MI+B1+Chapter+6

tocAbstract
This chapters primary and actually it's only focus was on the different teaching strategies within each individual intelligence. This chapter gave a total of FORTY different strategies. Most of these ideas are different than the ideas we are accustom to. For example we could say that strategies for linguistic intelligence are reading textbooks, giving lectures, and completing worksheets. Can we even call them strategies anymore? The world of teaching is changing and new educators need new and inventive ideas for teaching to intelligences. It is important to note that we can't fixate ourselves and our class just on these ideas. Throughout the day, the lesson, and the unit we need to mix in all the intelligences and not be repetitive within each one. Students intelligence will be on high alert when you keep them thinking and using different ideas instead of the same ones over and over. Some of the fun strategies from each intelligence are tape recording for linguistic, heuristics for mathematical, picture metaphors for spatial, body answers for bodily-kinesthetic, supermememory music for music, people sculptures for interpersonal (or bodily-kinesthetic), choice time for intrapersonal, and plants as props for naturalist. Lastly an important piece of knowledge is that many of these techniques incorporate different intelligences. Hitting two birds with one stone can be a helpful technique for teachers.

[|Dan's] Synthesis
As a class we were all excited to see techniques we can better our classrooms with in the intelligences we are the least strong in. Not all of us were totally convinced that these techniques will help our students master content in the classroom. We do understand that we could [|build a lesson] and have a technique from every intelligence and still have none of them work. On the other hand we could build a lesson we weren't happy with ourselves as teachers on, and come out okay because these techniques kept students alive during the lesson. Most of us stated that we see ourselves using these strategies in our classes. [|Keeping track of all these strategies] and finding ways to implement them in the classroom will be the hardest part. Sometimes you can plan to go on a nature walk giving us ideas about wildlife, and we have trouble finding ways to implement the mathematical intelligence. That is okay because not every second of teaching will every intelligence be targeted. We must just mix up the strategies we use and the intelligences we teach to.

Amy
Ch. 6 No one student learns the same exact way as another, therefore, teachers should not teach to only one specific intelligence. Incorporation of many different intelligences into one presentation, or from one presentation to the next has the greatest outcome in terms of student success. While it is important to maintain some tradition in teaching strategies and tools used, but it is also vital to become accustomed to new strategies within each field of intelligence. Strategies such as brainstorming for linguistic students to Socratic Questioning in math, and body mapping for kinesthetic students are only a few examples of ways teachers can best incorporate learning into an exciting end result known as understanding. In order for a kinesthetic student to understand concepts and not be bored or confused is to allow that student to interact with what she is learning, while making sure not to neglect the learning differences of her peers. Getting all students involved in the ideas and concepts of a class through providing differentiation with respect to intellectual strengths improves the overall atmosphere of the classroom.

Jennifer
Chapter 6

Many teaching strategies should be used by teachers in classrooms because of the varied intelligences and learning methods of their students. One strategy is not going to work for all the students. Instead it will only reach a few students, so if throughout the day the teacher shifts their emphasis of certain intelligences in each presentation, they will have reach all their students. The lists of teaching strategies were very helpful, especially the list for the Logical-Mathematical intelligence because that is an intelligence that I am not strong in. I know that I will have students whose dominant intelligence is logical-mathematical so I need to find ways to present my lessons so that they will understand them. The list will help me to create lesson plans using the strategies. Many of the strategies can be combined together to create large projects. Using these strategies I will help my students to understand, retain, and be able to apply the information later on.

Darren
I think that the information in the fifth and sixth chapters should have been combined. Where I felt that the former was unnecessary, I thought that the sixth chapter was really, really good. It was nice to see the lists in the former chapter expanded and presented in more detail. The author listed five examples of lessons for each of the eight intelligences, and these were not only listed, but explained; the author also wrote how each activity connected to the intelligence in question. Some of these were common sense; turning to a neighbor and having a discussion is a pretty basic example of interpersonal activities. There were also ones that I hadn't thought of before, and this was where the chapter was really helpful. The idea of using "Body Answers" for classroom discussions was an interesting example of a Bodily-Kinesthetic Lesson. For example, a teacher would ask his/her students to put a finger on their temple if they disagree or adopt a thinking pose if they think the information is interesting (however, the lesson that uses "Body Maps" to compare a student's body to places in the world or a storyline is just asking for it...). For each intelligence, there were probably three common sense lessons and one to two interesting, innovative ideas. I was happy with this chapter for that reason, but I think both chapters five and six should have been condensed and combined.

George
This chapter was a more drawn out version of chapter 5. It listed teaching strategies for all of the intelligences. I was drawn more to the ones about interpersonal learners because I am a strong interpersonal learner. Most of these are as you can guess working with others. Either working in groups to try and complete a single goal or to share things the student has learned or created in the classroom. One of my favorite was simulations. We had one in my World History class when we took up a court case like debate on child labor for the pros and cons of it. These were argued on the basis of economic, social, and medical factors. We had a lot of fun doing and in fact the final decision was a deadlock because our teacher really could not decide which group had outdone the other. Those are the types of projects that stick with me.

Dan
It is funny because while reading chapter five in the book I found myself wondering if they were going to explain some of the strategies they were listing off, to better help us teachers understand how we go about using these in the classroom. Because every student is different, teachers need to teach different meaning that they cant just teach at the front of the classroom and write on the chalkboard all the time. So these techniques and strategies will help them keep their students engaged and ready to learn. Some examples of the techniques explained are journal writing for linguistic learners, heuristics for mathematical intelligences, visualization for spatial intelligences, body answers for kinesthetic learners, discographies for musical intelligences, peer sharing for interpersonal intelligences, and choice time for intrapersonal intelligences. This chapter was kind of “beating the dead horse” as George would say...

