Think long and hard about classes you enjoyed during your schooling.  Why did these classes and / or teachers get your learning juices flowing?  From my schooling years, only two teachers fit these basic criteria - a Year 7 teacher who actually explained mathematical processes by using concrete materials, and my Year 12 Economics teacher who related the theories to practical applications and current situations.  In hindsight, I find it disappointing that only two out of thirty teachers from my twelve years of schooling rated using this criteria.  From my experience and the completion of learning style questionnaires, I have established that I'm a multi-modal / multi-sensory learner and it has been this knowledge that has been the burr beneath my teaching saddle.

The saying "a picture paints a thousand words" could be modified to "painting a picture develops a thousand words".  Physical involvement is a key  learning style, (another element of my Six Degrees of Contemplation™), that underpins my delivery of learning materials for learners of all ages.   We all have different methods of processing and retaining information (the latter seems to become harder with every passing year) and they generally fall into three categories - auditory, visual and kinaesthetic.  Most learners have a dominant learning style, and I believe the core to successfully assisting learners to achieve their goals is offering a multi-modal approach in every learning situation.  Before you can put this into practice, why not have your students understand their preferred learning style.  Helping learners to understand how they learn best gives them learning ammunition, that is, they can develop and implement strategies that support their learning style e.g. use art projects to create representations of the content you are learning or apply what you are learning to hands-on models or in-practice examples (Cited: www.edutopia.com).

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