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OK, here's another wonderful gem from yesterday with a group of kindergarten students...

I taught them a very short song that goes with a "name game," and when they sang it back to me, I would have given them about a C+. Vocally, they were all over the place. So, I gave them the following hypnotic suggestions:

1) OK, now everybody close your eyes, and imagine yourself singing in your most beautiful voice. Now, open them and sing!

2) And you know, that every time you sing that song, your singing will just get better and better!

The results were astounding. The change was immediate, and their singing was beautiful! A whole room (about 25 children) of five-year-olds singing on pitch together! THAT really put a smile on my face!

Andrew Austin really is right. Children are such natural trancers!

(my name means love) phil

Can we break kids up into V A K? NO no no!!
At the risk of sounding like a broken record, people (children included )are not visual, kinesthetic or auditory! If we label children or adults in this way we condemn them to one type of learning. All good strategies - including learning strategies - will combine the rep systems. Good strategies will begin and end with a K. All you need to do to work out a really elegant learning strategy is to use the TOTE model and ellicite the strategy.
Musicians have a wide range of strategies, for example Van Morrison 'sees the music' out there and then when it feels complete he plays it. So that goes V K A basically, when it sounds right he feels good ( ends in a K). Other great musicians do it differently but just as effectively.
Personally I would shoot the person who came up with the VAK questionaire - guardian reading liberal that I am
Don Blackerby's book is great btw
Kate

Thanks for the recommend Kate. I will try the book. I never need much prompting to buy a good book. Excellent example which makes it vry clear why we should move away form learning styles and focus on learning - using NLP of course.

Wendy

Phil, another fantastic example of how we can effectively use NLP. I think you should write your own book. It makes me excited and eager to get moving with my own teaching later in the month.

Keep them coming.

Wendy

Kate,

I combine the VAK ALL THE TIME when I teach music. That is why my students learn it so well!

Wendy, I am going to start journaling about my teaching experiences with NLP! Who knows what will happen about a book...I always thought in the past that I was not a writer, but writing a regular blog now has dispelled that belief, and with a good editor, I should be able to put together a nice book of helpful hints for music teachers!

(my name means love) phil

All good strategies begin with a K? Can you please clarify because that looks rather interesting.

Kate,

You wrote "Can we break kids up into V A K? NO no no!!"

Do you mean, never? Ever? Never - Ever? You think there is no benefit whatsoever?

Thanks,

Matt

Hi Sam
How do you know you haven't done something? Usually you know this by a feeling. You may have visuals or auditory input that also let you know this but whatever the sequence you know it with a K. How do you know when you are done? It is usually with a K - somewhere down the midline.
This isn't just my observation. When I discussed NHR with Richard and the difference between NHR and NLP he said that the rep systems and submodalities were ways of getting to the K. If every strategy begins and ends with a K lets just go straight for the K!!!
Whether this is true in every case or not I don't know but its a good starting point and a good ending point
x
K

Matt
I will stick my neck out here and say yes never ever ever. What is the point of creating even more boxes for children. NLP is about freedom and freeing people from external and internal constraints.
In addition there is no evidence - in fact counter evidence that labelling children as Visual Auditory or Kinesthetic learners has any validity what so ever.
Have you read the learning styles evaluation research from Northumberland university?
K

Kate,

My experience in teaching music to children tells me to always begin with a K. This is reinforced by the natural physical response of children to rhythm and pulse.

Also, I notice that when teaching young children how to sing, they start with a K, but can quickly combine that with an A to experience a kinesthesic (is that a word) experience of singing. If they get stuck in only kinesthetic feedback as singers, they have greater difficulty developing pitch matching skills, and the best way to cultivate that is through what we call "inner ear," or internal auditory memory.

The combination of the body feeling with the auditory feedback provides the best result from young singers. Visual seems least important of the three in learning that skill, although becomes essential of course, in transferring knowledge of musical sound to the printed page!

This thread is fascinating to me!

(my name means love) phil

You are spot on Phil
Great stuff!

Kate,

I take that as high praise coming from you.

I will keep you posted. I plan on contributing new things to this thread every day!

(my name means love) phil

Another good resource is to read the Coffield report which looks at Learning Styles and the Inventories. It is 180 pages long so you may want to read the summary. Basically they say that we should move away from learning styles and say that nearly all of the inventories are not fit for purpose.

Wendy

With respect, NLP Connections is a juicy forum and I am not going to let you rewrite what is deemed 'good practice' in the classroom without some kind of cross examination- I hope you don't mind.

I do believe that too many kids are failed by the education system for it to be anyhwere near the finished article, from top to bottom the system is flawed and out dated and for every piece of research to claim we should do x and Y, there are equally passionate reports to claim x and y are the only way forward.

For example,

That taken from Inspiring Education Professionals | Teaching Expertise

There are equally well meaning and well researched pieces of work that tell me I should be ditching my car for alternative means of transport but in reality, until I have a better alternative then I will be using my car for the forseable future.

Kate, thanks for not sitting on the fence with my earlier question, may I probe you with more questions?

"I will stick my neck out here and say yes never ever ever. What is the point of creating even more boxes for children. NLP is about freedom and freeing people from external and internal constraints.
In addition there is no evidence - in fact counter evidence that labelling children as Visual Auditory or Kinesthetic learners has any validity what so ever."

Of course there are major concerns regarding labelling kids and pidgeon holeing them as being a certain way. But grouping them is going to happen and it happens for sound logical reasons and more than that, it happens because kids work well and learn well in groups. The dynamics of the groups are paramount to the groups success. Peer to peer learning is a great tool to use in the classroom and as a Learning Facilitator (teacher, lecturer or whatever) we can maximise this by using these groupings to offer effective differentiation strategies such as altering their group tasks, method of teaching, methods of achiveing their tasks and methods of assessment.

Sure, but it is not without models (which are templates or structures and dare I say labels and boxes?) to become aware of problems and then how to manage them.

Maybe I need to wait until your book is out to find out my answers, but a little like the people who want the cars of the roads, what is the alternative? I will read the work by Northumberland Uni and the Coffield Report, I will even read the signed, complimentary copy of your new book that you send me :-) but we need an answers to solve real problems and not just another slating of the current systems.

I slept on your comments last night and find it very strange that knowing their prefeered learning styles offers no value to me as their teacher? Knowing how to break down serious barriers to learning and ultimatly learning is about the educational 'distance travelled' by the learner, knowing what their most effective way of getting them learning and engaging in eductaion is not a tool I can give up until I know of a better alternative. If the experts say we should give this up, I hope their expertise offers real solutions to replace them with.

Thanks,

Matt

Matt and Kate,

More interesting than I could have ever dreamed!

Please allow me to shift this discourse from the arena of the ivory tower back to the world of the classroom.

I constantly mix the VAK in instruction. ALL children can (and DO!) learn through all three rep systems. Using delivery approaches which constantly mix the three are in my experience the most effective, and most efficient in teaching a group. This sort of delivery also tends to keep a higher percentage of students engaged in learning, again, in my experience.

So, Matt, how does this perspective relate to your application of learning styles in the classroom? And if you are constantly finding ways to combine, and in a rapid fire way alternate between the V, A & K, how would you NOT be addressing the needs of each child?

Works for me. And more importantly, for my students!

(my name means love) phil

The Coffield report stuided 13 learning styles. It includes the Myers-Briggs which you could say vaguely overlaps meta programs programs.

Also VAK isn't a learning style, it's a reality style. So can we draw a distinction between dividing children up into VAK and teaching with only VAK?

I know offices that divide teams up into VAK without their knowledge to better facilitate rapport and the group dynamic. However as children are different, would we want to encourage them to interact with others with a different style of filtering reality as much as possible?

