No matter what type of preschool or kindergarten experience a six-year- old may have under his belt, first grade represents a radical change. Spending over thirty hours a week away from home is often a novel experience in itself, even before academics, art, music, and physical education are added to the picture. First graders must assume a degree of responsibility for their behavior, possessions, movement about the school building, and completion of tasks that, until now, rested on the shoulders of their teachers.
Some first graders are better equipped to cope with this new responsibility than others. You see, organizational, academic, and social skills—all of which result from years of learning and playing according to inborn sensory preferences—differ greatly among six- and seven- year-olds. Children who have been visually oriented since birth, for example, usually learn beginning reading and writing skills with ease. Yet, these Lookers' conversational skills may not approach those of a child naturally attuned to the auditory, and Lookers also lack the superior coordination of a child who favors touch and movement.
Chapter Six illustrates exactly how learning style colors the first- grade experience by following the development of three children—a Looker, a Listener, and a Mover—throughout the course of their school year. A Learning Style QuickCheck for First Graders is included to help you identify the way your own child absorbs information (see page 153).
This chapter also takes a subject-by-subject look at the relationship of learning style to first-grade school performance, and suggests ways to effectively communicate with your child's teacher. Tips are included to help you select extracurricular activities with an eye to learning-style enhancement, and strategies are presented to help your child apply his
preferred way of learning to the mastery of reading, writing, spelling, and math. Finally, you'll find lists of specially chosen toys and techniques, designed to sprinkle your child's at-home play time with activities that will encourage his interests and strengths while improving those weaker skills that are part and parcel of his learning style.
Whatever a child's first-grade experience may be, his time at home is an important component of the "big picture." For some, home provides relief from a stressful academic pace or a level of socialization that is at once fascinating and overwhelming. For others, it may be a place that's too quiet or offers limited opportunities to burn off energy. Making your child's at-home learning a low-pressure, made-to-order, fun experience, while allowing him plenty of unstructured time, will enable him to be most receptive to your skill-enhancement efforts and help you both get the greatest benefit from the time you spend together. Enjoy!
Christopher, Angela, and Thomas have just begun first grade. The three children are veterans of the same preschool and kindergarten classes, and happen to be almost exactly the same age; each child turned six in early July. Despite these similarities and further likenesses stemming from their home environments, the children entered first grade with three distinctly different sets of expectations and readiness skills. It is their inborn learning styles that have made the difference. Christopher, you see, is naturally drawn to the visual aspects of his surroundings; Angela responds to language and sounds; and Thomas responds to motion and touch. Not every child exhibits the traits of a single learning style in this manner. Looker-Mover and Looker-Listener combinations, for example, are not at all unusual. However, for the sake of clarity and to highlight the characteristics of each type of learner, our case-study children will each display a "pure" style. Let's take a look at our three learners as they begin their adjustment to the first grade.
Meet Christopher. Looker Christopher has a highly developed sense of order. Before he leaves for school each day, he checks his room to make sure that his toys and possessions have been neatly put away. When he arrives at school, he goes straight to his desk to organize its contents.
Christopher is equally fussy about his personal appearance. He selects his outfits carefully and becomes quite upset if his clothing gets wrinkled or soiled.
Christopher is a loner. Reserved by nature, he does not make friends easily; he is happiest playing by himself because doing so frees him from the strain of socializing. Christopher enjoys the role of observer. He is fascinated by the interactions and play of other children, but remains on the sidelines as though unsure of how to join in their games.
Christopher's gross motor skills are about average for his age. But, rather than engage in full-body play, he is certain to find and devote his attention to some visual aspect of the activity at hand. When he's at the shore, he shuns the water, preferring instead to write in the sand. When he goes bowling, he shows more interest in the automatic scoring device than in taking his turn. At the park, he sits motionless on a swing, eyes darting back and forth so as not to miss anything. Wherever there's noise, activity, and the potential for messiness, you'll find a somewhat daunted Christopher watching intently from a safe distance.
