Gestures—especially ______ones. 【29】

Tutor: Come in, everyone. The office might be a bit crowded with four of us and all these materials! There’s coffee over there---help yourselves. ... Now, we’re here to discuss three types of learners--kinaesthetic, visual and auditory--and how we can teach each type. I gave each of you one of them to consider. Jack, can we look at yours first, please. You were assigned kinaesthetic learners, weren’t you?
Jack: Yes, I was. The first idea I had was using gestures, particularly finger gestures. Teachers can use them to emphasise stress on certain syllables. They can also use their fingers to write words in the air--spelling out the letters. The second thing is that the teacher can use the board. The teacher can ask students to spell words by going to the board and writing them up. The teacher could also ask students to write a letter each, in order. The teacher could put a poster on the board and students could go to the board with labels and label it as directed by the teacher. Another possibility is to ask students to organise words into categories on the board.
Tutor: Good. The important thing is to keep kinaesthetic learners active-- moving.
Helen: Games are good for them. Jack, did you think of any?
Jack: Yes, Helen. I thought of a couple. One is like charades. Divide the students into two or three teams. Give the students on one team some words and ask them to act them out. For example, if the word is ’cold’, a student might shiver. The other teams have to guess the words.
Tutor: Good idea. Simple, but effective. Well done. Tina?
Tina: Well, I was asked to think about teaching visual learners. Flash cards are good in my opinion. The students can guess words from seeing part of the flash card--which can be a word or a picture--or the teacher can show students the flash cards very quickly. Maybe that’s how flash cards got their name! Flash cards can also have different background colours depending on which part of speech they are-- noun, verb, adjective, adverb, etc. Students could also learn from their peers by highlighting words they don’t know, in a text for example, then asking ... helping each other with unknown words.
Jack: I know a good game for visual learners. Make a set of cards--half with words on and half with pictures. The cards are face down and students can mm over two at a time. If the word and picture match, they keep the cards. If they don’t, they mm them face down again and the next student tries.
Tutor: Great idea. Visual learners are often good at categorising words. Each page in the student’s notebook refers to a category of words. Students write new words on the correct page in their notebook for faster recall. For example, page one might be food and page two could be telephone phrases.
Tina: Spider diagrams are good too.
Tutor: Yes, they are. Helen, you were assigned auditory learners.
Helen: OK. I had these ideas for teaching auditory learners. First, they could listen to a dictation and draw what they hear. For example, students listen to the teacher describing items of furniture and then draw them in the appropriate rooms of the house. Or the teacher could describe a picture. After the description, the teacher and students can see whose picture was closest to the original. Flash cards can also be used. Each student gets a flashcard and they hold up their card when they hear that word or phrase in a song, poem or story. Another way of using them is to go around the class, with each student adding a sentence to a story, including the word on their flash card.
Tutor: Auditory learners can also learn using songs and music. Any suggestions?
Tina: The teacher could give the students a text of a song, you know, the lyrics, with some words replaced by a rhyming word. Students then listen to the song and make corrections.
Tutor: That’s a really good idea. Perfect for auditory learners. Well, thank you for your suggestions. I have a few other ideas you might consider...