Hear ye hear ye, it’s the last instalment of our learning style series! We’ve gathered a few ways you can utilise the tech in your classroom to support auditory learners. Because everyone learns differently, and we aim to support all students.
What is auditory learning?
Auditory learning is one of the three learning styles established by the VAK model of learning, along with [link to blog] kinaesthetic [end link] and [link to blog] visual [end link].
Unsurprisingly, auditory learners prefer listening to lesson content rather than reading text. They tend to retain spoken information well, and are often active participants in class discussions.
How to engage Auditory learners
Auditory learners are one of the easier groups to engage, as much of our regular classroom presenting is spoken anyway. But with edtech, we can take this engagement even further, with some fun and interesting ways to deliver lessons.
Record time
While taking notes and reading through slides might be a good revision strategy for kinaesthetic and visual learners, auditory learners might benefit better from listening back over lessons.
With the ActivInspire Screen Recorder, you can easily capture your voice along with your on-screen actions and other applications, to provide students with engaging revision material.
Tune-in to stop tune-out
Did you know that research has shown that music can help increase cognitive functions? A Stanford study found that listening to certain types of music can improve focus and retention of information. This is particularly heightened during the transition points between musical movements of classical compositions.
Why not play some gentle classical music during lesson delivery? As much of it is in the public domain, there are plenty of free apps that you can download to the ActivPanel, and the front-facing speakers mean rich sound quality for the whole class.
Or if you’re feeling extra creative, check out Chrome Music Lab. This handy app that can be installed on the ActivPanel is packed full of ways to make music, including a touch-enabled keyboard, song makers, and a feature that makes music from drawn lines. Short songs related to taught content can act as great mnemonic devices – so why not play around?
Read out loud
As a fun break from traditional reading lessons, try playing audiobooks to the class. This is a great time-saving measure, as it frees up space for marking or forward-planning. There are also apps that convert text to audio that you can install on the ActivPanel, or to students’ personal devices.
Project podcast
For a fun, immersive project, have students create their own podcast episode on a topic relating to the curriculum. In groups they can use the ActivPanel or personal devices like tablets to record.
This is a great activity, as it really hits many different learning styles other than auditory. Pre-planning script-writing and research targets visual learners, plus the project-based learning element means that kinaesthetic learners will benefit from the active and immersive learning opportunity.
Have you enjoyed any of the above ideas? Sign up to our free professional development site, Learn Promethean for a wide range of online courses, videos, and articles designed to inspire.