Christopher's fine motor skills are excellent. He loves to draw and write, for he finds his sophisticated finished products very gratifying. Not surprisingly, Christopher's superior eye-hand coordination makes him a whiz at video games and the computer. He is also adept at mazes, connect-the-dot pictures, and pencil-and-paper games of every kind. And Christopher adores picture books, as he has since babyhood, and greatly enjoys playing cards and board games. Building sets and children's quiz shows and magazines take up the remainder of Christopher's play time.
At the start of first grade, Christopher has quite a large "sight" vocabulary—that is, he can recognize a number of words from memory. He doesn't hesitate to guess at unfamiliar words, but is rarely correct unless the words appear in the context of a sentence. Christopher can add and subtract up to ten with accuracy by envisioning a line of sequential numbers and moving an imaginary "counter" ahead or back as needed. He is also quick to grasp new concepts because he is able to commit to memory everything he is shown.
Christopher's adjustment to first grade has so far been slow. He has trouble listening for long periods, but even when his attention wanders, his good behavior and respectfulness continue. Although at first Christopher was tense and silent much of the time, he is now beginning to feel more at home with his new teacher and classmates, and, as a result, more tolerant of group activities. Certainly, some of his skills are stronger than others. Still, Christopher stands to gain a great deal from first grade on the strength of his visual orientation alone.
Meet Angela. Listener Angela's work and play areas are as cluttered as Christopher's are tidy. To her, the game at hand is much more important than the surroundings in which it takes place; and besides, much of her pretense involves a myriad of props and players, be they real or stuffed. Children gravitate toward Angela, for they admire her self-assurance and the ease with which she talks to older children and adults. Angela usually turns her own adoring gaze toward the friends of her ten-year-old sister. Because she copies their clothing and hair styles and mimics their speech, Angela has become somewhat of a trend setter among the first-grade set.
Angela's sophisticated vocabulary and confident demeanor make her a "natural" at masterminding role-playing games. She loves this sort of play, and the fact that she usually reserves the role of Queen, Boss, President, or Leader for herself adds to her enjoyment. When she's alone, Angela gravitates toward the TV, the tape player, and her toy microphone.
Angela's fine motor skills—cutting, coloring, printing, and the like— are acceptable for her age. At school, she often heads for the crafts corner during free time, not necessarily to work, but because there's always a group gathered there with whom she can try out her play ideas. Her own artistic efforts are not particularly detailed or imaginative, but she's good at instructing other children. Things are not much different outdoors, for there, again, Angela views play time more as a means to socialize than as exercise.
Angela is very much at home in first grade. Reading poses no problem, because our Listener's knowledge of the different letter sounds enables her to sound out even multisyllabic words. Math comes just as easily because of her immediate recall of addition and subtraction facts. The teacher encourages Angela's outspokenness about her opinions and feelings, but has to reprimand her almost daily for general talkativeness and a tendency to speak for everyone in her class. Angela's auditory recall enables her to follow even the most complicated directions, but it comes as no surprise that social Angela is quickly bored with seat work and individual projects. Nevertheless, Angela is so rewarded by her everyday academic success and built-in circle of friends that she can't wait to get to school in the morning.
Meet Thomas. First grade is not as much fun for Mover Thomas. In fact, it's more of an ordeal. This active, sensitive six-year-old chafes at the constraints of classroom life and is repeatedly frustrated when his efforts to "buck the system"—by falling back on the full-body activity he craves—meet with failure.
Thomas tends to mumble when he speaks, mispronouncing words
and using short, poorly sequenced sentences. When he has an urgent need to communicate an idea, you can count on Thomas to express himself physically rather than verbally. The urge to push, grab, hug, and wrestle strikes him long before he thinks of talking things out. Naturally, many of Thomas's classmates keep their distance for fear of becoming one of his targets. The other children are, in fact, slightly horrified by Thomas's shenanigans and the frequency with which he is scolded by the teacher.
