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    The Way They Learn
    The Way They Learn
    The Way They Learn
    Ebook185 pages2 hours

    The Way They Learn

    By Cynthia Ulrich Tobias

    3.5/5

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    About this ebook

    Draw out the best in your children—by understanding the way they learn. If you’re frustrated that your child isn’t learning the way you did, chances are they are too! In this practical resource, Cynthia Ulrich Tobias explains that understanding how you both learn can make all the difference.

    Using expertise in education and learning styles, Tobias offers practical guidance for teaching to your child’s strengths—both at home and in school—even when his or her learning style is very different from your own. Enlightening and informative, this book will help with these issues:
    • The different ways children perceive and order information
    • Four learning styles and how your style and your child’s may differ
    • How to bring out your child’s greatest strengths
    • Ways to help your child grasp and remember what’s being taught
    • Tips for advocating for your child with teachers
    • How your involvement can increase your child’s success at school
    Whether you’re a parent, grandparent, or teacher, this book offers concrete help for guiding the children in your care onto their very best path to learning—now and for a lifetime.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherTyndale House Publishers
    Release dateAug 2, 2013
    ISBN9781624052132
    Author

    Cynthia Ulrich Tobias

    Cynthia Ulrich Tobias is founder and CEO of AppLe St. (Applied Learning Styles) and coordinates education and commerce programs throughout North America and internationally. She is a speaker and the best-selling author of several books including Every Child Can Succeed, Bring out the Best in Your Child, Do You Know What I Like About You? and You Can’t Make Me (But I Can be Persuaded). She lives near Seattle, Washington.

    Read more from Cynthia Ulrich Tobias

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    Reviews for The Way They Learn

    3.5/5

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    • 4/5
      A great introduction to learning styles with examples of how to apply what is being explained. I'm bit concerned about the shallow explanations of the research and to me simplistic groupings. Perhaps that is all to the better though for the purposes of this book.
    • 4/5
      Not particularly deep, but fun. The four styles that Ms. Tobias discusses are a little different from most, and worth the read if your child isn't fitting into the "schoolish" mold.
    • 2/5
      Supposedly one of the 'great' love stories of all time, I have always felt Catherine and Heathcliff's relationship was selfish, manipulative and just plain weird. I could never understand why she felt she could marry Linton and still have Heathcliff on the side and that Edgar would accept him too. I guess she could see herself aiding Heathcliff in the process, but I just can't see how she could rationalize that. Maybe it is just a bitter reminder of how stringent class distinctions were in that period. For the longest time I felt nothing but disgust for Heathcliff until after thinking about this book for some time: he may be vindictive, mean spirited and low but he did have a rough life where he was mistreated at every turn. I think his one redeeming moment was when Cathy and Hareton were starting to connect and he couldn't bear to punish them -- perhaps he did have a heart if only it lay beneath layers and layers of darkness. This time around I actually felt like Catherine was more the villain than he ever was.I'm glad I reread this one from an adult standpoint. I know that love isn't always passionately destructive and all consuming -- but 'Wuthering Heights' truly is an engrossing tale. I highly recommend the recent Masterpiece adaptation, it was fantastic!

    Book preview

    The Way They Learn - Cynthia Ulrich Tobias

    CHAPTER ONE

    What Is a Learning Style?

    a girl listening to an iPod

    Here comes the first one!

    The atmosphere in the delivery room was charged with excitement and anticipation. It was a planned C-section, so I was fully awake to witness the arrival of our two sons that April afternoon.

    The doctor held up a tiny red baby and whispered, He’s beautiful! Two minutes later, the doctor held up another baby.

    He looks just like the first one! a nurse cried.

    I recognized them both immediately. On arrival, each boy already seemed to exhibit many of the same behaviors he had demonstrated during the last several months in the womb. The boys and I had started the process of getting to know one another almost from conception, and now I was amazed to see how different these two identical babies were from each other. While it will take years to become familiar with each boy’s complex nature, their differences were evident from the very beginning.

    Friends and acquaintances, gazing at the redheads, often ask How do you tell them apart? My standard reply: Just watch them for a minute—you’ll know. If you listen to the way they speak to each other and to you, if you watch the way they interact with people and situations, you will have little doubt that these boys, who share the same birthday, are very much individuals.

    When they were still very small, a favorite toy for the twins was a small workbench with hammer and pegs. Robert, our go-for-the-gusto son, took great pleasure in vigorously pounding the pegs. Michael, more analytic by nature, was fascinated by the fact that in the middle of the workbench was a hole just the right size for storing the hammer.

    ^ ^ ^

    If you are a parent with more than one child, you’ve already discovered that even children growing up in very similar circumstances and environments can have dramatically dissimilar approaches to life. You begin to realize that people are fundamentally different. The individual bents that cause each person to be unique often bring an overwhelming challenge to parents. It is not enough to simply decide how children should be reared and then apply the same techniques to each child. Parents need to get to know their children, and no two will be the same!

    Often, with the very best of intentions, we set out to chart the course and plan the events of our children’s lives according to what makes sense to us—the way we did it. After all, we are living proof of what works! But what seldom occurs to us is that other people, perhaps even those in our own family, may view the world in an entirely different way than we do. It therefore stands to reason that when we try to teach or communicate with our children and others, they are not all going to benefit from the same approach.

    If you’re like many busy parents, you may become frustrated when you try to help your child follow directions, do homework, or review for a test. You may be convinced that your child simply isn’t trying hard enough. The fact is, each of our children perceives the world differently from the way we do. Each child is a unique individual with his or her own natural strengths and preferences. These individual gifts or bents are called learning styles.

