Regardless if your kid is an auditory learner or not, you should consider adding Auditory Learning to your homeschool curricula.
People perceive information in different ways, and this is common knowledge. That’s why it’s quite ironic that kids have to compete with other people in school—and then get judged by a common standard—when each of them is unique.
While your kid should learn based on a certain standard, you should also strive to provide them with a learning experience that caters to their personality and preferences. Kids learn best when you’re teaching according to their learning style.
That is why whether you’re homeschooling your kid or you’re new to distance learning, you need to consider exploring Auditory Learning in homeschool.
Here in All Digital School, our goal is to supply you with the best learning resources on the web, regardless of your kid’s learning style. We also have a community for parents and teachers, where you’re 100% free to share your questions, ideas, and tips.
In this post, we’ll discuss Auditory Learning, how to use it to boost learning for homeschooled students, and the best apps and resources that will help you.
Why teach according to your kid’s learning style?
Homeschool is not public school relocated to a home environment. It’s important that you take a different approach to teaching in homeschool. That is why you should consider teaching in your kid’s learning style, whether they’re an auditory learner or not. You will both get the following benefits:
More engagement and interest in homeschool.
Homeschool is an entirely different method of educating children. It’s even different from distance learning. Therefore, if this is your kids’ first time getting homeschooled, the key here is to engage them to learn. Show them that homeschool is not a public school at home. You can make this transition easier if you teach them in their own learning style.
Related: Ultimate Guide To Homeschooling High School Students
They can study better.
Because they will study using the tools in which they’re good at using, it’s more likely that they will retain the concepts they have studied.
If your kid uses audiobooks to learn lectures, for instance, they will spend less time trying to understand a concept in a platform they just don’t prefer. Therefore, their studying session will be more seamless. Homeschool will not be as stressful as they thought it would be.
Related: How To Help Your Kids Study For Online Tests
It encourages personal learning.
Self-paced personalized learning is the lifeblood of homeschool. You can encourage your kids to take on personal learning by teaching them in their own learning style first.
If you become consistent with this, your kids will eventually become more engaged since you’re speaking their language. As a result, they will feel like they have autonomy over their learning, encouraging them to ask more questions, supply answers, and continue learning on their own.
They can learn how to be a creator and not just a consumer.
When you teach kids using their learning style, they can easily learn how to use tools such as apps and learning management systems (LMS) on their own.
As a result, they are more likely to experiment using those devices, which allows them to learn from their mistakes. They will then learn how to innovate better ideas using those learnings. Ultimately, they will take on the role of the creator and not the consumer.
As you can see, teaching your kids in their own learning style is fundamental for independent learning. This, in turn, is imperative in homeschooling. Therefore, whether or not your kid is an auditory learner, considering their learning style is important.
Now, how do you know if your kid is an auditory learner?
What is Auditory Learning?
If a kid learns best with videos, podcasts, or audiobooks, they might be an auditory learner.
Auditory-Aural Learning Style
Ever noticed your kid’s notebooks are not filled to the brim with written notes? Don’t be alarmed. Instead, check their Voice Recording app.
If you find a lot of voice notes, they might just prefer an auditory-aural learning style. This learning style is when people perceive and retain information better when they hear voices and sounds.
People with this learning style like recording or listening to lectures and instructions rather than taking notes or doing activities. They are just more effective and efficient with a sound-rich learning environment.
These types of learners are also known to have notable qualities of an extrovert.
How to know if your child is an auditory learner?
If you want to incorporate auditory learning into a homeschool curriculum, you have to determine if your child is an auditory learner. Often, auditory learners have three to four of these tell-tale qualities below:
They are skilled listeners.
This is quite obvious, but auditory learners are also good listeners. They don’t just prefer to learn through listening, they are also good at remembering things in class just by listening. People who are auditory learners are often good with people. They take note of details that were shared with them during a discussion.
Leaning on verbal repetition as a memorizing technique.
How does your kid memorize terms and equations? Do they look at the word, or do they say it out loud? Auditory learners tend to lean on the latter. They say words over and over so that they can memorize them. Auditory learners also tend to learn a new word’s spelling by pronouncing the syllables out loud.
They explain ideas articulately and loudly.
Because they need to hear what they want to know, these learners are often known to be eloquent and articulate speakers. Because of their tendency to think aloud, they are also adept at communicating their ideas in ways others can easily understand.
Always acing oral exams and quizzes.
Most of us grew up taking written exams and answering true or false questions. When auditory learners take oral exams, they just shine. They can easily answer the quiz since they are verbally articulate and can provide the answer faster. Yes, even if they are not sure about it.
They love to hear stories and storytelling to others.
Auditory learners also love listening to a story and retelling it. Because they love hearing sounds, they also like listening to other people’s stories, troubles, and desires. As a result, they can interpret those anecdotes in the best way they can.
He or she is very receptive.
Good listeners are well aware of tone changes in others’ voices. They can even detect a slight tremble in a voice. They know how to recognize if someone is pretending to be happy or if a person is outright lying.
The other learning styles
If your kid only has a few or none of the qualities above, they may be any or a combination of the two kinds of learners below.
