The Book Fort
Instructional Ideas for Immediate Implementation
Welcome to The Book Fort: Issue 21
Week Twenty One: So Each May Learn
The eight multiple intelligences are defined as (based on Gardner): verbal-linguistic, logical-mathematical, spatial, musical, bodily-kinesthetic, interpersonal, intrapersonal, and naturalist. The learning styles are defined as (based on Jung): mastery (sensing-thinking), interpersonal (sensing-feeling), understanding (intuitive-thinking), and self-expressive (intuitive-feeling). You may have taken an assessment yourself in a teacher training to determine your own strengths and styles; there are a ton of quizzes online such as the Myers Briggs.
While this text is going on twenty years old, it still rings true in so many ways. The introduction addresses the excitement teachers feel when they leave an incredibly useful professional development workshop and the frustration that often ensues when they cannot seem to grasp how the ideas they just got excited about will actually play out in practice. Driven "by the goal of equality" (3), the three authors of this text offer practical applications to the multiple intelligences and learning styles theory. They define multiple intelligences as the content of learning and learning styles as the process of learning, which should go hand-in-hand instead of work exclusively.
Silver, H., et al. (2000). So each may learn: Integrating learning styles and multiple intelligences. ASCD.
Bonus: if this strikes your fancy, you can find it on Amazon VERY cheap since it is an older text.
The Principles of Diversity
- Comfort: "Building comfort into learning is essential if we expect students to respond positively and constructively to their education" (44). Eric Jensen's brain research is quoted here as well; if students feel helpless in their learning environments, a defense mechanism is triggered in their brains and they enter a state of stress. This breeds behavior problems and teacher stress as well. Varying your instructional strategies to include various learning styles will help all students find comfort in the way they learn and decrease stress.
- Challenge: "Learning, as Vygotsky tells us, means being ready to be challenged; we grow as learners by reaching beyond our current abilities" (44).
- Depth: "From the perspective of brain research, few approaches could be more antithetical to the way the brain learns than the predominant cycle of content coverage: teach, quiz, teach, quiz, teach, unit test" (45).
- Motivation: "Studies on the roles of teacher control and student choice in learning show that self-motivation on the part of the students can be expected only if the students have opportunities to focus on topics and activities that interest them" (45).
Practical Applications
Step One
1. Choose a lesson or unit you plan to teach. Identify, in simple language, the standards you are assessing or the outcomes you wish to achieve (51).
Step Two
1. List the assessment tasks, processing activities, and instructional “episodes” students will engage in throughout the lesson series (52).
Step Three
Step Four
1. Based on your analysis, generate some ideas on what kinds of intelligences and styles you need to address.
Step Five
1. Review and implement your ideas; if at all possible, consult colleagues and other stake-holders for feedback before you implement.
Step Six
1. Reflect and adjust: how did your attention to varied intelligences and learning styles affect the assessment results? What can you do next time around to meaningfully differentiate?
Website of the Week
Teaching Tolerance
Ed Tech Tool of the Week
Glogster
What Students Are Reading
Amulet Series by Kazu Kibuishi
Ghost by Jason Reynolds
Escape from the Furnace Series by Alexander Gordon Smith
Kristie Hofelich Ennis, NBCT
Email: kennis@murraystate.edu
Location: Dublin, OH, United States
Facebook: facebook.com/kristie.hofelich
Twitter: @KristieHEnnis