Things are different at home and outdoors, for where there are obstacles to scale and balls to throw and kick, agile Thomas emerges as a leader. He has a group of pals who meet each day on the playground for races or a game of tag. And the neighborhood boys flock to Thomas's backyard, because, when school's out, that's where you'll always find him, climbing trees, tackling a buddy, or playing war. Most of the boys' parents, unsure of how to deal with Thomas's frequent tears and wild behavior, discourage his presence in their homes.
Thomas has trouble with printing. He holds the pencil incorrectly and presses so hard that he snaps not just the point but often the pencil itself. Many of his letters are reversed, and none is properly shaped or sized. Art projects, free-time activities, and any class work that requires sitting still are nonstop struggles for Thomas, for he has trouble staying with any task that doesn't allow him to move about. So far, Thomas has enjoyed only two class activities—the creation of a "Things With Wheels" mural, which focused on a favorite topic of his and enabled him to roam while working, and the class's train trip to a duck pond several towns away.
Thomas cannot read yet. He recognizes his name and that of his brother, but because he still confuses the letters of the alphabet and has trouble remembering their sounds, he can neither recall nor sound out other words that he encounters. He can manage simple addition by counting on his fingers, but he can't envision number groupings the way Christopher can and is completely baffled by math word problems.
Thomas is well aware of his academic shortcomings, but is powerless to change his activity level and attention span. In school, he requires a place to work where he cannot create too many distractions for others, a place to calm down when he becomes upset, and lots of support and encouragement in the form of pats, hugs, and handshakes. First grade promises to be quite a trial for Thomas.
What kind of learner is your first grader? Is he a Looker, attracted to color, movement, and shapes, as Christopher is? Is he more like Listener
Angela, highly attuned to sounds and language? Or is he drawn to sensations and motion, much like Mover Thomas? The Learning Style Quick- Check for First Graders on page 153 will give you the answer. Just review the traits in each of the three columns, checking any that are characteristic of your first grader. After you total the checks in each column, you should have a clear picture of your child's sensory preference.
At age six, Christopher, Angela, and Thomas's various aptitudes and weaknesses—all of which are determined by the way each child has absorbed and responded to environmental stimuli since birth—are already obvious. As we follow our learners through their first-grade year, you will see that without intervention, each of them will succeed in those subject areas that "fit" with his or her learning preference. But, by the same token, the children's struggles will persist—and, in fact, increase—in subjects that call for skills they do not naturally possess. Let's see how Christopher, Angela, and Thomas fare as they move through the first grade.
Christopher. Throughout the school year, Christopher continues to prefer his own company to group play. He has one special friend with whom he plays during free time, but if that child is absent or tries to vary their games by introducing a new rule or a third child, Chris wanders off in search of a solo activity. When spoken to, Christopher expresses himself clearly but simply. Yet, despite his reticence, Christopher is roundly admired for his prowess at computer and video games—prowess assured by his superior eye-hand coordination.
Chris's parents encourage his creative side. They have enrolled him in a drawing class, and they make sure that he has plenty of models and craft supplies to keep him busy at home. And, of course, Christopher remains interested in books, magazines, board games, and card playing.
This spring, at his parents' urging, Christopher joined a T-ball team. He is certainly no star in the making—in fact, he hates getting sweat and dust on his uniform and is almost always "out at first"—but Chris adores playing the role of statistician when it's his turn on the bench. With T-ball, just as in other areas of his life, Christopher has a great concern for the rules of the game.
Christopher's progress in reading has slowed somewhat. Without the sounding-out skills needed to master phonics, he cannot decipher the two- and three-syllable words that have cropped up in his reader. Chris still relies on visual memory when the text is simple, and this same ability comes into play when he enjoys comics and the puzzle and hidden-message books his teacher provides for free-time use.
Christopher is enjoying great success with math. He adds and subtracts quickly and accurately, because he can envision groups of numbers in his mind. He has immediate recall of the names and meanings of the symbols for addition (+), subtraction (-), and equals (=), and has quickly grasped the idea behind geometric shapes, graphs, and measurements. He is adept at completing the dittos and workbooks that confound so many of his classmates, and he delights in his teacher's use of visual feedback—stars, stickers, and written words of praise.
