Thursday, February 27, 2014

Activities Fitting Your Learners' Learning Styles: Naturalistic Learners

This post explores different ways to make the most of your learner's learning style and help them become successful learners. Try these techniques and activities to help your naturalistic learners.

In this post I will suggest activities fitting for your naturalistic learners. If your learner has a naturalistic learning style, they are probably more in tune with nature and might often be interested in nurturing and exploring the environment and learning about the natural world. Your learner will be highly aware of even subtle changes to their environment.




My dad is a naturalistic learning. He loves to spend time outside. He has a beautiful garden and grows produce. We live in Russia and experience severe weather conditions, so in winter he does not have a chance to take care of our garden. He compensates for this by planting in-home flowers. We have at least 30 different types. As soon as summer comes, it gets impossible to find my dad at home. He starts beautifying our garden and produce, planting flowers, fruits, berries, and vegetables. Every weekend, he goes to the forest to pick up mushrooms and berries. He knows all the types of mushrooms and berries, their subtle differences, the laws of nature and animals' behavior. He is an expert in my region and is always approached for advice. 

When I was a school child, my dad liked to develop my math skills outside in the open air. I used to count the jars of berries he picked up and the rows of potatoes planted in order to describe the shapes of plants and trees. He told me that was the way he liked to learn when he was a child. He was curious about the natural world, and kept asking his mother lots of questions about it. My dad's dream school was an open air school. When he was a child he was shown an Indian film which had a scene about poor children studying outside. The teacher taught students to count crops by singing a song. My dad still remembered that song and taught me it. That old movie impressed my dad a lot. He fell in love with India, and instilled in me the love for India as well. In my undergraduate school in Russia, I had a chance to choose between 3 countries to travel to for an internship: India, China, and Turkey. Of course, I chose India and I sang to Indians that song. It surprising them a lot, as that was a very old - fashioned Indian song.


Going outside, my dad has never taken watches with him. It surprised me a lot. He knew exactly when we needed to go home. Thanks to the position of the sun he could tell the exact time. My dad has never taken the compass while going to forest. Russian forests are huge and complicated. He has always known the way back. The position of the anthills and tree trunks helped him to define where the north, the east, the west, and the south is. Later, I learned about those secrets as well. 


If my dad were my learner, I would invite him to do activities which would appeal to his naturalistic learning style. I would involve him to sort out natural things, make a plant exhibit, listen to the sounds of nature on tape, plan a hunt or a hike, observe and discuss natural surroundings, and participate in beautification projects or clean-up activities. Open air tutoring sessions would be a desirable setting for my naturalistic learner, and it would inspire them to observe, to talk, and learn more.


Stick with me and find out about other types of learners in future posts!

Happy tutoring!

Tatyana Pavlova
Bachelor of Arts in Linguistics/ Bashkir State University
MA Education/ESL 2014, Cambridge College

ENGLISH AT LARGE
Literacy and Learning for Life
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