Donovan R. Walling - Teaching Writing to Visual, Auditory, and Kinesthetic Learners

For Sam

Copyright 2006 by Corwin Press

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Walling, Donovan R., 1948
Teaching writing to visual, auditory, and kinesthetic learners / Donovan R. Walling.

p. cm.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN 1-4129-2519-3 (cloth) ISBN 1-4129-2520-7 (pbk.)

1. Composition (Language arts) 2. Perceptual learning. 3. Active learning. 4. Individualized instruction. I. Title.

LB1575.8.W37 2006
808.042071dc22 2005029173

This book is printed on acid-free paper.

06 07 08 09 10 11 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

T he author wishes to acknowledge the inspiration and ideas provided over many years by friends and colleagues in the Sheboygan Area School District in Wisconsin, in particular Dr. Wayne Homstad, now assistant professor of education at Lakeland College.

Corwin Press would like to thank the following reviewers for their contribution to this book:

Marilee Sprenger, Educational Consultant, Seattle Pacific University, Seattle, WA

Erin Sullivan, Research Associate, National Research Center on the Gifted and Talented, University of Connecticut, Storrs, CT

Sue Teele, Director of Education Extension, University of California at Riverside, Riverside, CA

Carol Ann Tomlinson, Professor of Educational Leadership, University of Virginia, Charlottesville, VA

Pamela Fannin Wilkinson, Educational Consultant, The Winston School San Antonio, San Antonio, TX

Donovan R. Walling is a writer, editor, and educator. He has taught art, English, and journalism in the United States and abroad, and he has served as a curriculum administrator in public school districts in Wisconsin and Indiana. Currently, he is director of publications at Phi Delta Kappa International, the professional association in education. He is the author or editor of twelve professional books for educators and numerous articles and other publications. His most recent books are Visual Knowing: Connecting Art and Ideas Across the Curriculum (Corwin Press, 2005) and Public Education, Democracy, and the Common Good (Phi Delta Kappa Educational Foundation, 2004). He is nationally recognized in the field of art education, where his publications also include the Corwin Press book, Rethinking How Art Is Taught: A Critical Convergence (2000), the core chapter on visual and performing arts for the Association for Supervision and Curriculum Developments Curriculum Handbook (2002), and the Art in the Schools entry for Macmillans Encyclopedia of Education (2003).

T his book focuses on teaching writing to visual, auditory, and kinesthetic learners, who usually are not natural writers. Research has established that students of all ages construct knowledge in a variety of ways, based in large part on how their brains process stimuli. The ways that students minds work also influence howand how wellthey learn to write. Teachers who understand that students respond in different ways to various types of stimuli can differentiate writing instruction according to students preferred learning styles and thus increase students success.

Some students process stimuli most effectively using linguistic cues. These students often are early readers and, later on, can be the natural writers in the class, those students who acquire writing competence seemingly without much effort. Other students rely on logical or mathematical cues to discern information and construct understandings. These students also may be able to acquire writing skills with relative ease. Students whose minds work in these linguistic and logical ways generally have the easiest time in school, particularly in academic classes, for the simple reason that most academic teaching is based on using linguistic and logical-mathematical stimuli that match these learning styles.

However, many students do not construct knowledge most effectively in these ways. Visual learners respond most strongly not to information that they read or hear, but to information that they see, such as pictures and patterns. Auditory learners respond to information that they hear, such as spoken language, music, and rhythms. And kinesthetic learners learn most easily through movement and physical activity.

All of that said, of course, no student uses only one mode of responseor learning styleto the exclusion of all others. But from students early grades onward, teachers can observe how they learn most easily and effectively by noticing students dominant learning styles, if any. They can observe whether students learn better from reading (linguistic), looking at pictures (visual), listening (auditory), or doing physical activities (kinesthetic). Observant teachers often notice that their visual, auditory, and kinesthetic students struggle with learning how to express ideas and concepts in writing. These learners can be picture smart, music smart, and body smart, but they may be challenged in the classroom because instruction and assessment are structured in ways that require performance tasks and reward evidence that learners are word smart and number smart.