Willis-Hodson2 - Discover Your Child's Learning Style



	Learning Aspect: "Disposition" "Discover Your Child's Learning Style" by Mariaemma Willis, M.S. & Victoria Kindle Hodson, M.A. Join our education support groups Online Self Portrait - special discount

	Interview with Willis Hodson: Introduction \| Aspects of learning \| Learning Aspect: Disposition \| ADD & other "learning styles" \| HSing & Afterschooling \| Excerpt: The five dispositions \| Online Learning Assessment Special Needs Kids: ADD \| Asperger's Syndrome \| Autism \| Dyslexia \| Gifted \| Explosive Children \| SID \| Speech Disorders

	Joe: Within the learning aspect you call "disposition," you outlined five subcategories called: Performs, Produces, Invents, Relates/Inspires, Thinks/Creates along with a great way to assess how your child fits in. How did you develop these questions? How does knowing this about your child help you structure your child’s learning experiences? Victoria: When the two of us started working together in 1987, we knew that we wanted to create an assessment instrument that: children could fill out about themselves by themselves a parent could score and interpret him or herself used everyday language and concepts. We each had many years of teaching experience, and independently we each had been carefully observing the behaviors of different kinds of learners. We had a great deal of material that needed a structure to make it accessible to others. We also researched the work of Myers-Briggs, Keirsey-Bates, Keith Golay and combined it with what we knew from our own teaching experiences. With a thesaurus in hand, the two of us met every week for an entire year in order to get the categories and the language just the way we wanted it. Then we spent two years testing the questions with adults and with kids of all ages in various settings. In the Disposition assessment, the statements we give people to choose from are all things that we have heard people say about themselves or we can imagine them saying about themselves. People with a Thinking/Creating Disposition often say, "I have a good imagination." People with an Inventing Disposition often say, "I like to discover things myself." People with a Producing Disposition often say, "I like to plan ahead." Your child's learning Disposition is a synthesis of all of the aspects of learning style and can help you have confidence in choosing activities, learning materials, and toys that he or she will actually learn from and enjoy. You can come up with alternative ways for doing school work that are more suitable for the way your child learns best-ways that reduce stress and make learning more fun. And, you are able to provide many different kinds of activities in after-school time that restore your child's interest and confidence in learning. Knowing your own learning Disposition as well as your child's can transform family fights into interesting discussions and strategy planning sessions. Just imagine the possibilities for misunderstanding when a parent has a Producing Learning Disposition and a child has an Inventing Disposition. These two kinds of learners see almost everything from opposite perspectives. Producing learners have a precise sense of time and thrive on being on time, getting things done on time, following directions, and making plans and schedules. Inventing learners have a loose sense of time, get lost in their projects, forget what time it is, and feel discouraged by the pressures of plans and schedules. Producing people enjoy pencil and paper activities, workbooks, order, organization, and sequenced activities. Inventing people do best with field trips, laboratories, asking questions, exploring things in a more random way. Which of these people is "more right" or "smarter?" This question loses its meaning in the Learning Style Model of Education. They simply have different needs. So, there is nothing to fight about anymore. The challenge is to find a way to meet the needs of each person. ADD & other "learning styles" Joe: Many of the parents in our support groups have special needs children (ADD, ADHD, dyslexia and other behavioral disorders). How does your program apply to these children? see the answer by Mariaemma Special Homeschoolzone Discount Save $5 with this special offer Click here to receive the special Zone discount & find out more about the program		Kick 'N' Crawl Playhouse FREE Child Development Ideas FREE Craft Ideas FREE Kids Recipes FREE Coloring Pages The Explosive Child Interview with author Ross Greene more ADD & ADHD books more special needs books more homeschooling books Discover Your Child's Learning Style: Children Learn in Unique Ways--Here's the Key to Every Child's Learning Success by Mariaemma Willis, Victoria Kindle-Hodson also see: FAQ: Learning styles It has become widely accepted that not all children learn alike. Some grasp information best by reading, while others learn better through listening or discovering concepts in a hands-on fashion. Two longtime educators--Mariaemma Willis and Victoria Kindle-Hodson--suggest in this guide that there are actually five aspects to a student's learning style beyond the simple modes of visual, auditory, or kinesthetic. Their "learning style profile" takes into account a child's talents, interests, preferred learning environment, and disposition, as well as the three more familiar modes. Written as a workbook, with a series of do-it-yourself assessments, the guide offers parents a chance to diagnose their child's learning style in all five areas. A chart of activities accompanies each style. Teach Your Child to Read in 100 Easy Lessons by Siegfried Engelmann, Phyllis Haddox, Elaine Bruner also see Reading Ed Center SRA's DISTAR is one of the most successful beginning reading programs available to schools. Research has proven that children taught by the DISTAR method outperform their peers. Now, this program has been adapted for use at home. In only 20 minutes a day, this remarkable step-by-step program teaches your child to read--with the love, care, and joy only a parent and child cane share.

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	Reprinted by permission of the authors from "Discover Your Child's Learning Style" All rights reserved. This may not be reprinted without the express written permission of the author � 1999 Mariaemma Willis, M.S., Victoria Kindle Hodson, M.A.