LET ME LEARN FOR PARENTS AND FAMILIES

These are the words of a parent who has learned how to apply Let Me Learn theories and practices to homework time with her children:

?Now that I know how my son learns, which is different than how I learn, I don?t get so frustrated doing homework with him.?

You, as a parent, know your child better than anyone else. You were your child?s first teacher, starting from birth. And no one cares more that your child receives the education he or she will need to succeed in our increasingly complex work force and society.

Most parents know that there is a direct correlation between parental involvement in academic work and student success. These days, however, many parents are frustrated by their inability to help their children succeed in school. For many, nightly homework sessions can be almost tortuous experiences.

For more and more parents and students, the Let Me Learn process is part of the solution to this problem. By coming to understand how their child learns?and how THEY learn?and how the two may not be the same?parents are finding new ways to communicate with their children about schoolwork. They are finding new ways to help.

LET ME LEARN?S IMPACT

The road to homework success may begin with your child, as well as other family members, spending a few minutes taking the Learning Connections Inventory (LCI). This tool asks individuals to respond to 28 statements and three open-ended questions about learning, and identifies the patterns a learner uses ?first,? ?as needed,? or ?last? (avoids). There are four basic patterns of learning: sequence, precision, technical, and confluent.

The degree to which any person naturally uses each of these four learning patterns is measured by the LCI. Nobody uses just one exclusively; nobody avoids any of them completely. But one or two of them come more naturally to most of us than the others. And knowing what our natural learning patterns are can give us valuable insight into how we learn, and why certain kinds of learning tasks seem easier to accomplish than others.

This knowledge can also explain why sometimes your child just doesn?t seem to ?get it??when, it seems to you, you are explaining it clearly. The answer may be that your child doesn?t, in fact, ?get? information in the same way you do, and in the way you therefore tend to explain it.

So you may need to find new ways to present learning challenges to your child. That?s what the best teachers do in the classroom?and you can do it too. The way to start is for both you and your child to take the LCI and find out what learning connections each of you employ most naturally.

LET ME LEARN IN ACTION

How your child connects the four patterns of learning determines how he or she learns. It is important to understand that there is no good or bad way or learning, no right or wrong. Maybe one child learns, for instance, about cells by memorizing what each part of the cell is called and what its function is. (This child naturally tends to use precision as a way of learning.) Maybe one child learns about cells by understanding what each part does, in order, in the healthy life of the cell (naturally sequential). Maybe one child learns by building or drawing a model of a cell (naturally technical). Maybe one child has the thought that a cell is like a little world, and writes a paragraph or poem about that, and then understands cells (naturally confluent, or intuitive). Probably most children would learn about cells by using all four approaches, to varying degrees and in different order. But no way is wrong?as long as the child does, in his or her way, learn about cells.

After learning about how you and your child learn via the LML, the next step is to help your child understand how she or he can make his or her learning connections work successfully. Let Me Learn can help by providing you and your child with strategies to succeed.  More