Create a Homework Area to Match Learning Style: Setting Up aStudy Place That Will Meet a Child’s Needs

A child may learn better through sight, hearing, or hands-on. Recognize a child’s dominant learning style and then set up a study area conducive to that learning method. The main ones are visual, auditory, and kinesthetic.

Visual Learning Center

Visual learners grasp facts through sight and tend to be distracted if sitting by a window, surrounded with colorful objects, or close to too much background noise. Face desk toward a blank wall, in a quiet area. Place supplies in plain sight, in a divided container or on a shelf, with pencils, rulers, highlighters, erasers, markers, paper clips, and other needed items.

Add a wall calendar and bulletin board to post deadlines, spelling words, and assignments. Consider posting mottos, such as, "The quicker homework is done, the sooner it’s time for fun".

Keep a stack of index cards and scrap paper on hand so the visual learner can make flash cards, doodle, and draw out lessons as tools to remembering facts. Posting any visual charts that compliment school subject will aid in learning information. Consider what will help, such as having a desktop globe or hanging a world map up if the child is studying geography or posting a times table for the student learning multiplication.

Auditory Learning Center

Auditory learners remember information heard and by talking about the topic. Background music can boost the mind’s memory ability. This child may work better with someone to talk to, so consider setting the desk in the family room with space to invite over a study buddy. Provide a CD player or ipod.

Allow child to talk aloud, such as reading aloud or saying spelling words. A recorder to tape the reading and replay it may help the child recall facts. This child may also want to make study calls to friends to chat about homework.

Let the child take breaks to retell facts. Speaking the information increases retention. Inspire this student with a rhyming dictionary and challenges to create jingles, raps, or rhymes using the lesson facts. Keep the calendar for deadlines in a family area and ask child to tell and help post the dates on the calendar. Daily, ask child to read any deadlines aloud.

Study areas open to conversation, and filled with friendly noise, encourage auditory children.

Kinesthetic Learning Center

Kinesthetic learners gain knowledge best through touch and movement. Set desk near open space to pace and stretch. Set out touchable items, such as a squeezable stress balls, math manipulatives, a spinning globe, and a dry erase board on which to write notes. Add items that reflect lesson material, such as science artifacts, photos of spelling words, and small toys to act out story scenes.

Provide sticky notes to post deadlines that can be moved as dates approach. Break homework into segments so child can alternate work and play. Encourage child to act out lessons, take breaks to pace and think, flip pages of a book to skim lesson, and then read the pages. Write facts and cut them apart to make jigsaw puzzles, or provide letter blocks to practice spelling.

Good Matches Inspire Learning

Let the child help create the personalized learning study environment to be better prepared for a successful school year.

The copyright of the article Create a Homework Area to Match Learning Style in Primary School is owned by Karen Whiting. Permission to republish Create a Homework Area to Match Learning Style in print or online must be granted by the author in writing.

Aug 1, 2009 2:28 PM

Guest :

Don't know about the validity of this lawsuit, but there is an important issue re: the validity of homework, in general. I have an idea to share re: homework.

On back-to-school night last year, I made a deal with their parents: I said, "I won't assign grammar or essay homework, if you will supervise your child's reading-discussion homework." Every parent made positive comments about this approach to homework. Few parents at the intermediate, middle, or high school levels want to or know how to supervise written work. Supervising their child's reading is something that parents support and perceive as valuable.

Here, in a nutshell is the homework plan: Students read for thirty minutes, four times per week. Parents grade a three-minute discussion of each reading session. Students lead this discussion with reading comprehension strategy discussion prompts. I got a high degree of buy-in from parents and students. I flesh out this homework program much more on my blog at <a href="http://penningtonpublishing.com/blog/reading/how-to-get-students -to-read-at-home/">Homework That Makes Sense</a>.

Aug 21, 2009 11:28 AM

Christine Ledder :

Great specific strategies and supporting ideas to help parents implement the plan. Often parents and teachers teach to the style that is most effective on a personal level. This can help parents to understand how to work with a child who has a different learning style.