The ministry of higher and secondary specialized education mansurova shoira

2.3. Some problems and difficulties in using different activities for kinesthetic learners

Another potential difficulty is that teachers may label students as learners of a particular style , for example, 'kinesthetic learners', when it is more accurate to say that these are learners who often learn well in kinesthetic modes, but who can use other learning modes to access information with help and a sympathetic approach to other styles of learning.

There is a debate about classifying the way students learn as learning styles, partly because the evidence that favoring any one particular way of learning actually improves student attainment is very weak. We need to be careful that we don't label students as specific kinds of learners, because although human beings do seem to have different preferences when it comes to learning, all learners can learn to process information in more than one way, or style, and in real life it is necessary to be able to process information in a variety of ways and all students need to learn how to do this. However, when compared to two other main types of learning, visual learning and auditory learning kinesthetic learning is the mode that seems to be the most fixed, in other words kinesthetic learners find it harder to break out of this learning style and adapt to other learning styles.
It is also the learning mode that formal education seems to cater for badly, not just because formal examinations and tests, with mainly written outcomes, favour verbal/auditory learning, but also because many classroom learning programmes do not encourage kinesthetic learners to access information through appropriate activities.[9,25-11]Kinesthetic learners, or more accurately, students who show a strong affinity with kinesthetic learning, like to learn by doing, by moving around and through hands on learning.

Research from neuro-science seems to suggest that movement encourages the brain to process information more effectively so even for those students who are not predominantly 'hands on' learners, learning activities that involve some movement may enhance the learning experience of all learners. It's just as important to remember that a major element in successful learning, as well as  the need for rigorous thinking,  is enjoyment and fun, and most students find at least some kinesthetic learning activities enjoyable and fun. Of course, some students will feel uncomfortable with some kinesthetic learning, but teachers can become skilled at devising activities that appeal to all learners and that satisfy the kinesthetic need.

So kinesthetic learning approaches can benefit all students, not just so-called kinesthetic learners, when these approaches help to add another dimension to their overall learning capability. Even critics of 'learning styles' agree on this, but their proviso is that the nature of the meaning to be gained from the information being learned is the reason for choosing to present information kinesthetically, not a particular preference for an particular learning style on the part of the learner.

Students who have a strong kinesthetic learning style often like to move around in the classroom. They may not be able to sit still for long periods of time and remember what they physically DO, so need to do something to 'learn' it. They

are able to remember something perfectly after doing it only once and enjoy activities that involve 'acting out' such as role play or drama. They find many ways to keep their hands busy, such as tapping a pencil, or taking their pen apart and putting it back together. They need the help of physical objects, that they can handle, as aids to sequencing and learninghave poor handwritinghave difficulty with spelling and enjoy subjects which inherently satisfy the need for 'hands on' learning, such as science experiments and practical science and subjects where they can use computers and other forms of technology. They perform well in sporting activities and activities such as dance. They express their interest in an actvity enthusiastically and excitedly - sometimes they can become over-excited.

Teachers can promote kinesthetic learning in the classroom by providing a varied menu of learning activities - within each lesson if possible, but certainly over a series of lessons, making sure some activities require learners to move around - this works best if it's not just movement for movement's sake although this can be a useful 'safety valve' for some learners but movement with an inherent learning purpose: for example, instead of students reading information from a text book or worksheet, you can put the information on pieces of card and stick them to the wall in the form of an information trail or 'Treasure Hunt' - students visit each card in turn to find the relevant information. They provide concrete learning aids that students can handle: very often teachers can do this very easily - for example, putting a selection of everyday objects in a bag that students then feel to identify is a simple way to make a learning activity kinesthetic.

Teachers give lots of opportunities for writing - not as a way of assessing learning - but rather as way of helping students understand the shapes of letters and words and to reinforce them, as writing helps 'trace' the words through neural pathways in the brain - sometimes we can disguise the writing input by asking students to create posters, not just for information, but also as a way of getting them to assess their own learning. They encourage learners to role play the learning: for example, in a Spanish class, kinesthetic learners will understand more easily the words needed to book a hotel room if they can act out the scene at the hotel reception. They make appropriate use of technology such as computers, video and DVD etc. They can keep it 'real': 'kinesthetic learners' often find it hard to work in the abstract, so teachers can find ways of 'wrapping up' abstract concepts in real tasks: for example, I once asked a class to write a few paragraphs about their own house in French a typical examination question, and while most were able to do just that, some  learners created a mini project in the form of a booklet including photographs of the rooms in their house with captions to accompany each photograph.

Teachers keep it 'really real' by giving students whenever appropriate and possible the chance to take part in museum visits, field trips, practical learning sessions both in and out of the school environment.

Learners must use effectively the information they have learned. They can do this by transforming all the information into different formats, by reconstructing the information. For example they can rework any notes they have made - the notes may be incomplete or of poor quality because the topics may have been delivered in ways that were not 'real' or concrete enough to really appeal to a kinesthetic learning style - encourage students to include as many 'real' examples as they can - getting them to 'relive' the kinesthetic parts of the learning can help

They can associate specific case studies or examples with abstract concepts they have to learn and include pictorial cues such as photographs and pictures in the notes to provide more of a 'hook' for the information they need to memorize. If it's possible encourage students to carry out the kinesthetic activity again at home: this has obvious limitations, but I have known kinesthetic learners who have 'revised' very effectively by recreating the classroom situation: for example, students who learned words and phrases to use in a presentation by walking up and down the 'learning wall' we had in our classroom, stuck the same information on their bedroom walls and went through at home the same moves they did in the classroom, in order to make the information 'stick’ [7,22-94]

They practice writing the kinds of answers they will face in the examination - remember that the act of writing does seem to help information become clearer to kinesthetic learners and talk over their learning with other students who learn in the same way, as a means of recalling all the important points.