Understanding Your Child's Learning Style

SMARTS Approach to Learning Styles 

SMARTS incorporates different preferred learning styles and best-practice teaching methods to benefit every child who walks through our doors. Our programs make complex ideas accessible via various modalities. 

Visual Learning

Visual learners are inclined toward images, diagrams, and other graphics. Parents can support visual learning by providing their children with stationery to color code, highlight key terms, or draw symbols that replace essential words. For example, teachers can use flow charts to explain processes or mind maps to show connections between ideas. Photos and videos can help visual learners, but it's also about using shapes, patterns, and demos.

Auditory Learning 

Auditory, aural, or verbal learners have good listening skills and prefer hearing and speaking about concepts. By drawing students into a group discussion about a topic, auditory learners are better equipped to retain new ideas. Teachers can get students to teach their peers to solidify knowledge and identify gaps in understanding. Aural learners benefit from mnemonics, repetition, reading aloud, recording, and listening to summarized notes during independent study time.

Kinesthetic Learning

Kinesthetic learners, or tactile learners, gain the most from a hands-on approach. They're the doers in a classroom, preferring an experiential learning model with tangible representations of information such as building models, conducting experiments, or engaging in simulations. The challenge for teachers is to make words on a page come alive, linking theory with practice or real-life case studies. For example, a teacher could use three students to demonstrate the difference between equilateral and isosceles triangles when teaching basic trigonometry to teens.

Reading/Writing Learning

For reading/writing learners, words are the gateway to knowledge. They're the bookworms in a classroom who take detailed notes and prefer essays to other assignment types. Get this kind of learner to translate graphs into words, to rewrite information in their own words, and to handwrite typed notes or vice versa.

Logical Learning

Logical learners may use analytic skills to understand subject matter. They enjoy finding connections between ideas and doing problem-solving activities that require critical thinking. They may also utilize visual tools to reinforce concepts. Teachers must include elements in lesson plans, such as debates or technology use, that cater to deeper engagement with the curriculum.

Social Learning

Some students are social learners and gain more from learning in the company of others. Role-plays, story-sharing, field trips, and other constructive student interactions keep these learners focused and motivated. Monitoring a student's contribution to group activities is important.

Solitary Learning 

The opposite can be true, too. Some learners like to go solo. Solitary learners prefer studying alone and dislike group projects. Teachers can accommodate solitary students by including quiet time for individual tasks.

Overlapping Styles 

Learning styles are not set in stone, and shouldn't be applied rigidly. They often interweave and reinforce each other, and a single student may have a dominant style, utilize multiple modalities equally or turn to different styles for different subjects. For example, flashcards appeal to visual and auditory learners.