Christopher is still an observer. He is particularly attuned to the misbehavior of others, and has taken to biting his nails during tense moments. Christopher becomes impatient with long listening tasks and has trouble absorbing complicated instructions. When Chris is taught, he requires a demonstration instead of verbal directions.
At year's end, Christopher's teacher notes that he sometimes seems to tune her out with a blank stare or closed eyes. (Actually, he is at work forming mental images.) She mentions that he is a perfectionist and should be less critical of himself and more assertive about his ideas, rather than parroting what he deems to be a "proper" opinion. It appears that Christopher will need help with his social and auditory skills to ensure his becoming a happy, confident second grader.
Angela. As Listener Angela moves through first grade, she becomes more sociable than ever. She has play dates almost every day—in fact, she hates to play alone—and attends a constant round of birthday parties and sleep-overs. She makes and receives phone calls quite regularly, and impatiently counts the days between Brownie troop and church school meetings. Angela continues to be talkative to a fault, for her impulsive chattiness often disturbs the teacher's lesson or her classmates' work. Nevertheless, she expresses herself beautifully, voicing sophisticated opinions in precise adultlike language.
Angela's fine motor skills have changed little since September. Her printing and artwork are acceptable, nothing more. She still reverses an occasional letter, and seems unaware of misspellings in her written work. She is enrolled in a crafts class, but attends only when her friends do, because her real interest lies in scheduling after-class play dates.
Outdoors, Angela likes activities that she can share with her friends, like skating, bicycling, and jump rope games. She signed up for a soccer team earlier in the year, but was bored by practice sessions and found the pace of the games so difficult to follow that she eventually dropped out.
Angela's sounding-out skills have kept her at the top of her class in reading. She is particularly good at reading aloud, but as the books become more difficult, Angela is losing her place on the page with increasing frequency. She has similar trouble following the lines of problems printed on math work sheets, though she rarely makes an error when the class does their addition and subtraction aloud or solves word problems as a group.
Angela still asks a lot of questions and makes occasional inappropriate comments in class. She is as distracted as ever by noise and talking, and has great difficulty keeping her mind on visual tasks for more than a few minutes. Angela's teacher suggests that the child learn to become more organized, and mentions that Angela's school work would improve if she expended less energy on socialization and more on her written work. It appears that Angela, like Christopher, would profit from some skill development before tackling second grade.
Thomas. As the school year progresses. Mover Thomas becomes somewhat more communicative. He is still difficult to understand, but his sentences are longer and he uses his hands to help convey difficult messages. Nonetheless, Thomas is not very articulate. Rather than grope for an elusive word, he refers to objects in general terms, like "The thing over there," or "My whatchamacallit."
Thomas has become a tease. He seems to have a sixth sense that enables him to zero in on a child's sore points, and he enjoys wrinkling the paper of a neighboring neatnik or placing his chair a scant inch away from that of a child who needs a lot of space. When Thomas's classmates are working, he often intrudes with a bear hug, a poke, or a tug of the hair.
Thomas shows great pride in his accomplishments on those occasions when he completes an assignment, but becomes frustrated and angry when he finds that he can't sustain such a work pace. These days, Thomas's printing is more legible, but he is a long way from keeping his letters within the confines of the lines, and he still reverses many letters when printing from memory. Few of Thomas's written words are spelled correctly, for he hasn't yet grasped the phonetic skills necessary to make an educated guess. Not surprisingly, Thomas still reads on a level appropriate for a kindergartener. Even at the school year's end, he has a very small sight vocabulary, and loses his place on pages with
more than one line of copy. Lately, he has taken to trailing his finger along the page to follow each sentence word by word.
Thomas uses his fingers in math, as well. In an effort to reinforce the concepts of addition and subtraction, his teacher has provided a number line and an abacus at the back of the room. While these are somewhat helpful to Thomas, they provide new distractions in that he now has a built-in excuse to walk around instead of working at his seat.
