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Thriving in Academe
Best Practices

Strategies for Reaching Students of Diverse Abilities

Have students complete a learning style inventory. Then provide activities for students to reflect on their preferences and plan strategies to immediately capitalize on the strengths of their preferences. They should also plan for the difficulties they may encounter in certain subject areas and with certain teaching styles.

Teach “around the circle” using Kolb’s cycle. Be sure to continually provide activities that reach all learners through concrete experience, reflective observation, abstract conceptualization, and active experimentation.

Be open to varying your teaching methods. Participate in roundtables where colleagues openly share active learning strategies. Take advantage of your college’s teaching and learning center or informally invite colleagues to share. Keep an open mind about how an activity from one subject area could be adapted to your field.

Incorporate study skills into the curriculum. Modeling how to learn the material may be much more valuable to the learner than another explanation of the material. Encouraging the use of supplemental instruction or student success workshops outside the class or some modeling right in class of note-taking and annotating text, for example, can help students develop successful study skills. Outside reading or class discussion on time management and specific subject-related study strategies can be valuable to all students, especially those with a non-identified learning disability.

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