Here's a short article on it
[Sm]all things considered by r.vuorikari: The slippery slope of learning styles, some notes

and here's the entire report:
http://www.lsda.org.uk/files/PDF/1543.pdf

Hi Matt
There are a lot of interesting points in your reply. Grouping children to learn together is great, People often learn best when they help/ teach each other as we know. I am not advocationg that the teacher teaches and the children learn! Creativity in approach, resources, methodologies are the tools of our trade.

As Phil says, we as teachers can and probably should utilise VAK in our teaching. This is fundamentally different from utilising VAK in learning!
When we use VAK in teaching what we are doing is providing the opportunity for the learner to access or create a strategy for learning ( whatever it is we are teaching) that suits them. But this is an inexact way of doing it. We may have to though because we have 30 of them in front of us so we can't install a perfect strategy for each one of them individually.
So for example think about how you like to learn say a new computer programme. Do you start with fiddling with the keys and watching what happens or start with the manual and ask for help or do you ask someone to show you etc. Whatever you do first you will then move on to the next part of your strategy. Great if you are being taught one to one. When you are teaching a group you have to 'offer' the useful pieces of potential strategies and help the learners to put it together for themselves.

Another option is to work out the strategie of people who do something really well and install it in the kids. This works fantastically for spelling and for mathematics.
there are other points I want to respond to but it will be a little later today - got to go now
K

Phil and Sam, some great points,

Phil, nice touch, lets put some context to this theory.
Sam, many kids learn through exporing their environment and have levels of manual dexterity and abilty to mimic and express themselves (and enjoy themselves) physically in far contrast to a person / child who can sit and absorb (and enjoy!) pages of information from a book or audio track.

If we need to edu-tain them for an hour whilst passing on knowledge of how electrical circuits work, does it make sence that we differentiate their method of achieving the task while still passing on the same knowledge and getting the learners to the same destination? Knowing how each individual filter, manages, stores and recalls information is pretty important to know when you are asking them to take in, manage, store and recal info? But of course, as a professinal educator you will also work on developing the students ability in ALL areas of their development. A follow up activity to the above may involve the cohorts of students using the other groups worksheets and activities, the group dynamics here come into effect with more prominence as we want all members of the group to contribute, not just the person who is happist in that environment dominating.

My last job was in a college where the level 1 courses (students who were failed and excluded, physically but more often mentally, from school education) had terrible success. Students would get despondant and drop out again from a system that required silent reading, working alone at home, essay writing and written exams. Course are consistet around the UK and the main difference between success and failure for each student at each establishment that offers them is in the delivery. The classroom practitioner makes or breaks the course. I do not believe in labeling the kids as x or y but a kid who will not / cannot write an essay is not being done any favors by being set essays time and time again. I dont believe that a third party written questionaire (how hypcritical is that!) can tell any more about the working of a childs mind anymore than answering questions on kickboxing measures your ability to win in a fight. We can look a persons prefeered style of learning and working and tailor his education to them.

Education is often aimed at attempting to make all children to become university professors and while very few achieve that, the others are measured by their level of failure in how far away they get from that goal. Lets celebrate their flair, their natural strengths and their unique abilities. Let us take a childs small amount of confidence and allow them to build on it and not keep looking to highlighting their weaknesses.

That said, what we have is not perfect, but, I am yet to come across anyone that has any more success with another system. I want a better system,

... somebody show me (but it needs to be with the resources available to the mainstream teacher).

Thanks

Matt

Just had to add to this first as I read the above. In summary we must not confuse 'style' with strategy - they are not the same. Secondly we can ellicit a groups strategies using our sensory acuity. Within minutes you can discover so much about a learner by really paying attention to what they are doing. Callibration skills are much better than questionaires

Hi spotted this video - sad but, you guys may want to do something or know someone who has knowledge of this.

YouTube - psychetruth's Channel

Sorry to upset but its something I thought you might want to know.