As he approaches seven years of age, Thomas loves skateboarding, karate, and soccer, though he frequently ignores the rules inherent in the latter two. He signs up for a team sport every season and is usually the undisputed star of the team, but his coaches will all attest to the fact that during practices and games, Thomas is always either making or getting into some sort of trouble. He simply cannot tolerate waiting of any sort.
Thomas has begun to visit the school's speech-language pathologist for help with pronunciation. He has little difficulty with the twenty-minute sessions, mainly because he is the only student present and is helped to concentrate on his work by the therapist's unwavering attention. In class, he finishes his work only when the teacher stands beside his desk to keep him at his task. Thomas loves physical education, art class, and the hands-on projects his class does during science lessons; he loathes the sitting and listening required by music class. Thomas's teacher is rightfully concerned about his inability to adhere to rules, keep track of belongings and assignments, and remember the sequence of months-old routines. Much of Thomas's behavior and many of his skills are more typical of a four-year-old, and his teacher makes an end-of-year recommendation that he be evaluated for possible learning disabilities and placement in a transitional class before advancing to second grade. (For an in-depth look at learning problems such as Thomas's, please refer to Chapter Nine, "Learning Problems and Possibilities.")
The academic and fine arts material covered during the primary grades can be divided into Looker and Listener subjects. Only physical education employs a child's Mover skills. Because different senses and learning skills are called into play during class time, each lesson's appeal to a child is largely dependent on his inborn learning preference. The discussions that follow separate first-grade Looker subjects from Listener subjects while describing the visual or auditory components of
each area of study. Sample first- and last-quarter reports cards are also provided to illustrate the different academic experiences faced by Lookers, Listeners, and Movers.
Considering the many visual aids used in academic work, it's easy to see why Looker skills are so necessary for classroom success. Spelling, for instance, is primarily a visual exercise. At first, most Listener children are good spellers, for their reliance upon sounding-out skills is sufficient to reproduce the simple one-syllable words that constitute the bulk of beginner readers and basic writing exercises. But, the English language is awash with exceptions to the rules of phonics, and it is the Looker, able to envision a word's spelling in his mind's eye, who remains a good speller.
Handwriting is also a subject at which Lookers excel. For beginning writers, in particular, a good visual memory is needed to recall the various letter and number shapes before putting pencil to paper. Well- developed eye-hand coordination is then necessary to reproduce the letters and numbers exactly as recalled. These skills also serve Looker children during art class. When designing and creating a project. Lookers are able to envision a finished product before putting their deft hands and fingers to work to give their plan life.
Math requires Looker skills in addition to the Listener skills described on page 131. Looker children can recall the symbols used in addition and subtraction (+, -, and =), and use them as visual cues to the operation being performed. Lookers can make immediate sense of graphs, and can call to mind pictures of number values—two stacks of six blocks each, for example, when adding six plus six. Children with strong Looker skills can also easily visualize various geometric shapes and form mental images of the actions involved in story problems: "Jim had six apples but gave two to Meg. How many does he have left?"
Of all the subjects that require Listener skills, perhaps reading is the most essential. The mastery of reading requires that a child tune into and discriminate between different letter sounds, and then blend these sounds to form spoken words. Even when reading to himself.
a child "speaks" each word in his mind. Surprisingly, the earliest readers are usually Lookers, who recognize printed words by sheer visual recall. However, Looker children eventually fall behind their classmates as the reading material becomes progressively more difficult. As sight readers, they can pronounce only those words they have seen before. They lack the Listener skills needed to deal with unfamiliar letter combinations.
Primary music is also a Listener subject. In most cases, the teacher first tells the story behind each new piece of music. The children are then expected to listen to instrumental compositions and memorize lyrics and tempos that become longer and increasingly complex as the school year progresses. Children with below-average auditory skills are hard pressed to listen and vocalize in this manner. In fact, even Listeners may have trouble with either music reading or tone recognition, as each skill originates in a different brain hemisphere, and the two hemispheres are not always equally developed.