Andy
This chapter provides a lot of teaching strategies for each of the intelligences. I will pick a couple out to talk about, and they are ones in intelligences I do not tend to learn very well in. In the linguistic section the example of publishing is a great idea. I am not a big writer, but for me, and many others, the opportunity to show off a bit or get that shot to get my name out there is very exciting. If the students know that their piece of work might be published they will put more time into and produce better work. In the musical intelligence section the Hamlet video comes to mind from Dr. Theresa’s class. Those three students had to know all about Hamlet, but at the same time had a great time making a video and making up their own rap with Hamlet lyrics. I am not musical inclined, I’m pretty sure I am tone def, but I know I would love to do something like that.

Damian
If we believe that the multiple intelligences exist and we acknowledge the benefit of their inclusion in our lessons, then we must have methods by which to implement them. This chapter outlines innumerable options by which to cater to an academically diverse population, targeting very specific learning styles. This targeting method resembles that of a machine gun. Accuracy by volume. If educators throw the same idea out there in a multitude of fashions then hopefully one of them will strike. There are no snipers in education. No one bullet methodologies that can effectively inject understanding to every target every time. If we are prepared to work with a diverse population then we must be prepared to employ a diverse set of methods.

Zack
The most important part of this chapter is how to teach reach the students and what kind of strategies to use to teach them. As a teacher the bigger your aresonal to teach the student in all of the intelligences, the better of you are. I learned from this chapter different ways in which I will be able to reach my most difficult students. The more ways I know how to reach them the better off my chances of being successful in teaching the students. I must always have a back up to my lesson plan, if my students are not capable of learning the way I teach them I must change how I teach them. My job is to know I can use more than what is taught to me, the book may give some very successful ways but, that is it, I need to know how to make up my own, unique ways to teach the students to all of their abilities.

Ethan
This chapter gives us a lot of great ideas for how to teach to the different intelligences. One of the most interesting points I found was in the ways to reach the musical learners. Incorporating rhymes or songs to help people learn is something that is seldom practiced in the classroom, but if you have a musical learner this may be the best for them. When I relate this to math I find it somewhat difficult to connect with. The challenging part still is identifying what type of a learner a child is, but that will always be the hard part. From this chapter I can say that I do have a plethora of new ideas to at least try in my classroom when I feel them necessary.

Sean
This chapter was very helpful in giving me idea on how to teach my class effectively by tapping into all eight intelligences. That was a problem I was starting to have with this book. It was saying all these things about the intelligences, how to recognize them and how they develop, but I never really noticed anything helpful to teaching a class. This chapter finally gave me the help I needed. I'm not a spatial learner, not even close, but this chapter gives suggestions on how to accommodate these students. I'm heavy linguistic and intrapersonal, so I don't recognize how difficult it can be for those who learn differently to learn in these intelligences. Now I know how to help them learn in my classroom. This chapter gives explanations of all the different ways to teach each intelligence. Some seem easy, some seem pretty creative. Something I noticed that I saw in my time at MBHS was the use of music in the classroom. My mentor teacher played music a lot, did a lot with songs in the class, either to keep students aware or to help them learn. Never really knew why, I just thought he was trying to be funny. Now I know why.

Cassandra
I am really thankful for most of this chapter; finally the book gives examples and advice on how to reach the different multiple intelligences it so thoroughly explained in the first 4 chapters. I understand most of the intelligences and the "how to's" when it comes to applying them to my lessons. However, I'm stumped about the Naturalist one. I mean, yes I know that it exists; I can see it in both my husband and his father. They can navigate using their sense of north and south so easily- it's scary. However, I don't see how to incorporate that in my lessons. The only one that sounds remotely okay is having a lot of plants in my classroom, but I don't totally see how that would help. The only other way I can see incorporating the Naturalist Intelligence into my lessons is using stories based on nature like //Into the Wild//. However, I can't always have that type of book.

Brian
Basically every person has different preferences of learning styles and different intelligences, although we know that everyone possess some ability and intelligence in all areas. Therefore, for our students’ sake, we need to teach within all eight intelligences to produce successful lessons, students, and people. We need to be sure to stay up to date with the latest information on the different intelligences and learning styles. At the same time however, we do need to keep some of the more traditional aspects in the classroom. We can’t freak everyone out with too much change at one time, plus, some of the traditional methods are still useful, like Corporal Punishment. JUST KIDDING JUST KIDDING! But I believe what chapter six is trying to get at, is that our greatest challenge as teachers is to create a lesson enveloping all eight intelligences, however this will produce the best results.

This chapter stressed that methods that are successful with one group or class may not always be successful with another. It gave examples of lessons that are targeted to each specific intelligences. As a teacher if I take any one of the examples, that means that it will only reach a select group of students, while leaving others unengaged. The idea is to combine all the intelligences in one lesson, so all students stay engaged and learn most effectively. What I think would be useful would be examples of combining intelligences in the lesson ideas. I realize that reaching every single student in one lesson would be very hard to do. I would aim to be as creative as possible to reach out to as many intelligences in one lesson as I can, if that is possible. Rather than making each lesson target different students. Because of this, I feel strongly that as a teacher my job is to be as creative as possible to cater to as many of the intelligences as possible in each lesson so that success can be reached by each individual student.

Liz
Chapter six goes further into ways teacher can make their classrooms and lessons more MI diverse. They suggest several different ways covering the eight intelligences can be accomplished in the classroom. While many of the ways are simple adjustments there are some that are tweaks of a different very, very, very similar change. One change that concerns me is the suggestion of color coding different topics. I see a problem with this as it excludes one obvious group, which was obvious to me, which would be those students who are color blind. For a future teacher these suggestions of classroom activities are good to remember.