I might be joining a group at my school about ways in which students learn, and how teaching can best be adapted to suit most people. I thought I'd get a head start by asking on here how you think you learn best, and methods you might like to see teachers using to aid learning.

It's not just aimed at those still in school (although that'd be ideal!!), but also all of you adults too!! I'm talking about learning in general, not just musically. And any idea's at all would be appreciated

I'll start it off:

* I think that being given sheets and answering questions on sheets doesn't help me learn at all - or at least not when sheets are used as the main method of teaching. Using sheets as an aid is good though, in moderation.

* When learning important/specific facts, I find that a little dictation from a teacher helps, so that the points can be understood and revised correctly.

* Lessons should begin with the teacher informing students on what is going to be learnt...then they should explain the information, then get the student/s to do a short task to clarify the points made, and finally the lesson should conclude with a summary of some sort!!

* I think that most lessons should follow the general structure of the above point, but should maybe occasionally take a different form - like the teacher says what is going to be learnt, and then the pupils go off and come up with their own ideas on the topics, and relay them back to the teacher, who'll then clarify etc.

Come to think of it, I did a little course thing on demonstrations a while back which might help...I vaguely remember the term sequence 'EDIP', although can't remember what each means - Explain, Demonstrate....???

Thanks - any idea's etc would be reeeeeaaaallllly useful (and interesting!)

Actually I have a hunch that people learn best when they think they are discovering it all by themselves.

Yes I do agree with you, actually Except the group I'd be helping would be about learning in schools, and I dont know about any other school, but people in my school certainly wouldn't take to teaching themselves!! And there's so much on the internets and things that contradict, it's hard to know what's right and what's wrong!!

But thanks for your opinion!

Well, I find writing copious notes doesn't work for me. I prefer to just sit down and read. Maybe reading out loud could be an idea?

Probably not very original - sorry

Not sure if this fits, but...

How about the idea of learning through teaching? Sometimes in class we've been asked to present a certain topic or part of a topic to the rest of the class, complete with hand-outs (if appropriate), maybe a Power Point or some diagrams on the board.

On a slightly less scary scale (to timid old me anyway ) even just discussing things is useful. There are only 4 of us in my English class and most of the time we spend together isn't teacher-lead; we each pick up on different aspects of, for example, a text we've been working on and a discussion stems from there. I've found this to be really useful because more often than not the others will think of something I might have missed (or vice versa ) or will have contrasting opinions which can then be moulded into essays or just aid understanding.

When I'm with the 1st year English class I help with, I've found that they learn most effectively when actively employed in doing something. When they're expected to read about something, either by themselves or aloud with the teacher or one of us, their concentration can disappear quite quickly. Even if they're just making notes or talking about what they've read, it's much more obvious that they've understood it.

Hope I haven't bored you too much with this post!

These days school educators seem obsessed with the VAK concept. I.e. some people are visual learners, and learn best when things are shown, or associated with picture, and are highlighter obsessives. Other are auditory learners, who like to be told how things work, are generally musical et al. And lastly there are kinetic learners, who learn by doing and hate sitting still.

Obviously I'm generalising a bit, because I think the whole concept is twaddle. Everyone learns in a combination of different ways, and few fall perfectly into one of these categories. It is however a useful way of remembering that everyone learns differently, and can help teachers to deliver material in a balanced way.

Personally, for me, almost anything works...

I think it depends on what you are learning and I also think it is important to remember that people do learn in different ways and what works for one won't necessarily work for someone else. The most helpful thing you can do is to help someone discover how they learn best.


I think it depends what they are learning and there are times when I disagree strongly with this. In my daughters' school they are supposed to discover how to conjugate verbs by themselves (and most other grammar rules and multiplication tables and various other mathematical things). My elder daughter never did work out the verbs and used to get terribly frustrated. Eventually the teacher gave them the rules and the children were told to learn them - my daughter has been top of the class in grammar ever since.

yes, I can imagine, and it sounds like some kind of cop-out.

I wasn't suggesting that students should be left totally to their own devices. Note that I said *think* they are discovering.

I find it very hard to absorb stuff i'm reading. We seem to be meant to do this for half the physics course and its really not working for me, whereas i could take in the same information and understand it pretty quickly if i was taught it. Having said that, being spoken at doesnt really work either - need to see things written down/ diagrams drawn etc as well.

Discovery method - complete b******s. How is even a very clever child supposed to discover for themselves what took what took centuries of effort by the greatest minds that have ever lived.

I've tried a handful of "efficient learning" techniques, and read about dozens more, but I've only ever found one method that is effective: Work your socks off

I think this can work really well, because it's very difficult to teach something to others without having understood it yourself. It's a good way to learn a big topic, because different people in the class can research their own allocated bit of the topic, and then it all comes together with the presentations.

Sometimes it's thought that only older children should learn in this way, but one of our Physics teachers tried this with her year 8 class recently, and they loved it! It made them feel really grown up to do a presentation.

I beg to differ

We had to this for all the gcse english lit poems. The one our group did, i never got any notes on, because we were busy doing the presentation, and by the time of the exam, i'd forgotten half the stuff we'd come up with. Also, when on the receiving end of the presentations, they're often hard to make notes from because they're not particularly well structured, and quite often they dont really know what they're talking about, so how are they meant to teach it? Whereas, for the few poems we were taught about by the teacher, i got some really useful notes.

Maybe i'm just the exception to all the learning rules though, as none of the clever teaching techiniques seem to work on me at all

I think it depends entirely on what's being learnt. If it's a series of facts that will have to be regurgitated, then it's an entirely different matter to a skill that has to be mastered, The former requires the learner to be able to sit down and study. The latter requires a combination of guidance and response, with the guidance carefully tailored to what can absorbed in a given time. In either case, a certain feeling of autonomy and self-motivation has to be there, but, personally speaking, I cannot abide simply being told what to do; I need to feel in control. But then I'm an adult! The same may not be the case for a child who thrives on structure and guidance as set down by a teacher. I learn best when I'm in a position of having to question what's set in front of me...

Yes, I never think these things work so well in groups, because one or two people do all the work and the rest coast. If you have to do the whole presentation yourself it works much better.

I'm not sure it would work well for poems either, as responses are so subjective. It's good for science though because there are very definite explanations for things. No one technique works for every subject, but if you're a teacher I expect you learn how best to put your own specialism across.

Thank you so much, everyone, for all the replies!! There's some really interesting ones there...particularly those by Miss Ross - the teaching through learning idea sounds really effective, and I completely agree with the idea of discussing things to pick up different idea's on things


Thanks again

Laura