Visual learners
When a kid prefers to read words, charts, or graphs, or look at pictures, he or she is a visual learner. These kinds of learners often prefer to visualize a problem in order to solve it. In learning, they prefer to watch how a person does a job, rather than do it themselves. They also prefer to write down a word to memorize it or to recall its correct spelling.
Kinesthetic learners
Also known as tactile learners, these kids learn concepts better by taking them into their own hands, literally. They are more effective when they get to touch, grasp, or press the subjects in which they are learning. They also learn better when performing activities rather than watching a demonstration or listening to a lecture.
Logical learners
Children who are logical learners do best when they know the logic behind what they are learning. For example, a child has to know the meaning of a word before he can spell it. An auditory learner, on the other hand, has to hear the word to learn how to spell it. Logical learners are most effective when they are given steps, lists, and orders.
Kids who have auditory learning styles are more engaging and active in performance-based learning environments. However, even though your kid is not an auditory learner, he or she can still benefit from auditory learning in a homeschool environment.
How to use Auditory Learning for homeschool curriculum
Auditory activities are great tools for boosting your homeschool curriculum. Kids don’t have to read books or answer printables all the time. Whether your kid is an auditory learner or not, you should definitely consider sprinkling auditory activities in your homeschool curricula.
Here are the best ways to do it:
Read together or let them read aloud.
Reading together and letting homeschooled children read aloud is essential, especially if they are just starting school.
For example, in Oak Meadow’s sample curriculum for first graders, the kids are required to learn about phonics for their Language subject and read fairy tales for their History subject. Phonics, particularly, is a tricky topic to teach because kids have to learn the alphabet’s sounds and not just their names—thus the need for auditory learning materials.
If your child is an auditory learner, he or she can easily learn those topics better by auditory activities. For example, you can teach phonics by letting them spell words aloud, so they can be familiar with how each letter sounds and not just their names.
You can also read fairy tales together and record it on a Voice Recording app, so they can hear their voice later on. These make their reading activities more personalized to their learning style.
Related: Engaging Toddlers To Read: 13 Tested And Proven Ways
Use audiobooks instead of eBooks or PDFs.
More than the obvious fact that your kids are auditory learners, audiobooks are great auditory devices for teaching language. Audiobooks are definitely a staple you’d want your kid to own or collect in their homeschool journey.
First of all, audiobooks can streamline the reading experience of homeschooled kids since they can learn how to pronounce a difficult word. On the other hand, if they read printed books, that would be more time-consuming since they have to Google the word’s correct pronunciation.
Additionally, by listening to audiobooks, kids can:
- Learn how sentences should sound from beginning to end.
- Memorize poems or terms better since they can pause and replay the material.
- Know how to pronounce foreign words or phrases.
- Teach them how to pay attention in class by listening, especially if they are not auditory learners.
- Do other tasks such as coloring or drawing, all while listening to an audiobook.
If you want to browse audiobooks, you could take a look at this app called Epic. It’s a digital library with over 40,000 books and audiobooks with read-to-me options.
Supply well-written podcasts or dialogue-focused videos.
Podcasts and dialogue-focused videos are great auditory learning tools for your homeschool curriculum.
Podcasts are great for opening a fruitful discussion about a certain topic or question since they are informative yet conversational in tone. Meanwhile, dialogue-focused videos are effective tools for teaching kids social interaction and clarity in two-way communication.
Just like audiobooks, you can choose great educational podcasts depending on the objective you’re trying to achieve in your curriculum. For example, in Oak Meadow’s coursebook for 8th-grade Physics, one of the learning objectives is to “Differentiate between causation and correlation.”
The coursebook explains the difference between causation and correlation in Physics. However, if you want your kid to truly enrich their understanding, you can provide additional context with this NPR podcast episode, “What Causes What”. NPR also has another podcast for kids about life’s general knowledge.
You can use dialogue-focused videos in the same way. They can listen to it to learn additional context about a certain topic. The key here is to supply your kids with auditory learning materials, which will help them attain that learning objective in your curriculum.
Know the right techniques in verbal discussions.
We know that teaching for the first time is hard, especially if you have no teaching experience. You can prepare and practice, but teaching your child can be nerve-wracking. You don’t want to lose your authority and credibility by making a fool of yourself, right?
But even if you’re not an educator, you can still learn the right techniques in discussing lessons. With these certain techniques, you can engage your kids to listen well. This will be a part of incorporating auditory learning into your homeschool curriculum.
One tried-and-tested technique is starting your discussions with a story. Engage them with a mysterious opening line, but don’t make it too dramatic that you become unbelievable. Oh, and also—the story should be related to your topic. Don’t forget that.
Another technique is that you could also provide real-life examples of the topic you’re about to discuss. If your kid is studying astronomy, you can start discussions by mentioning current events such as the latest news about Mars exploration.
As you can see, the right techniques in verbal discussions are getting their attention and keeping them engaged throughout the lesson. Making your kids listen to you is also part of auditory learning.
Let them present or report what they have learned.
