Knowing The Learner

It was in 3rd period in my 10th grade year, when I first experienced school through a different lense. As a project for my health class, my teacher had us make a lesson plan explaining the topic individually assigned to the whole class. It wasn’t until after my presentation that I realized that I’m a very heavy tactile learner. As described in the essay “Knowing the Learner” by Gayle Gregory and Carolyn Chapman, a tactile learner learns best from handling materials, being involved, and writing or drawing. In my project, I put myself in the students shoes and made a lesson plan that I would have wanted presented to me. Therefore, I made the role playing interesting and decided to bring an item into class to pass around within the students and started explaining my topic to the class. As that was in process, I had also made a detailed poster and provided some visuals with drawings and diagrams and added just the right amount of wording. This technique has helped me in remembering certain key points from lectures.

Throughout my

As they spoke, they expected my classmates and I to follow along and write down what they were saying. This personally made me lose focus and any minor distractions would win over my attention throughout the class. Aside from having to stay concentrated and alert, some teachers would speak rapidly and as a student, it is discouraging to have to ask them to slow down or repeat themselves. Knowing this, my biggest fear is writing too much information or lecturing too often causing a loss of interest to the students. Therefore, I strongly believe that it will be most difficult to adjust myself to the auditory crowd due to reasons of insecurities of time management, lack of interest, and/or focusing too much on my learning