Students who are visual learners will do best when information is presented in a way that they can see it. To reach this type of learner, teachers can show children charts or graphs, or draw a picture that represents the lesson being taught. For example, when teaching about the water cycle the class could draw a picture of a pond to represent "evaporation," clouds to show "condensation," and raindrops for "precipitation." Using colors can also be helpful for visual learners, so teachers can use color-coding in their lessons. For instance, words on a word wall can be written with different colors depending on the part of speech they are (verbs in blue, nouns in red, and adjectives in yellow).
Some students learn best by hearing and listening to the information presented. These auditory learners will need to hear the lessons instead of only seeing or reading them. The traditional lecture format usually works well for these students. Auditory learners could learn about the water cycle by listening to the teacher explain the process of evaporation, condensation, and precipitation. They would also do well hearing the vocabulary words the teacher has put on the word wall and using them in a sentence.
According to Family Education, most learners do well by touching, feeling, and experiencing the information they are learning. These students are called kinesthetic, or sometimes tactile, learners. They learn best by being active and involved in the lessons, participating in activities such as skits, science experiments, and using hands-on manipulatives. When learning about the water cycle, these students would retain the information best by acting it out. For example, the teacher could have students stand up slowly to demonstrate "evaporation," wave arms in the air showing "condensation," and then wiggle their fingers downward representing "precipitation." These kinesthetic learners could learn the word wall words by chanting the letters out loud while putting motions to them.
Some students learn best when working with their peers and participating in group activities. Teachers should use cooperative learning strategies when presenting new information that will allow this type of child, the sociological learner, to learn best. Teachers could allow students to talk to one another about what they have learned or teach each other what they know. The sociological learner could learn about the water cycle by engaging in a class play about how the water travels through the entire cycle. These students could learn their vocabulary words by talking to their peers about what they mean or spelling them together.