“I want my children to understand the world, but not just because the world is fascinating and the human mind is curious. I want them to understand it so that they will be positioned to make it a better place.” – Howard Gardner
Dear New Teacher,
The teenage years can often be terrifying for students, but it also can be just as scary for parents and teachers who spend everyday with these teens as they ride on an emotional rollercoaster. Being a new teacher and experiencing teenage angst and anxiety in your classroom has the potential to greatly influence your classroom environment. One way to turn these scary times into positive motivators within your class is to create an environment where different personalities, different body types and different intelligences are not only respected but encouraged. As new teachers we must create lesson plans and activities that are sensitive to our students and their wide rage of learning styles. There are many ways that you can create a classroom environment where students learning increases because they feel accepted and capable of contributing to the learning process within the class as a whole.
As new teachers it can be difficult to create lesson plans that encourage the use of multiple intelligences, however, the extra effort to develop creative lessons will be well rewarded with a positive response as different students who in a typical classroom would not do as well suddenly excel when creating an assignment using paint instead of words. Students express their knowledge in different ways. We as teachers need to acknowledge and allow for the freedom to use their strengths and also develop other intelligences. For example a student who does not have a high literacy rate may not do well in a history classroom essay exam, but he/she may excel when asked to create a diaphragm of a scene from the Civil War.
Howard Gardner is well known for his study on the theories of multiple intelligences. It is important to know what the multiple intelligences are so that we as teachers may develop lesson plans that incorporate all of them into our curriculum. By doing so we can increase the success rate of students and encourage students to broaden their abilities and critically think in different ways.
The teenage years can often be terrifying for students, but it also can be just as scary for parents and teachers who spend everyday with these teens as they ride on an emotional rollercoaster. Being a new teacher and experiencing teenage angst and anxiety in your classroom has the potential to greatly influence your classroom environment. One way to turn these scary times into positive motivators within your class is to create an environment where different personalities, different body types and different intelligences are not only respected but encouraged. As new teachers we must create lesson plans and activities that are sensitive to our students and their wide rage of learning styles. There are many ways that you can create a classroom environment where students learning increases because they feel accepted and capable of contributing to the learning process within the class as a whole.
As new teachers it can be difficult to create lesson plans that encourage the use of multiple intelligences, however, the extra effort to develop creative lessons will be well rewarded with a positive response as different students who in a typical classroom would not do as well suddenly excel when creating an assignment using paint instead of words. Students express their knowledge in different ways. We as teachers need to acknowledge and allow for the freedom to use their strengths and also develop other intelligences. For example a student who does not have a high literacy rate may not do well in a history classroom essay exam, but he/she may excel when asked to create a diaphragm of a scene from the Civil War.
Howard Gardner is well known for his study on the theories of multiple intelligences. It is important to know what the multiple intelligences are so that we as teachers may develop lesson plans that incorporate all of them into our curriculum. By doing so we can increase the success rate of students and encourage students to broaden their abilities and critically think in different ways.
- Your Friend and Colleague
List and description of the 8 most common multiple intelligences:
Linguistic Intelligence: (good with language and writing) involves sensitivity to spoken and written language, the ability to learn languages, and the capacity to use language to accomplish certain goals. This intelligence includes the ability to effectively use language to express oneself rhetorically or poetically; and language as a means to remember information. Writers, poets, lawyers and speakers are amount those that are seen to having high linguistic intelligence.
Logical-mathematical intelligence: (categorizes, puzzles, how things fit together, good with organizing information) consists of the capacity to analyze problems logically, carry out mathematical operations, and investigate issues scientifically. It entails the ability to detect patterns, reason deductively and think logically.
Musical Intelligence: involves skills in the performance, composition, and appreciation of musical patters. It encompasses the capacity to recognize and compose musical pitches, tones and rhythms.
Bodily-Kinesthetic intelligence: entails the potential of using one’s whole body or parts of the body to solve problems. It is the ability to coordinate bodily movements.
Spatial Intelligence: (seeing how things work 3D, good with understanding of space, artistic intelligence) involves the potential to recognize and use the patters of wide space and more confined areas.
Interpersonal intelligence: is concerned with the capacity to understand the intentions, motivations and desires of other people. It allows people to work effectively with others. Educators, salespeople, religious and political leaders and counselors all need a well-developed interpersonal intelligence.
Intrapersonal Intelligence: (reflective) entails the capacity to understand oneself, to appreciate one’s feeling, fears and motivations.
Naturalist Intelligence: (The ability to make sense of the world around you) enables human beings to recognize, categorize and draw upon certain features of the environment. It combines a description of the core ability with a characterization that many cultures value.
Examining these multiple intelligences and looking at ways to fit them into your lesson plans can help you as an educator question your work and encourage you to look beyond the narrow confines of dominant discourses such as curriculum and testing to develop lessons that will encourage student learning and broaden their scope of the subject you are teaching. At the end of this article you will find suggestions on ways to bring these multiple intelligences into the classroom in practical ways.A valuable resource to look at that lists other ways to use multiple intelligences in the classroom can be found at the Project SUMMIT website. Http://www.pz.harvard.edu.SUMIT/COMPT.HTM
This information on Multiple Intelligences was taken from:
- Gardner, H. (1999) Intelligence Reframed. Multiple Intelligences for the
21st century. New York: Basic Books.
- Smith, M. K. (2002) ‘Howard Gardner and multiple intelligences’, the encyclopedia of informal education, http://www.infed.org/thinkers/gardner.htm
Practical Ways to use the different Multiple Intelligences in your classroom!
Linguistic: Have your students write an essay, poem or speech about an important figure for the time you are studying (history) Have your student write a paragraph about why they would use a certain formula in a situation (math) Have your students write a poem about the process of growth from a seed to a tree (science)
Logical-Mathematical: Have your students create a time-line of events related to their cause and effect. (History) Have your students solve a problem on the board (math) Have your students categorize objects (science)
Musical: students can write a song or create an instrument/sounds that relate to a current time frame they are studying. (History) Students can interpret why certain sounds have a higher frequency (science)
Bodily-Kinesthetic: Students can create an interpretive dance or act out a scene from an event in history. (History) Students can solve math equations around the room at different stations or create movements based on angles measurements and numbers. (Math)
Spatial: Students can create a diaphragm of a scene from the civil war. (History) Students can become an architect for a day and create a building using equations. (Math) Students can organize a garden based on what each plant needs and design a greenhouse (science)
Interpersonal: This would involve group work
Intrapersonal: Have your students write a journal about how they would react if they were in a situation from the past compared to how they would react to that same situation today. (History) Students can journal about their strengths and weaknesses in solving math problems and reflect on how they may go about improving their weaknesses. (Math) Students can write a reflective journal about what they are learning in their science classroom and how those lessons can be applied to their everyday life. (Science)
Naturalist: Have your students examine their current community and compare it to a community 100 years ago. (History) Have your students find math problems in everyday life related to the environment such as how much gas it costs to drive to and from their home to school everyday. (Math) Have your students plant a tree and study the effect of using paper and other products that require trees to be cut down. (Science)
- Information interpreted and compiled by Samantha Harris
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