When you hear homeschool, you imagine a sit-down between a parent and her kids. Or it could be a student reading and doing schoolwork on her own. Well, what can you do to break that mold?
As we have mentioned, auditory learning involves speaking as well. That means you can incorporate auditory learning into your homeschool curriculum through keynotes, oral reports, or presentations.
For example, if they have listened to history audiobooks, you can let them take notes of what they have learned. After that, they can create a short slideshow and present it to you the next day.
In fact, you can even go beyond slideshows. For example, you can assign them to create a product that they would sell if they lived in the 1800s. Giving them this assignment will make them research about the livelihood of the people in that area. After that, they should have a “product launch” the next day.
This is one auditory activity you should at least try once. Not only will it give variety to your activities but will also enhance their public speaking skills and self-confidence.
Make them write voice notes while studying or doing assignments.
Voice notes can boost your homeschool kids’ studying experience.
Besides using a voice recorder app to quickly keep ideas before they forget it, they can also use it to streamline their workflow. The habit of using speech to text helps students study better because he or she learns how to spell words properly.
For example, if kids know how to pronounce a word but not how to spell it, they can use the Voice Typing tool on Google Docs. As they describe their answer to their assignment, they won’t worry about writing the correct spelling—the voice recognition tool will do it for them.
As a result, they will spend less time worrying about how a word is spelled; instead, they focus on expressing their ideas through speaking.
Allow them to play music while studying.
In the homeschooling world, even veterans won’t deny that their kids struggled with isolation. But one thing saved them from the loneliness that isolation brought: music.
But exactly what are the benefits of playing music while studying or answering a test?
Music brings many benefits to kids, especially if they are auditory learners. According to this study, students listen to soft music and instrumental songs to focus better on their tasks. The study also found that music keeps them calm and prevents them from feeling sleepy.
If your kid does not prefer to listen to music while studying, it could be that they can concentrate better without it. They could also have Musical Anhedonia, which is a rare condition that affects people’s incapacity to listen to music.
Best apps and resources for Auditory Learning for Homeschool
Have you decided to include auditory learning in your homeschool curriculum? These tools can help you streamline your auditory-focused activities and assignments.
Audible is Amazon’s largest collection of audiobooks. As of the moment, they offer free audiobooks in six different languages to kids of all ages. On the site, their collections involve preschool, teen, tween, and high school audiobooks. They have literary classics like Winnie the Pooh and Harry Potter, for example.
Sonlight has a comprehensive guide to homeschooling. While they don’t offer audiobooks, their detail-rich guide to homeschooling for first-timers will help you become more organized. They also have a guide about kids’ learning styles, including auditory learning.
Zoolingo is a fun interactive app for preschoolers. Best of all, it’s free! With more than a thousand interactive preschool games, activities, and puzzles with engaging background music, your kids will enhance their auditory learning skills as early as one-year-old.
NaturalReader
Does your kid have trouble with pronunciation? You can try using NaturalReader. It’s a free text-to-speech app for students and professionals. The free plan alone allows unlimited use of free voices, has a pronunciation editor, and reads files like PDFs, Word, TXT, and ePub.
Spotify Kids
Spotify Kids is a standalone app that has child-friendly audio content. They can access songs, singalongs, playlists, and stories from giants like Nickelodeon, Disney, Discovery Kids, and Universal Pictures. However, it’s only available to Spotify Premium Family subscribers.
But Why is a podcast by NPR that answers kids’ most curious questions about the world. If you want your kid to do some stealth learning while they are studying, this could be a good podcast for them. The topics are mostly general, which includes questions about nature and words.
Odilo is a digital library for children, students, and professionals. They have over a million titles in 40 languages—from eBooks and audiobooks to courses and videos. At the moment, their learning platforms are free to use for educators.
DCMP is an educational video-on-demand service that offers closed captioning and audio descriptions in their content. They are also offering free memberships and resources to those schools and families who are affected by the pandemic.
Ask My Kid is a collection of audio games, instructional exercises, and activities made by teachers for Alexa users. If you have Alexa at home, you can enable the “Ask My Kid” on the Alexa app’s setting. You can then command Alexa to give your kids activities and instructions.
Barnes&Noble Kids has a collection of videos, music, audiobooks, and eBooks. As of now, they are offering free eBooks to kids who were affected by the school closings. They also have age-based recommendations.
Conclusion
Auditory learning in a homeschool curriculum will prepare a child for the challenges he or she will encounter later in life. They will learn how to be more attentive, engaged, and active. Instead of sitting in the bleachers, they will become participants, ultimately reaching actualization—and it’s all because you incorporated auditory learning into their activities.
Related questions
How do you teach auditory learners?
You can teach auditory learners by engaging them with musical activities and oral quizzes. Any activity that requires active listening and speaking will engage them better and make them learn more effectively.
What are the most fun activities for auditory learners?
You can allow auditory learners to record what they have observed during a video on a voice notes app, write a song, participate in timed oral quizzes, and spell unfamiliar words out loud. If they can use their ears to listen and their voice to speak, then they will most probably enjoy that activity.
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Do you know some good podcasts and audiobooks for homeschooled students?
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