Understanding
Your Kids’
Learning Styles
— by Tanni Haas, Ph.D.
A
s your kids head back to school this fall, one of
your top priorities, as a parent, is to help them
with their homework. But how do you best do
that? To be sure they truly understand the material, it’s useful
to know how they learn. Researchers have discovered that there
are four major learning styles: visual, auditory, reading/writing,
and kinesthetic. Below are brief descriptions of each learning
style and how you can tailor your homework help.
Visual Learners
How They Learn: Visual learners process new information
by seeing it. A sign that your kids might be visual learners is that
from a young age they lingered over illustrations in books and
other visual stimuli. Another sign is that they love to draw or
paint. At school, visual learners often doodle when they listen
to the teacher. It helps them better understand and remember
the material.
How To Help With Homework: Have your kids create vi-
sual representations of the material they’re supposed to learn.
These can be charts, diagrams, figures, maps, and timelines.
Other useful tools include color-coded flashcards, sticky notes,
and folders. If they have a hard time understanding something,
show them how it’s done instead of telling them how to do it.
Since visual learners often get distracted from too many visual
stimuli, it’s important to keep their study space neat and clutter-
free.
Auditory Learners
How They Learn: Auditory learners process new informa-
tion by having it explained to them out loud or by vocalizing it
themselves. A sign that your kids might be auditory learners is
that they “read” books out loud to themselves, even before they
10 WNY Family September 2019