How do you learn?

Have you ever considered – what’s my learning style? how do I learn? Hmm…when was the last time I learned something new? How did I learn it? What did I do to make meaning and sense of it?
 When was the last time you observed and watched your child learn something on his/her own? How did he/she learn? What did you notice about your child’s learning style/behavior? There are many researchers out there who study how we learn, how children learn, learning behaviors, habits of successful minds, cognizance, social-emotional intelligence. Learning behaviors are essential and crucial to positive outcomes and daily productivity (storing information in the brain, long term memory vs. active working memory, attention – deciding on what to concentrate on and how to filter out distractions, reflecting and planning – concentrating on things before you do or say them and planning things – your brain predicting what will happen, self-monitoring – being alert and aware, controlling your mood – how you feel influences how well you concentrate and controlling your body- our bodies and minds work together. Ultimately how we feel about ourselves as learners also impacts how we learn.

When was the last time you observed and watched your child learn something on his/her own? How did he/she learn? What did you notice about your child’s learning style/behavior? There are many researchers out there who study how we learn, how children learn, learning behaviors, habits of successful minds, cognizance, social-emotional intelligence. Learning behaviors are essential and crucial to positive outcomes and daily productivity (storing information in the brain, long term memory vs. active working memory, attention – deciding on what to concentrate on and how to filter out distractions, reflecting and planning – concentrating on things before you do or say them and planning things – your brain predicting what will happen, self-monitoring – being alert and aware, controlling your mood – how you feel influences how well you concentrate and controlling your body- our bodies and minds work together. Ultimately how we feel about ourselves as learners also impacts how we learn.

Some learners are big picture/big idea learners, if they understand the big idea or big picture (conceptual learner) they can put the parts and pieces together (abstract or spiral thinkers) to make meaning. Some learners need to see the parts broken down to the whole to put the pieces together (concrete learners or linear/sequential thinkers)

Howard Gardner a professor at the Graduate School of Education at Harvard University discusses Multiple Intelligences

I think I’m addicted to teaching because I love learning so much and I think as teachers, we teach the way we learn, and often we have to keep in mind that ALL of our students come into our classrooms with very different learning styles + behaviors… and as teachers, parents, coaches and facilitators it is our job to hone in on students’ strengths, make sure they feel good about themselves as learners, let them embrace the productive struggle of learning (foster and embrace mistakes instead of fixing it), and foster students’ to have ownership and agency over their own learning process by having them learn, do and think more, independently. Students also learn a lot by watching us, our behaviors, what we say and do, and they notice EVERYTHING (the good and the bad!) Trust me…I have 31 little Sevgi’s who can run the classroom.

I hope this blog post was informative and thought-provoking, for you to read and enabled you to ponder and reflect on yourself as a learner– to think about your own learning style, your habits and behaviors.

During morning meeting yesterday, we had a class discussion about ‘how we learn’ I also posed the question to them. Here’s what some of our students said: