Before you go any further, it’s wise to have read the previous two posts in this mini series: 01 – Introduction, and 02 – Making your data usable. Done that? Good! In this post I’ll be looking at ways in which you can use the ‘quadrants’ on the graph produced via the procedure outlined in the second step to inform the activities you engage in with your students… :p

There are four possible distinct groups of students that arise out of the CAT mapping done in the previous stage:

• Those with both low (below 100) Verbal and Non-Verbal scores.
• Those with a reasonably high (above 100) Verbal score and a fairly low (below 100) Non-Verbal score.
• Those with both high (above 100) Verbal and Non-Verbal scores.
• Those with a reasonably high (ablve 100) Non-Verbal score and a fairly low (below 100) Verbal score.

Visually, that looks like this:

For a printer-friendly PDF version of this diagram, try below:

CAT quadrants (64KB)

In my experience, teachers who teach in a ‘normal’ way have little problem in reaching those in quadrants B and C, represented above by the blue and green boxes. It’s much more tricky teaching quadrants A and D – the students in the yellow and white boxes. That’s because they have a mismatch between their Verbal reasoning and Non-Verbal reasoning skills. Those students in the yellow quadrant (A) tend to be those who write lots but really don’t ‘get it’, whereas those in the white quadrant (D) tend to be those who are great at explaining things verbally and/or acting things out, but not so good when it comes to writing down what they understand.

Consider the following class. Although I have changed the names, it is the actual CAT results of a Year 7 class I taught in my previous school:

(click to enlarge)

Initially this group was difficult to teach as most of them have a predominantly kinaesthetic learning style. Once I had realised this through analysing the graph I was able to build into their lessons much more role-play, diagrams and card-sorting activities than I had previously. They started to enjoy lessons more and my life as a teacher became a lot less stressful! :D

This next class was actually easier to teach than a cursory glance may suggest:

(click to enlarge)

Why? In my experience the school system deals well with those close to the dotted line of Verbal/Non-Verbal correspondence. The teacher tends to aim their lesson for 100+ (i.e. quadrant B) and teaching assistance and remedial support picks up those in quadrant C. The trouble comes with those furthest away from that dotted line. You see those two blue dots on the black line underneath the dotted line? Guess which two boys caused me the most problems in that class!

So, what can be done to cater to the learning styles of all students? First of all, I would have a serious look at whether there is any mileage in grouping your students by preferred learning style. Whilst those in quadrant D should not be forever doing role-plays, storyboarding, and the like, they do perhaps need more of that kind of approach than other students.

If preferred learning style groupings are impossible, try integrating different approaches to your teaching so that at least every few lessons every student learns in a way that really makes sense to them. Alternatively, you can build choice into your lesson activities where the learning outcomes are the same (or very similar) but the methods by which they are achieved differ. For example students could be given a range of resources about Henry VIII and the Break with Rome from which to learn (text, interactive websites, videos, pictures, diagrams, etc.) and then represent this information however they wish – so long as it is in an original way. They could write an essay, make a documentary, create a storyboard, paint a picture, create a play, compose a poem or song, and so on.

If you’d like a fairly extensive list of the types of activities that are likely to engage learners in different quadrants, download the PDF below, or just view the picture:

(click to enlarge)

CAT quadrants teaching activities (136KB)

Are YOU using CAT data to inform teaching and learning at your school? How is it going? Have you seen benefits?

Are you sceptical? What are your thoughts? Leave them in the comments section! :)