    Although we accept and even cherish each child’s uniqueness, it’s often difficult to work with the combined variations of all our children when we’re also trying to juggle family schedules and the many demands of school and work.

    Knowing I was to be the mother of twins, I did a lot of reading. One article had an excellent suggestion for every parent. The writer suggested taking at least 15 minutes a day to spend alone with each child. It recommended you choose a safe and fun play area and then let your child show you how he or she prefers to play and interact with you. Short of absolute necessity, you should make no corrections, suggestions, or negative comments. Simply enjoy being with your child. Give as many positive comments as possible, and make some mental notes as to how your child prefers doing things. If you do this consistently with your children, you will be amazed to see how easy it is to identify their different learning styles!

    Getting to know each of our children as individuals is an exhausting but rewarding proposition. The busier and more complicated our lives become, the harder it is to remember that each person in our family has a unique and valuable contribution to make from his or her own perspective.

    It is my intention to help you discover these different perspectives and to aid you in developing quick, practical ways of helping your child adapt his or her inborn strengths to the varied demands of learning, both in school and throughout the rest of life.

    Parents rarely intentionally frustrate their children, but intentional or not, it happens. By reading The Way They Learn, you can learn to identify many areas of frustration and conflict that can be directly attributed to a mismatch of the child’s learning style and the parent’s. This is not a deliberate defiance of parental authority by the child. The challenge for parents is to find positive ways of building on their children’s natural strengths without sacrificing desired bottom-line outcomes. Believe it or not, it can be done!

    Another important task for parents is to help their children effectively work with a variety of teachers who will undoubtedly have a number of different teaching styles. After reading this book, you will have gathered some very positive information to share with your children’s teachers. Having been a teacher myself, I can tell you that if you will approach both administrators and teachers from a positive perspective, you will be surprised at how open they are to learning about your children’s individual styles.

    When I first started teaching, I quickly realized that many of my students did not learn the way I did. However, I honestly thought it was just because they didn’t know how. Surely, if I could teach them to learn my way, it would eventually make perfect sense to them.

    As a new teacher, I was determined to keep my students excited about school. Since I assumed that they were a lot like me, I decided that boredom was their greatest enemy. I began a one-woman crusade to prevent boredom in my classroom.

    The first day of school, after my students left, I rearranged the desks into a new, creative seating plan. I didn’t post a formal seating chart, so I was not expecting some of the reactions I got the next day.

    Where do I sit? several students asked.

    Sit anywhere! I replied enthusiastically. The desks make a butterfly today. See the wing tips?

    "Well, where do you want us to sit?" they asked uncertainly.

    Now I was becoming a bit frustrated. "I don’t care, I insisted. Just choose a part of the butterfly and enjoy a new seat!"

    Now they were walking around the room, peering under the desks.

    Where’s the seat I had yesterday? one student muttered.

    That day many of my students notched their desks so they could find the same one the next day. I soon realized that one person’s boredom is another person’s security. Although I was well-loved and respected for my concern and creativity as a teacher those first years, many students seemed to really struggle with some of my methods. When I later discovered learning styles, I began to accommodate the students’ many different ways of learning. It was a great relief to know that those students whose styles were so different from my own weren’t deliberately trying to annoy me!

    A Journey Toward Understanding

    This book is just the tip of the iceberg about learning styles. In it, I have highlighted the most practical aspects of five leading research models on the subject. An annotated bibliography is included so that you can continue more in-depth reading or studying. I think you will find it fascinating. For far too long we have had writers and researchers putting people into tight little boxes. But because each person is so complex and unique, no one learning styles model can fully describe what a person is. As enlightening as each new chapter of information in this book may be, please remember: Each is only a piece of the puzzle. We can recognize and identify patterns of behavior and communication that will become keys for understanding and appreciating style differences. What we dare not do is insist that each person fit neatly into a category.

    Even though you will find some potentially invaluable checklists and assessments throughout this book, you will also discover that identifying and understanding individual learning styles is an ongoing journey of observations and impressions. As you read through and begin to use these concepts, keep in mind the following general guidelines:

    Observe patterns of behavior. When you or your child experiences success, what are the circumstances that brought about that success?

    Listen to the way a person communicates. If you only talk to others the way you want them to talk to you, you may discover you’re speaking a language that is foreign to them. Listening carefully can teach you how you need to talk to them.

    Experiment with what works and what doesn’t. Keep an open mind and remember that even if an approach to learning does not make sense to you, it may work for your children. We do not all learn in the same way.

    Focus on natural strengths, not weaknesses. Unfortunately, it’s so much easier to pinpoint areas of weakness that need improvement than to bolster sources of strength. But you can’t build much on weaknesses—strengths provide a much better foundation!

    Learn more about learning styles in general. Pay close attention to your children’s and your own learning styles, in particular.

    Everything you discover in this book is only part of the larger picture. There is much more to learn, and that is why I have included an extensive bibliography. While you are reading this book, look for additional pieces of your children’s learning style puzzle. Resist the temptation to put labels on your children or anyone else. Don’t box them into any one learning style.

    Once you begin discovering your natural strengths as well as those of your children, you will probably be relieved to learn that much of their struggle and behavior has more to do with inherent style than with something you failed to do as a parent.

    ^ ^ ^

    After receiving some learning styles training, one harried home-school mother seemed particularly relieved to find out her young son was normal. She admitted it had been very difficult to work with him, especially when it came to teaching him music. Now I understand why, she said. When I tell him the stems on the notes must be straight, he makes them diagonal, and when I ask him to name the notes, he gives them names like ‘Larry.’ This child

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