These are the words of a Vermont 4th grader. He is analyzing the learning strategies he employs at different times ? and beginning to understand the connections of patterns that make up his preferred learning process:

• "I was sequential when I made power notes in outline form while I read about earthquakes.
• I was sequential when I listed my words.
• I was precise when I looked for facts about mudslides and landslides.
• I am precise because I like reading non-fiction books to learn facts.
• I was technical when I built a box out of paper for my rock collection.
• I was confluent when I created a game at recess. It is called Hide and Seek Freeze Tag."

LET ME LEARN?S IMPACT

Let Me Learn is impacting elementary education in classrooms throughout the nation?and in Europe and Australia as well. The challenges of teaching the elementary grades are many, but Let Me Learn is arming teachers with new ways to approach them. When elementary education teachers learn about their own learning connections and add that insight to their knowledge of their students' learning connections, they begin to see the interaction between learner and instructor with new perspective.

Suddenly, teachers begin to discover ways to reach students who may have formerly been viewed as inattentive, disruptive, or difficult. These students can now be approached as learners whose learning connections didn't fit into traditional school modes and who have learning abilities that until now have been untapped. By incorporating new understanding into their teaching style, teachers find they can reach these children. Students are freed from past failures by the chance to express what they know in their own way.

LET ME LEARN IN ACTION

Let?s hear (and see) from a number of elementary school teachers and students to discover how the Let Me Learn approach is helping both to reach their potential. Here is Luella Vengenock, a New Jersey 2nd grade teacher, describing how she introduces her students to the Let Me Learn approach:

"To prepare my students to take the LCI, I discuss with them the ways we like to learn new things in school and at home. We discuss the different ways their classmates like to learn and whether they are the same ways that they like to learn. We then talk about whether or not we think one way is better than the other.

We decide that different people like to learn new things in different ways, but there is no right or wrong way to learn?.My pupils gradually come to understand that they use all four processes in their learning combinations at some point in learning. I point out constantly that their comments, thoughts, and actions validate over and over their combinations, and soon the children are commenting on them to one another."

Vengenock shares her plan for a unique lesson, which involves analyzing the learning patterns of comic characters and creating cartoons that illustrate differences in learning, along with a journal writing component.  More