You’ve done everything that you know how to do to help your child be successful in school. You provide support and encouragement at home, read to your child, play educational games, study all the right books and articles about education, and take an active interest in your child’s classwork.
You are certain that this year is going to be your child’s best ever in school. Despite your best efforts however, did you know that the odds are against your child receiving good grades in school?
Less than 25% of the students will receive A’s and B’s.
One of the single biggest reasons is that your child’s learning style may be very different from the school’s written testing styles. When your child learns in a different style from how he or she is tested, the mismatch often results in lower grades than your child actually deserves.
Here’s a little known fact: Written tests actually cater to only one kind of student – and that’s the high visual learner. That’s because the kids who get the highest grades on those written tests, think in a certain way that allows them to both learn and retrieve the information they need to do well on those type of tests.
If your child happens to learn in a different style – say more by listening (auditory) or more hands-on (kinesthetic or tactile), they are actually at a disadvantage when taking written tests because they may not be able to show what they know fast enough to get the highest grades.
Brain research shows that thinking in pictures is much faster than saying each word aloud or silently in your mind; and many times faster than thinking about how you feel about the material or trying to retrieve it based on something you built, or made a model of. Therefore, it’s actually to your child’s advantage that you show him or her how to play and “win” the school game. Remember, that game is all visual, when it comes time to take those written tests.
Don’t be discouraged if your child is an auditory or kinesthetic learner, because there are several things that you can do to increase the odds of your child’s success in school. You can even give him or her a “learning edge” by developing each of the three learning styles (picturing, listening, feeling) so they can use whichever style is more appropriate for the task at hand. However, when your child takes written tests, make sure you’ve shown him or her “how” to use visual learning strategies.
First, you can provide the most help by first discovering how your child prefers to learn. Just ask a few questions which will reveal their natural learning style.
1. Does your child love reading? Is his or her room usually tidy and is it important to them that they dress neatly? Is their school notebook organized and assignments neatly written? When your child is speaking, does he or she often say things like “I see, I get the picture”?
If you answered yes to each of these questions, your child has a visual or picture learning style. This student usually gets the very best grades because their way of learning precisely matches the school’s way of teaching and testing. The visual learner takes in, stores and recalls information in the form of pictures. Written testing requires a person to recall what was learned in a picture format so that it can be easily translated into written symbols (pictures) on the test.
2. Does your child love music, know all the words to the current songs, repeat their lessons out loud in order to learn them, and tell good stories? Do they spend hours on the phone and always have lots to say? Can your child usually repeat exactly what you have said to them (even several days or weeks later?) If so, your child learns best by listening and repeating and is an auditory learner. Unfortunately, these children do not easily make pictures in their minds and of course most testing is not conducted out loud.
3. Is your child good at sports? Does he or she love to put things together and make things with their hands? Is reading a chore and writing especially difficult? Is their room disorganized and school papers messy? Are assignments often lost or misplaced? Does your child speak at a slower pace and generally talk about how they feel? If most of these things are true, this child is a kinesthetic (physical) learner and learns best with their body. He or she almost never makes “pictures” of new or stored information in their mind and therefore has an unusually hard time translating what they know into the written, picture form.
More often than not, these children, although very bright, receive the lowest grades. The school, written testing model actually penalizes this type of learner by rarely allowing assignments or testing to be completed in the kinesthetic style. This child, who makes up at least 33% or more of the school population, is hopelessly lost in a school system which almost never allows his or her talents to be rewarded in the classroom testing and grading system.
However, there is some good news. Once you have discovered your child’s preferred learning style, (and of course they may have
characteristics from more than one) the second way to increase the odds for better grades are to tell your child that visual or written tests are probably here to stay.
Teaching and testing children exclusively in the style in which they learn may actually disempower them by only building one of their strengths. And, although learning theories such multiple intelligences are very good, the school day does not usually provide teachers the extra time to design, teach and test in each of those modalities.
So once your child understands that school testing will only be conducted in one of those learning styles, you can then begin to teach the following “visual” or picture learning strategies to your child which will increase the odds for higher grades.
When your child is reading, tell him or her to look up and create pictures of what they read. Good readers turn all the black and white symbols on the page into images. That way, they can easily recall the pictures during the test. It’s important that your child physically lift their head and eyes upward when they create, store and retrieve these images. Adding color and movement also improves their creative imagination, recall and grades.
Next, for subjects like spelling and math facts, have your child make note cards with different colors for odd letters in the words or difficult math facts and hold them up above their eye level when studying. This insures that the physical, kinesthetic and auditory learners create images of the new information so that it can be easily recalled during the test. Tell your child to look up and remember their note cards during their test.
Finally, when taking notes from a text book, create “mind maps” of the new information. Using lots of colors, draw a circle in the center of the page and put the title of the chapter inside the circle. Then place other circles outside and around the one in the center. Within each circle, write a few key words and draw pictures to represent as much information as possible.
This makes learning easier, faster and more fun and provides a brain-friendly strategy for successful learning in pictures.
Most important of all, give your child the gift of believing in himself or herself. Teach them from birth that all children are smart and that they can learn and be whatever they choose. Bathe them in their own uniqueness and let them know that school measures only a very small part of their “smartness.” Being smart is really only a set of skills and strategies that any person can implement, once given the information on how to use each of the learning styles whenever they choose.
Read on to find out more about exactly how to help your child think in the same “visual” or picture learning style that the school will test in.
THE EYES HAVE IT – LOOK UP FOR BETTER GRADES!
When you want your child to get higher grades, use the eye-brain connection to help him or her add the same “visual” or picture learning style that the school will test in. It’s easy because your child will simply learn how to create and remember pictures they are already making in their mind. Here’s how.
First, ask your child to remember something which requires that they see a picture in order to answer the question. For example, “What does your best friend look like? Make a picture in your mind and tell me all the physical details.” As you are asking the question, observe the upward left or upward right corner direction your child moves his or her eyes to when recalling a picture. Your child’s eye movements are a clue to where he or she looks when creating and recalling a picture.
If your child does not look up, keep asking similar types of questions until they do. Additional questions are “What was your friend wearing yesterday? Describe a scene from your favorite movie”, etc. (Do not tell your child at first what you are watching for. You will tell them later.)
Once you know which side your child looks up to when recalling a picture, you can have your child look up to that same side when studying and recalling information for tests in school. Teach your child to turn information to be studied into as many pictures as possible. Then place those pictures in the upper left or upper right picture memory location.
When test time comes in the classroom, tell your child to look up to that same left or right side so they can easily see the pictures that they made while studying. Remember – one picture is worth a thousand words and your child can choose the visual learning style strategy which matches the school’s testing style.
The results are better grades and increased self-esteem for your child!
Pat Wyman, M.A. is known as America’s Most Trusted Learning Expert, founder of the award winning website http://www.HowToLearn.com, author of several best-selling books, including the Instant Learning ® book series, Learning vs Testing; Strategies That Bridge The Gap. She is an also an Instructor of Education at California State University, serves as a corporate spokesperson and regularly presents workshops for parents and teachers. She has been interviewed by such publications as Family Circle, Woman’s World, Nick Jr. Family Magazine.
