From the Desk of Superintendent Robert W. Katulak: NHP-GCP teachers use innovative techniques

The Island Now

As you read the literature and articles in the papers and magazines about brain research and how people learn new things, I would like to share with you some of the innovative strategies our teacher in the New Hyde Park-Garden City Park School District implement weekly to help all of their students learn challenging and interesting new information daily.

Our teachers teach with style. This means that they assess the strengths, interests and pathways that information to teach to their students’ personal learning styles.

Each of us learns differently when we seek to acquire new information. Some students are visual learners who learn best by reading charts, diagrams, graphic organizers, looking at pictures, posters, movies or live shows.

Some students learn best by using their sense of hearing to listen to information, digest it and talk about it to foster their own learning and share ideas verbally with one another.

Many of the students in our elementary pre-school through sixth grade school district learn best by making, creating, moving and doing. This aspect or learning style is called tactile or kinesthetic.

Our staff does an outstanding job implementing hands on/minds on centers at which students learn concepts by making things with their hands on whole bodies and by moving and including music, dance and theater to reinforce, master and demonstrate the knowledge they have learned.

Since every teacher has a different numbers of students who have different learning styles, our teachers are diligent that weekly lessons address all four modalities of learning: visual, auditory, tactile and kinesthetic.

All teachers in our district have been given a selection of materials, both commercially produced or teachers made that are designed to match the style of the learners.

Materials such as tinted overlays, whisper phones, flip chutes, guided reading beach balls and exercise bikes all help to engage students in their classroom tasks and master the learning outcomes that teachers collaboratively design.

We are proud of the work that our teachers and students do and are confident that the materials and instructional techniques are having a positive outcome on retention comprehension and understanding. 

Let’s continue to celebrate the wonderful way our brains work by differentiating our teaching to our students’ learning styles.

Share this Article