What are some effective techniques for studying if you are a kinesthetic learner?

For some of my students, walking around while reading a book or chewing on gum during tests is a big, big help.

Kinesthetic learners learn best when they do hands-on projects like science labs, build models, participate in plays or reader’s theaters (best way to learn literature and story elements for them), work with manipulatives (cubes, sticks, etc in math or index cards to represent concepts moved around a table in English or social studies), or work in study groups and talk about information.

It’s impossible to make everything kinesthetic in class, like it’s impossible to make every single thing visual, auditory, musical, logical or interactive to meet all the different learning styles. To try to address all the different learning styles, I encourage students to develop their own way of studying to fit their learning style since studying is a personal task.

Some kinesthetic learners benefit from having a box of tokens or game pieces— what my students do is they’ll take the tokens and put it on a table. Each token will come to represent a concept (can be part of speech, placement of armies in wars, equation in math, etc) and move the tokens around while thinking out loud. It’s hard to describe in text, but it helps some of my students.

Kinesthetic learners also learn very well by taking notes, drawing diagrams and writing down everything, even if it means copying information from textbooks—the mind-hand connection helps them learn and retain information.

Hope some of this information helps.

You might want to check out this website: http://www.departments.oxy.edu/cae/PA%20Manual/pampage07.htm It uses a different classification for learning styles, but might be useful.

I learn by writing things over and over (e.g., what does SMART stand for in Smart goals – I will write it over and over until I can list what S stands for, M stands for, etc without any help). The important this is, as @linguaphile stated, to use what works for you and not worry about what others do or say.

Thank you. I use a combination of different strategies.I was just looking for other information.

My method of studying is to listen to the lecture (or read it), take notes while mumbling them out loud. Once the notes are written down I have 90% of the material learned. From there I just flip through my notes and read them out loud to get the last 10%.

Find ways to apply the material you are learning to hands on projects. Draw pictures.

The most effective learning strategy is to be critical of bullshit like learning styles. There is no evidence to support the claims made. Indeed, the evidence seems to contradict the assertions.

“Learning style” is simply a way to label learners: it’s a bad excuse for good practice – variety in approach just makes a class more varied, which means it’s more likely to be interesting.

On top of that, it appears the teacher who advised you doesn’t know what they’re talking about – the strategies you say you’ve been recommended to use seem to be strategies devised for “visual” and “auditory” learners (not that such things exist).

Beware teachers selling snake oil; find out what works best for yourself – autonomous engagement (either alone or in groups – you can judge which works best) in learning is crucial.

Are you saying that it does not matter? I have to use all of my senses to remember things well enough. I have to pay close attention, take good notes, ask questions, rewrite or type my notes, highlight, practice saying them out loud and in my head, and have to explain it to someone else or get quizzed on it, to remember it. I literally write side notes or footnotes on my notes if the instructor says that a question “similar to this” or that an essay question will “focus on this” on my notes. What I struggle with and always will is math. The only way I know how to study for math is to keep doing math problems where the solution is given, until I can get the solutions on my own.

@the100thmonkey You just said yourself:

“find out what works best for yourself – autonomous engagement (either alone or in groups – you can judge which works best) in learning is crucial.”

That is essentially what a learning style is—what works best for a person.

I agree that people should not be pigeonholed or labeled, but if the traditional way isn’t working for a person and they ask for suggestions, then get a long list of options, they can try different strategies to find something that works best for them. That’s how I see this discussion, a list of options for the OP.

Also, it’s not the teachers selling the snake oil—they’re just the “runners” caught in their system. The snake oil manufacturers are the ones you should beware of and they’re cooking up another law right as we speak.