Tuesday, February 12, 2013

MI Ch. 7, 9, 13, and 14

 Multiple intelligences shouldn't just be catered to through the curriculum, making your classroom MI friendly is also a great step towards helping kids learn better and feel more comfortable. One of the ideas which most interested me, was to have four centers in your room of activity centers. The activity centers are either permanently or temporarily (changing, unchanging) time-based, or open-ended or topic-specific in subject. By mixing the two kinds subjects and time-based permanency, you have lots of options, and not only will students have options that they can depend on to be unchanging and which they are used to,  they will also be stimulated with new things as well. The idea is to put each of these sections in the four corners of your room, but depending on the size or style of your classroom this may prove difficult. I personally think this is more appropriate for younger classrooms than the ones I plan to teach in.

The whole school can also help accommodate these intelligences. Schoolwide themes are suggested as a way to encourage schools to do something fun for the kids, while also giving teachers ideas to plan new projects around to incorporate the theme. There is also the idea of having mixed-aged grouping, which can give students the ability to work with people at various education levels from them. Another idea is of a whole room devoted to the intelligences, featuring games and activities  called a "flow room", which can help students develop their lesser-used or lesser-attuned intelligences in a stress-free environment, or simply continue to strengthen their other ones.

A few different staff positions are also something to consider. An assessment specialist is suggested, along with a student-curriculum and school-community broker. The assessment specialist would be in charge of creating a sort of portfolio or record of sorts that tracks every student's strengths, limitations, and interests in all eight intelligences. This information is made available to, and can be helpful to, the students, future and current teachers, as well as the student's parents. (We have to be careful not to stress too much importance on these though, as we don't want kids to stifle one intelligence and not work on it, simply because they're currently "limited" in that intelligence.) The brokers jobs would be to serve as bridges, the first between students gifts or abilities and the available resources the school has to offer. Basically, they make sure if the school have a tool a student can use to learn more deeply, that it's offered to them or they're aware of it's existence. School-community brokers are the link between student's intelligences and what the community around them has to offer.

Some things that you may not immediately associate with MI theory include computer technology, career counseling and cultural diversity. All of these things can be added to your curriculum and used as a means to implement the eight intelligences. When it comes to cultural diversity, there is something to be careful of, involving the possible ninth intelligence. While spirituality (the ninth possible intelligence) can be integrated through your curriculum, it's often not done because of cultural differences and hence religious differences between students. Because I don't want to offend anyone, I will try to keep my use of religion minimal or fact-based if possible.

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