Learning Styles...

I gave the learning styles inventory to two of my classes. Upon reviewing their responses, I found that I had a lot of auditory and visual learners and very few tactile learners.

The different methods I’ve used to engage my students based on their learning styles tend to vary. I have always and continue to make sure that I explain whatever concepts we go over in class thoroughly. I try to explain concepts in two or three different ways, hoping that at least one of the explanations will make sense to each student. I always allow students to ask questions about the material we are reviewing. If for some reason I cannot answer questions at the time they are asked, I make sure to talk to students individually later on in the period.
For my visual learners, I write down any questions that I ask during class on the board in addition to verbally stating them; this way students have more opportunities to associate what I say to what they see and can hopefully better retain the information. Also, I often write Spanish paragraphs on the board and ask the students to either work at their desks or to come up to the board and circle and correct the different errors in the paragraphs. Another way I've changed my classes in response to the learning inventories is by instituting a mandatory vocabulary review session. For the last 15 - 20 minutes of each class period, my students work on flashcards of different verbs, verb tense conjugations, common classroom phrases and any other words they feel they need to learn in order to enhance their vocabulary. They work on making their flashcards, reviewing them, and we play review games with the note cards as a class.
The flashcards are also a good way to engage my tactile learners (though I only have a few of them). In addition to using the flashcards, I alternate between distributing handouts in class and making the students copy notes from the board. My goal is to keep them actively engaged in the lessons by changing the ways in which they receive information. To be honest, however, I know I could be doing more to help my tactile learners. I'm working on ways to improve that aspect of my instruction.

Even though I have taken these steps to improve my teaching, my students are not at the level of success that I would have liked. I wasn't expecting miraculous improvement, but I was expecting better results than what I've been seeing in my class. So despite all the insight the learning styles inventory has given me, I need something more. I'm still looking...