Task efficiency is related to each person’s temperature cycle, thus it is related to when each student is likely to learn best.

For example, in a research done on high school math underachievers, they became more motivated, better disciplined, and produced a trend toward statistically increased achievement when they were assigned to afternoon math classes which matched their chrono-biological time preferences — after they had failed in morning classes which were taught during their energy lows.

A year later, it was reported and concluded that time preference was a crucial factor in the reversal of chronic initial truancy patterns among secondary students.

Later, the matching of elementary students’ time preferences and instructional schedules resulted in significant achievement gains in both Reading and Math. The following year, teachers’ time preferences were identified and in service sessions were conducted in both matched and mismatched sessions.

Interestingly, teachers implemented innovative instructional techniques significantly more often when they were instructed at their preferred times.

When elementary school students whose time preferences matched their test schedule — either morning or afternoon - were administered the basic skills achievement tests in reading and math, there was a reportedly significantly higher test gains in both subjects compared with each previous tests.

MORNING, NOON AND NIGHTTIME

Most students are not alert early in the morning. Elementary school children experience their strongest energy highs between 10 a.m. and 2 p.m.; only approximately 28 percent are “morning”
people.

Approximately one-third of high school students are alert in the early morning when academics are accented but, again, the majority first “come alive” after about 10 am. Almost 40 percent of high school students are “early birds” while a majority of them continue to be physically and academically active in late morning or afternoon. There are exceptions to these data, but test your students to determine the accuracy of these findings.

It is suggested for teachers to advise students do their homework during their energy highs; teach young children to read at their best time of day; offer demanding academic courses at varied times of the school day; and assign underachieving, at-risk, and dropout students to their most important subjects when they are most alert.

Time is one of the more crucial elements of learning style and demands attention — particularly for dropouts, vocational education enrollees, and underachievers for whom learning at their energy high increases achievement.

TRIGGERING CONCENTRATION AND INCREASING RETENTION

When students are introduced to new lesson material through their perceptual preferences, they remember significantly more than when they were introduced through their least preferred modality. This is true for elementary and secondary students.

Furthermore, when new material was reinforced through children’s secondary or tertiary preferences, they achieved significantly more than when they merely were introduced correctly — an additional!

Most children are not auditory. They rarely remember at least three quarters of what they hear in a normal 40-50 minute period lecture, discussions, and talking.

These are the least effective way of teaching to them. Few teachers, however, know how to introduce difficult new material tactually or kinesthetically. These are the sensory preferences of most young and underachieving students.

Firstly, we have to remember that using all four modalities in sequence does not insure that each student is introduced to difficult material correctly (through his/her perceptual strength/preference); neither does it insure that each will be reinforced correctly — and that is what caused achievement gains and/ or retention in the studies cited above.

Secondly, young children and underachievers almost exclusively are tactual/kinesthetic learners. Teaching them new and difficult information in an auditory manner at the onset almost insures confusion and/or difficulty.

If their auditory skills are to be developed, we must reinforce them that way and patiently wait for the day when, as usually happens, their modalities mature and they are “ready” to learn our way. In the meantime, the one-fourth of the time we talk, only a small percentage of what we say is absorbed and understood.

It is better to teach tactually and experientially first and then speak to emphasize and reinforce.

Lastly, underachievers, at-risk, and dropout students almost exclusively are tactual/kinesthetic learners. Introducing them to new material with tactual/kinesthetic instructional resources and then reinforcing that with auditory and visual supplements is likely to help them achieve almost on any grade level.