LEARNING STYLES – Colours in the Classroom

For the first time, in Melbourne Australia, PD for youth has been successfully introduced into the level 4 primary school curriculum (grade 5/6).  PD complemented the school’s leadership component and enhanced awareness of diversity in learning styles.
 

Benefits to students included:

•    increased validation of core values and strengths, and appreciating those differences in others
•    increased self-awareness,  individual learning preferences, leadership styles, varied approaches to team work,
     problemsolving and communication were highlighted

Benefits to teachers included:

•    insight into individual student learning styles and facilitation of targeted learning
•    able to relate “colours” to their own extension activities in the classroom; colours were applied to literacy, numeracy and
     technology units   

Feedback from students:

“………… I loved finding out who I was by myself”      

“I have learnt that anyone can be a leader”

“I learned that everyone is different in their own way and that there is no wrong or right in anyone’s personality”

 “I learned that all of us have all the colours in us.”

 “Today I learned more about team work and skills to keep working together.”

Feedback from teachers:

“This information will be very useful in my future teaching practices.  I can use the colours to help students choose partners and teams to work with.  It gives me solid information to draw upon when mediating student disagreements.   It will also help the students to take ownership over their personal development and learning goals.”

 “Students have learnt to recognise the learning environments suited to them and identified what they need to draw upon when faced with a less than ideal environment.  Students understand that they can draw upon the strengths of all 4 of their colours.”

“This helped me to pinpoint the differences in learning styles and saved me a lot of time in getting to know the kids – it was great to do it early in the year.”