Individual Teaching Techniques

As we acknowledge the fact that every student learns in their own unique way, we must consider how we can best help our students to learn. One important component is to realize that there are three primary types of learners, auditory, visual, and kinesthetic.

While most learners use some combination of all three types, learners are typically stronger in one of the three areas which makes it critical to include all three of the components in all of our lessons. This will allow us to "individually" target and teach all of our learners on a small scale; however, can also be considered a form of differentiated instruction when we use a variety of instructional methods to accommodate a variety of learning styles. To further expand this concept of individual learning, we need to get to know our students so that we can incorporate specific student interests and questions within our lessons, so that they will take an interest in the subject matter and their own learning.

Chapter 4 in Methods of Teaching Agriculture (2004), lays out how using problem solving to facilitate learning can be incorporated to increase individual learning. Several scenarios are presented with a problem and some context for the scenario. The most interesting

example was how an agriculture instructor used a student's "problem" of not knowing what size of plow would best for their farming needs to create a classroom project and a felt need to learn more. This is also a great example of why it is important to know your students on an individual basis. If the teacher would have made up the scenario, it would not have been as motivating, but because they felt the need to "help" they all got involved with guidance from the teacher, and learned the content because they wanted to learn.

Here is a really neat resource that briefly mentions the 3 primary learning styles and then lists multiple scenarios and how each type of learner would handle the situation... very interesting, and applicable! 
http://www.worldwidelearn.com/education-articles/how-do-you-learn.htm