[SENco-forum] learning styles

The thing that always puzzles me about these 'learning styles'

Philip,

Thank you for posting your response on the forum.  It makes for addictive
reading. My learning styles query has led to a really useful thread - thank
you to all who have replied, both on and off forum.

Could not agree with you more about looking at the quality of what schools
provide and ensuring that it fits with what empirical research has shown
works.  As a result of my empirical background (psychology degree that
included traiing rats - did not like the length of said rats' teeth so I
trained them but someone else handled them...) and contact with the Martin
Turner (who has been kind enough to keep me up to date with literacy
research over the years so that I can inform wider school practice) we now
have Ruth Miskin reading in place at school and the whole language scheme -
Oxford Reading Tree - is no longer used as a primary way to teach reading.
(ORT books are great at the upper levels - eg Tree Tops - for story books
once children can decode.  As we have them in school we might as well use
them that way but we are also using the normal school library books once
children can read as well as sets of normal books for guided reading to
develop higher level reading skills.) I am aware that Reading Recovery is
ineffective having read What Works for Slow Readers (a Google brings this up
for those who are interested), where the research was examined and found not
to support this programme.

All school children need effective vision and hearing tests - preferably
annually.  There are huge amounts of undiagnosed vision and hearing problems
that will act as blocks to effective learning.  The government's money would
be far better spent in this area than on Reading Recovery.

The medical model works for the few who do not learn when all else is equal
(Jonathan Solity, Warwick University, stated 3% when I asked him this at the
BDA conference in 2004), as I am sure you know from your EP work, as the
wave 3 approach - that is, having had an education that for the majority has
been effective, and having had physical checks and discounted physical
factors such as sight and hearing or cultural ones such as EAL, child A, B
or C has failed - what is going on?  Then you are into the realms of
dyslexia, ADHD/ADD, autistic spectrum, sensory integration, motor
development, dyspraxia etc. in an appropriate way.  The tricks are awareness
and identification of needs...

Learning styles have been raised by my colleagues and so I promised I would
investigate.  My own view is that a good classroom covers teaching through
as many senses as possible (we have 7 of them - the 5 + vestibular and
proprioreceptive). I like, and subscribe to, Ruth's point that you need to
teach to areas where children are not as strong as well as teach to their
strengths, which matches your own experience as a school pupil.

I think classrooms need to be multisensory; Montessori style in the early
years and keeping concrete equipment there for all. Play based.  Stuff like
Numicon seen as mainstream and not just for "special" children.  Numicon's
director, Romey Tacon, advises me that schools purchase Numicon for SEN ad
not for mainstream, for example.  Of course it does not have to be Numicon,
but the point is that concrete maths materials do not abound in the
mainstream, do they?

What research is there on multisensory teaching/learning please?

Philippa

On Dec 15, 2007 4:05 AM, Maggie Downie <maizie2004 at yahoo.co.uk> wrote:

> The thing that always puzzles me about these 'learning styles'
> questionnaires is how on earth are the children supposed to know how they
> learn?  I can't see that the majority of them have ever given it a moment's
> thought.
>
> Maggie
>
>
>
>
> ---------------------------------
>  Sent from Yahoo! - a smarter inbox.
>