605- week 5 A1

Every child has different ways that they are smart in. We as teachers want to help each student learn in the best way possible. It used to be that only if a child had a lot of knowledge was, he/she considered smart, but Howard Gardner, a graduate with his PHD says “Now we know there’s many ways for a child to be smart”.

There are eight different categories of intelligence, known as Multiple Intelligence, they are linguistic, Logical-mathematics, Musical, Spatial, Bodily- kinesthetic, Interpersonal, Intrapersonal and Naturalistic. Teachers who take these different types of intelligences and gear their lessons to all their different types of learners will improve the educational system tremendously. We try to do activities in many ways, because some children learn best when reading, some by dissecting items, some by building a model of the idea being taught. Another advantage of teaching in many ways, is that the students will come out of class and they will really understand and remember what was taught because they did it so many times in so many ways.

In the video they showed how Rebecca young and Urso-Flores, two wonderful 1^st and 2^nd grade teachers, and how they use multiple ways to engage all types of intelligences that their students have. Since not all students read stories well, the students are given a chance to learn the story in other ways and then discuss the story as a class. Students are also given a chance to describe what they read through drawing, acting, dancing, singing or writing what they read about.  When Rebecca Young’s class was studying plants, after they discussed the different parts of a flower, she had her students paint and make a model of what they learned. Through this project the students were able to use their Multiple intelligence to learn this concept.  

How do these teachers know which intelligences their students have and which ones they should incorporate into their classrooms? To know, they put a lot of different choices for the children to do and over time they see which choices they pick. It may take while to find out which intelligence each child has, because sometimes their intelligences aren’t developed yet. Teachers can play with their students during this time in order to see what form of learning each student enjoys.

In the younger grades, the teachers focus on using multiple intelligences when teaching; however. As the grades go up, this important component of teaching is forgotten. At Lake Orian high school the teachers find ways to use multiple intelligences in history, writing and literature. In one history class when they were studying about the 1970s, the teacher Tom, divided his class into groups, each group had to research and present some of the issues that led to social legislation. As they were preparing, he told his students to keep in mind that the class doesn’t know anything about the topic and each group was responsible to give over the information.  After the presentation, Tom and his class discussed the skits that they just watched and then the class wrote an essay on what they learned.

 Although this approach is great, when the class sits down to take a test, they’re not going to know the information. So, although this may be fun, the skits cannot be the only way that they are learning the information, (hence: follow-up essay). We want kids to feel good, but they also must learn. So, we first use their talents and give them the confidence they need to do the work that is required. We are not trying to make dancers or musicians, we are trying to help our students learn content standards and skills for life, through their multiple intelligences.

some ways to add this into your classroom is, projects using the five senses, experiments, songs, skits and even just having your students draw what they read about. 

In closing, using multiple intelligence helps teachers plan for effective teaching and learning, through engaging students into the lesson and dwelling on their strengths. All students are smart, some in different ways.