Learning Styles: Charting with Iconic Learners

At the high school and college levels, teachers tend to teach to their own learning styles because they find comfort and ease using methods they know. Students, however, exhibit a variety of learning styles. A questioning process led some teachers to analyze their students' problems further and to consider various categories for which they developed flow charts on syntax, on usage, on ratiocination/editing, and on punctuation. During a summer institute, one teacher preferred to gain new information through charts and diagrams; another easily accepted either print or diagrams; yet another favored only print. Use of Rei Noguchi's "Grammar and the Art of Teaching" led to theorizing that Noguchi's work, graphically presented, could solve many problems that had existed in writing classrooms for decades. The resulting charts deal with language on the sentence level and beyond the sentence level. Students writing flow charts can free teachers from a time consuming activity. Students can also write flow charts describing any process--once iconic learners realize the power of flow charts, they can extend the skill of making them to other subjects such as history, mathematics, and science. (Contains 2 figures, 2 notes, and 23 references; appendixes present rules for making flow charts, organizational patterns, and ratiocination.) (NKA)