Personal Learning Reflection

 

My learning experiences through college allowed me the opportunity to learn about my learning style. My learning style is visual. This means that I learn best by watching, seeing and viewing the information. Some stragtegies that are effective for my learning style include viewing pictures, diagrams and videos. My seating preference has always been at the front of the room, near the teacher so I can focus in on the instruction and watch the teacher’s body language and gestures. I also like to sit near the teacher so I can take notes, but I can also multi-task while listening to the teacher lecture.

            As a special education teacher, I am teaching all levels and accommodating all types of learners, it is impossible to differentiate every task so that each learning style is met. In my classroom, I try to think about how I want to teach a lesson before its taught and then I think of all my students and the types of learners they are and try to have at least each type of learning style in my entire lesson (auditory, kinesthetic/tactile, visual). For example, I might begin a lesson working on phonemes and we use our hands and fingers to make each sound while saying it orally (kinesthetic/auditory). Then I might use colored tiles or letter tiles on the overhead to show the spelling of a word after learning a phoneme (visual). After that we might work on segmenting or blending words and I might pass a squishy ball to my students when I want them to respond (kinesthetic/tactile). I think we should focus on all learners and all learning styles and try to differentiate as much as possible. Although, each step in a lesson should not be presented or differentiated for the 3 types of learners-that would simply take way too much time. The materials I teach are repetitive, so I am confident in my teaching that the students will gain the material and knowledge once they have been exposed to it a few times.