I am a kinesthetic learner. I’ve always known it. Tell me something to do and watch my eyes glaze over, show me how to do it and make me practice doing it, and I learn to do it.
It didn’t keep me from being an excellent student thankfully, because I could overcompensate by memorizing well enough to please professors/teachers on exams…but retention? Forget it.

 

Momma Maven (a fellow mom blogger) has a recent post showing that Harvard has identified 7 Ways We Learn.
The “Seven Intelligences” are:

• Verbal/Linguistic
• Logical/Mathematical
• Visual/Spatial
• Body/Kinesthetic
• Interpersonal
• Intrapersonal

But Maven brings up a great point…teachers still far and away instruct verbally through lectures, though most people don’t learn that way.
Brings up an obvious point of how our current education system needs to transition to today’s reality.
In the meantime, how do we help teach our children to learn verbally so that they can do better under the current system? Some tips for strong verbal learning suggested in a piece on Effective Learning are:

• Attend lectures and tutorials.
  
• Ask questions to hear more information.
  
• Read the textbook and highlight no more than 10%. 
  
• Record lectures.
  
• Rewrite your notes and add what you missed from the tape.
  
• Recite or summarize information. 
  
• Talk about what you learn. Work in study groups.
  
• Review information by listening to tapes you have recorded.

If your child does not learn well verbally, then engaging the content with questions, notes, recitation, and study groups might help broaden the information into other ways of learning.