to do their written homework assignments and improving their spelling and writing skills, the project is done, and the report duly submitted for the evaluation to the instructor. I feel very thankful for the comments on my first draft, which I received from my colleague, Thierry Martial Niangoran. One of the best things about this course is being able to share opinions and experience and learn from it, sometimes instantaneously. Therefore, I think that I greatly benefited from his peer evaluation.

The topic of our discussions this week was Learning Styles/ Multiple Intelligences. The article Learning Styles and Strategies by Richard Felder and Barbara A. Soloman explores the impact of different learning styles on classroom performance and after reading it, and going through tech tools that support multiple intelligences, it was fairly easy to think about practical application of tools that we got familiar with in the course to address the needs of different learning types.

According to the readings, the learner types are:

1. Verbal-Linguistic
2. Logical/Mathematical
3. Visual/Spatial
4. Bodily/Kinesthetic
5. Musical/Rhythmic
6. Intrapersonal
7. Interpersonal
8. Naturalist
9. Existentialist 

We all possess certain level of all of these. The learning styles are indeed something both teachers and students should be aware of. In order to create effective teaching materials and environment, one must know not just what kind of learner types there are in a class, but also what could be suitable activities for each. Therefore, the best way to start would be by doing the learner style assessment either online or offline. 

 I was also curious to find out what was my learning style and according to this online Learning Style Quiz here are the results:

I'd say it is pretty accurate because I do believe I am linguistic and intrapersonal type, but I was surprised with 81% score for musical. But then again, when I think about how I really learned English as a teenager, I mustn't forget that one of the best ways was actually listening to various American and English artists at the time.

Besides the two obligatory readings, I read the article Multiple Intelligences In The Classroom by Bruce Campbell which provided an interesting insight into ways how these intelligences can be implemented. What I liked the most was that the teacher organized the class in seven different centers, based on seven different learning styles, thus giving an opportunity to students to learn a lesson in seven different styles.