As a child, Judy Kranzler struggled with reading, and she dropped out of high
school after her junior year. The breakthrough came when she moved to France at 18 and
quickly picked up the language. She realized then that she was a "kinesthetic"
or hands-on learner. She has spent the last 26 years developing an approach to teach
reading with a strong kinesthetic component. Today she trains schoolteachers in her
technique and has a licensed nonprofit reading clinic in Walnut Creek, Calif.
I often jokingly say that there is not as much dyslexia as there is dysteachia.
If I am teaching a Japanese child and I don't speak Japanese, I am putting that child at a
disadvantage. I need to understand the pathways to that child's knowledge center.
The two traditional methods used to convey information in American schools are visual
and auditory. Most people, approximately 65 percent, are visual learners who have
something like a little camera that captures information and shines it up on a mental
screen. Auditory learners, about 25 percent of the population, have a mental tape
recorder.
These two methods leave out the kinesthetic learners, the 10 percent of the population
that learns hands-on, physically. Traditional teaching also often leaves out spatial,
interactive, and musical learners. Of the kinesthetic learners, over 90 percent drop out.
Kinesthetic kids need physical cues that help them connect word sounds and anchor those
sounds in their brains. When I was in France, I studied mime with Marcel Marceau. From
this training, I developed hand movements that are used in our reading program. In France,
they use this kinesthetic approach as one of their main ways of teaching French sounds. I
have developed movements for English sounds and have improved on that technique by
designing them to blend together to sound out and spell words.
We've seen the difference it makes for that kid whose head was on his desk, who was
bored out of his skull by the sit-look-listen approach, or who was bouncing off the walls.
If you put on a rap beat or you put a ball in his hand as he's practicing word sounds, you
see him wake up, pay attention, focus.
Many kids are misdiagnosed with ADD and prescribed Ritalin when in fact they are just
kinesthetic learners. We get kids at our reading clinics who were diagnosed ADD, yet
within three months they're reading. They gain a skill that makes them feel a part of the
classroom learning process and actually alleviates their frustration, therefore calming
them down. The most frequent question from the adults, teen-agers, and young kids we work
with is "how come no one ever showed me this before?"
By the time a child gets to second or third grade, we should know what his or her
combination of learning strengths are and be teaching all subjects to those strengths.
My son and daughter are good examples. My son is a very kinesthetic, spatial,
interactive and auditory learner. He takes longer to study than my daughter, who is a
visual learner. But my son has done very well. When he was given a poem to memorize by the
next day, he felt comfortable telling the teacher that he needed two days so that he could
walk it, talk it, and learn it physically. And the teacher gave him the extra day.
He is going to Johns Hopkins next year. And he is giving the graduation speech this
year. He, like all kinesthetic learners, can relate to the Native American saying,
"Tell me and I will forget. Show me and I will remember. Involve me and I will
understand."
