No matter what
classroom you happen to be in, student always learn in various ways and have
many intelligences. "Strategies for Great Teaching and Learning" says
"Intelligence is the ability to resolve a genuine problem, then produce or
service that adds value to oneself and others". The book emphasizes that because of these
varying intelligences, engaging-moments or e-moments are vital. E-moments will
help to connect combinations of different intelligences and modalities.
I think that this
hard to lose sight of for sake of our own learning strategies and like and
dislikes. I believe that it is always important to re-center and put yourself
in the mindset of an intelligence that is not your own. For example, if you are
a great visual learner and use a lot of visuals in your classroom, but you do
not like group work, remember you have students who are just the opposite and
learn best from working with others.
For those reasons I
think that it is important that as a teacher I need to make a proactive step to
be variable in my classroom and not retroactive. I do not need to create two
lesson plans, I need to make a lesson plan that is holistic. Check out this video
that helps put that into perspective:
So as Todd Rose
explained, we need to uphold and embrace the diversity in the classroom and
remember that not everyone wears the same size shoe! It’s at this point at a
teacher when you will be able to reach the most students in your classroom and
be able to engage and motivate the most student. By designing classrooms that
meet the needs of the so-called average student, we are not helping nearly as
much as we think we are. As Rose said, the average learner is a
"myth".
This topic is really
scary to me, because I feel like I am not going to be prepared in less than 4
months to tackle this task. Will I be inclusive enough? Will I fall into the
hole of the "average learner" perspective? I suppose those are the questions
I need to be asking myself as I continue through this journey!
References
Reardon, M. &
Derner, S. (2004) Strategies for great teaching. Chicago, Illinois: Zephyr
Press
Todd Rose:
Variability Matters. (2012, January 30). Retrieved September 04, 2017, from
Variability Matters.
(n.d.). Retrieved September 04, 2017, from
One of my favorite quotes by Albert Einstein:
ReplyDelete"Everyone is a genius. But if you judge a fish by its ability to climb a tree, it will spend its life thinking it's stupid."
All of our kids are smart, it's just about figuring out how they're smart! I found that if I try to stick to some "rules" while I'm planning my lessons, I feel more confident that I'm teaching to more than just one type of learner and keeping engagement high:
1) Don't do anything more than 15 minutes at a time with out some type of "break" or redirection
2) Have at least 3 different types of activities in a block (90 minutes)
3) For every lecture I give, there is a project or activity to go with it
4) Make sure to break out the colored pencils and markers at least once a week ��
This is awesome advice! Thank you so much! (Also, I love the quote!)
DeleteThe discussion of multiple intelligences is an interesting one, and the debate on the extent to which they should impact instruction is still ongoing (we were just debating this in our doctoral program last week in fact). What is less debatable is the fact that life itself is pretty multi-intelligence based. I don't know of a job that requires anyone to do nothing but define terms using a multiple choice format. However, in my own life, I have to use mathematics, art and design, science, communication, and even entertainment to do my work on a daily basis. One effective approach I utilized as a teacher for incorporating instruction reflective of MI's was to mimic real-world situations as much as possible. For example, in my biotech course, my students ended a unit on biodiesel production with a competition to create the best biodiesel from waste veg. oil. Each group of student's formed a "company" to produce biodiesel and had to create a marketing/business plan for their company. In their marketing plan, they had to outline the benefits of biodiesel and identify how they would overcome any potential challenges (e.g. "biodiesel cannot be used in cold weather, so what are you going to do in winter?"). Not only did this incorporate social intelligence, artistic design, communication, and science but also did so in a way that was more reflective of real-world considerations and more memorable than a multiple choice quiz.
ReplyDeleteIn a nutshell, I think MI's are good to keep in the back of your head as a guide for diversifying your instruction in a positive way, but I also think teachers can sometimes fall into the trap of focusing more on 'getting all the intelligences' (as if it were Pokemon) rather than using MI to make their instruction more effective. Sometimes a particular intelligence won't work for a given lesson and that's ok. The more real-world you can make it, however, the more likely you are to have a MI-based lesson in a manner that also improves the effectiveness of your instruction.
Thank you for all of this information!! This will be so helpful!
DeleteHi, Karlie. Best of luck on your journey. I've found it helpful to invite lots of feedback -- create a mid-term evaluation, welcome anonymous feedback, etc. I like to give out Post-It notes and ask students to write down something I'm doing well and something I need to improve.
ReplyDelete-- Bill Zimmerman
Well done Karlie! You are getting some great feedback from your virtual mentor team. Keep in mind an instructional goal of hitting 2 to 3 Multiple Intelligences per class period!
ReplyDelete