Ready to Roll – Learning Styles Inventories
Another snowday today, here another missed Monday. Last Friday some districts had a three-hour delay (previously unheard of) and attendance was at half. But we are ready to go. Kids are ready to work in their newly-identified Maker Rings, epilepsy and we keep getting these forced hesitations. At least the rest of the week looks okay weatherwise.
Our Maker Ring Groups have been identified and are beginning to form affinities. We have 5 groups of 4 students, and each group has a balance of male/female and are multi-grade.
One of the things we are interested in is how individuals learn to work together well. As part of entrance to The Birch School we ask students to complete a few Learning Styles Inventories. Some say there are seven learning styles, but we don’t like to limit our thinking that way. We know there are multitudes of learning styles and individual combinations manifest in each person. We use online tools such as this Multiple Intelligences Self Assessment from Edutopia,, and also this Learning Styles Quiz from Education Planner. Here is a link to a PDF file to take the quiz on paper and chart results (from Teachers Pay Teachers).StudentLearningStyleInventory
This site has many links to additional quizzes, descriptions, and resources for Learning Styles Inventories.
For the Maker Ring project we want to repeat this exercise in the small group context. We hope the smaller social circle will promote more thoughtful reflection and use of the self-assessment tools. We aim to help students see where their skills overlap and where they complement each other. We will ask questions like “What skill do YOU bring to the group? How can this help us work together? What issues can you think of that might come up?”
Our students who are working with Destination Imagination did an exercise much like this at the start of their project. We plan to use that resource and adapt it for use with the Maker Rings. We also plan to use colored sticky notes, and map out the predominant learning styles of individuals, Maker Rings, and the larger group. This visualization will hopefully help everyone “see” where the group has skill strengths, overlaps, and needs.
UPdated: A reader sent this link where you will find a good description of different learning styles and also several links to other resources about using learning style inventories.