Math, or at least a portion of it, comes easily to the Listener child. His well-developed auditory memory and quick grasp of language concepts enable him to process the information contained in story problems—for instance, Jim's sharing his apple supply with Meg. The Listener also has immediate recall of such math-related words as "quarter," "circle," and "o'clock"; can easily memorize the basic rules of addition and subtraction; and comprehends the terms "more," "less," "plus," "minus," and "equals."
Typical Report Cards for Lookers, Listeners, and Movers
Now that we've examined the skills called into play by each subject studied during the first grade, it would be helpful to return to each of our three learners and objectively assess his or her academic performance. Let's imagine for a moment that Christopher, Angela, and Thomas are classmates. The types of first-grade report cards each learner can expect at the end of the first and final marking periods are detailed below. If you imagine further that each grade of "E" means "Excellent," "AA" means "Above Average," "A" means "Average," and "I" means "Improvement Needed," you'll get a clear picture of the learning-skill differences among the three children. Particularly in Christopher's and Angela's cases, you'll also see evidence of academic plateaus, or the leveling off of progress in certain subjects.
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How to Maximize Your Child's Learning Ability
FIRST-GRADE REPORT CARDS FOR LOOKER CHRISTOPHER
First-Quarter Report
Reading E
Spelling E
Math E
Handwriting E
Art E
Music AA
Physical Education A Conduct E
End-of-Year Report Reading A
Spelling E
Math E
Handwriting E
Art E
Music A
Physical Education A Conduct E
Quiet, intense Christopher displays his first-quarter report card with pride, for here is visible proof of his academic ability and self-control. Music and physical education are the only two subjects in which he is not consistently at the top of the class. Later in the year, Christopher is disappointed to find that his reading grade has dropped from "Excellent" to just "Average," but sounding-out skills are being called into play more and more during reading class, and phonics does not come easily to Lookers. Christopher's music grade also falls, reflecting his boredom and frustration with that class's increasingly complex auditory slant.
FIRST-GRADE REPORT CARDS FOR LISTENER ANGELA
|
First-Quarter Report Reading |
AA |
|
Spelling |
E |
|
Math |
E |
|
Handwriting |
A |
|
Art |
A |
|
Music |
E |
|
Physical Education |
A |
|
Conduct |
AA |
End-of-Year Report Reading E
Spelling A
Math E
Handwriting A
Art A
Music E
Physical Education A Conduct A
Angela's report cards are quite typical of a first-grade Listener. Her work in math and music is consistently good, and her reading skills improve throughout the year as phonics begins to play a larger role. On the other hand, she becomes weaker in spelling as the words she encounters begin to defy the rules of phonics upon which she has always relied. Angela's "Average" grades in art, physical education, and hand-
Learning Styles in First Grade
133
writing reflect her average motor skills. Because her sociability and chattiness occasionally approach a disruptive level, her conduct grade drops to just "Average" by year's end.
Table captionFIRST-GRADE REPORT CARDS FOR MOVER THOMAS
|
First-Quarter Report |
End-of-Year Report |
||
|
Reading |
A |
Reading |
I |
|
Spelling |
I |
Spelling |
I |
|
Math |
A |
Math |
I |
|
Handwriting |
A |
Handwriting |
I |
|
Art |
A |
Art |
A |
|
Music |
A |
Music |
I |
|
Physical Education |
E |
Physical Education |
E |
|
Conduct |
I |
Conduct |
I |
Thomas's report cards tell the whole story. His performance in physical education is always outstanding; his conduct is always a problem. Thomas's academic skills are already a bit below the norm at the time of the first-quarter report, but his teachers choose to be positive and assign him "Average" grades in reading, math, handwriting, art, and music. By the end of the school year, however, Thomas has made so little progress that the gap between his abilities and those of his classmates has widened, and an "Improvement Needed" grade is the only recourse. In art, where Thomas is freer to move about the room, he enjoys some success despite his weak fine motor skills; thus, his maintenance of an "Average" grade in this subject.