I came across a fantastic BBC documentary for social studies called “What the Greeks Did for Us” which showed the innovations of Archimedes, Pythagoras, and other ancient Greeks. Something that caught my eye was around the 15:00 minute mark of the documentary- a piece on how the Greeks used geometry to drill through a mountain from either side and met perfectly in the middle.
Deciding to put it to the test for ourselves (go cross curricular connections!), I borrowed some clay from the art teacher, dowels, string and straws from the science lab and headed outside with the students.
First I explained the situation: a village of ancient Greeks is worried that they will be cut off from their fresh water supply on the North side of a mountain, if there is an attack from an enemy. They have an idea- drill through the mountain to create a tunnel. This wasn’t a totally crazy idea for the time as many aqueducts and incredibly elaborate irrigation systems had been developed. So off they set with picks and chisels. Soon, as you can imagine, they felt daunted by the task. They decided to send a team to the opposite side of the mountain so that they could double their efforts and complete the task more quickly. But how could they be sure that they would meet in the middle?
I asked the students to stick a dowel through the mountain from both the north and south and try to meet in the middle. Try as we might, no luck.
They played around with the string and dowels for about 5 minutes before I prompted them by sticking 4 of them in the ground at each quadrant around the mountain. This prompted some of them to use the knowledge of angles and degrees. They were on the right track by still needed prompting. I asked them to consider what we had learned previously about bisecting angles.
Finally, they had a square (ABCD) set up around the mountain (with string) and used point A and C as starting points for drilling. They used a square set to enter the dowel into the mountain (45 degree angle from corner post) and VOILA! they met in the middle! We “drilled” a hole through the mountain, stuck in the straws and poured water through the straws. Much to our astonishment, water came all the way through!
All in all, this was a complete success and an incredible way to show the importance of circumference, perimeter, angles and bisecting angle. Not to mention a great activity for outdoors!
Can multiple intelligences enhance long-term retention of information, facts, or ideas?
Why is it that we all remember, as adults, the projects and science labs we completed in school? More to the point, how does a grade seven Ancient Egypt banquet hold more sway with the ol’ hippocampus than the trigonometry we spent hours labouring over? The answer is simple. Humans learn through context-based, personalized, tactile-based activities.
One of my favourite multiple intelligence activities is the body/picture smart task “create a plasticine/ claymation scene.” Students never cease to amaze me with their creativity and imagination; but what surprises me more is that this small task creates such deep learning.
The first claymation task I developed was designed as a “choice activity” for Lit Circles. Body Smart Character Detectives were asked to recreate four key scenes from their novel and to provide page numbers and a caption to support their plasticine work; Visual Smart Detectives were asked to sketch four scene and so forth. The results were phenomenal. Although I had only provided students with three small pieces of clay, they creates wonderfully detailed scenes.
I have since used this activity for math, science, and social studies, as way of engaging students with a particular topic on a level that might otherwise be somewhat one-dimensional (read: dull). From models of the earth’s layers and thematic poetry to fraction circles and ancient Egyptian tablets, visual and tactile learning pushes students to personalize their learning. Unlike a worksheet that asks students to uniformly present their ideas either correctly or incorrectly, these activities engage students and involve them emotionally with their learning- hence the long-term retention.
Case in point: I assigned students a small homework task. I provided them with a “pinwheel” worksheet (see samples on my website http://www.mi-classroom.com). The eight MI activities were designed to draw out the student’s understanding of power in Ancient Egypt. 8/12 students chose the visual task: recreate the Palette of Narmer. What was interesting was that as they explained their favourite part of the task to the class the next day, they went into detail about the unification of upper and lower Egypt, the symbolism of power and the ideals of ancient kings in more depth than I could have anticipated; each student offered a unique Palette, with a detailed synopsis of its key information.
LOGIC SMART and SELF SMART SAMPLES
VISUAL SMART SAMPLES
I strongly believe that the reason science labs and field trips appeal so much to us, is the same reason these small tactile activities also appeal: haptically acquired information = unconscious learning.
Essentially, students who use visual and tactile tools to complete a task encode information differently than those completed completed on paper; they store information in their long term memory because it is a) interesting b) personal and c) contextual.
Words can certainly help us in the short term, but there just might be a strong case to be made for tactile, musical and visual learning tools. And if this can be proved than can we make a case for extending these forms of “learning through play” to Senior School students?
What a challenge! How do we get the paper tasks off the page and into the body? Want a creative way to have students more engaged in grammar and punctuation lessons? Here are three of the ideas I have come up with:
Martial Arts PUNCHuation:
Brainstorm with students all the punctuation marks they are familiar with. Generate a list on the board. Optional: introduce any new marks.
Explain that you have been trained in the secret ways of punctuation martial arts and would like to share your secret. This step works especially well if you say you are not sure, however, if the students are ready for that type of intensity. Explain that you will start small and see how things go. (Boxing gloves are optional)
Start with the period. Extend your fist outward with a simple fist punch. This, of course, if the PERIOD. This martial marks move is quick and clean. It is the ideal move to cut off a sentence in its tracks.
Have students model the PERIOD punch while they say a simple sentence: “The weather is nice.” will do.
Next, use the same punch but curve your hand downwards when your hand is extended, like a COMMA. This martial arts move, the punch and twist, demonstrates the need to continue a sentence, but allows for a brief pause. (Have students model with a sentence)
The third move is the COLON. This requires a double hand punch, like the period, but sideways. This move calls your opponents attention to an upcoming list. (Have students model with a sentence)
The fourth move is the SEMI-COLON. This complicated move is for the pros. It is a combination of a colon and comma. Extend two hands outwards in a punch; at the last second, curve your bottom fist downwards. This graceful move is used to take a breath and connect two sentences. (Have students model with a sentence)
The last move is the QUOTATION mark. This move requires two upturned arms that make a double, open-handed strike in the air. This move is to about quickrepetition of a persons words or an author’s ideas.
Have the students come up with their own moves to show off. Once you feel they have the language and usage down, have them write out the new words with visual mnemonics and an example sentence.
Wanted: Grammar/ Writing Culprits:
Test students on their grammar prowess with the inquiry activity.
Assign each student/ group of students a culprit of their choosing from the following worksheet.
Allow students to create a wanted poster with clues about why this culprit is wanted. For example: a noun was seen being used as a VERB rather than a person, place or thing. The Creepy Colon was trying to pass as a colon.
Students should create at least three examples of situations where the grammar was used incorrectly. They should also provide tips for the public on how to use the grammar correctly to avoid criminal writing of their own.
SLAP JACK grammar, punctuation and new vocab: This is a favorite of students, especially boys. It can get wild unless refereed properly. This game works well with either words or pictures.
Create the vocabulary or key terms that you wish to study (for example, parts of speech). Print each word on a piece of paper. It is best to laminate the cards, as the nature of the game is hands-on and cards will soon get crumpled…
This activity works well with magnets placed on laminated cards and stuck to the board, OR as a floor game, where students sit in a circle with words in the center.
Call out a key word. For example, in one slap jack game I created for Parts of speech, I printed off tons of nouns, adjectives, adverbs, verbs, pronouns, etc. I placed the cards in the center of the circle. When I called out the word “noun” the students had 5 seconds to find any nouns. (this is where the mad scramble can sometimes get crazy as kids get very excited!)
Students sit back and show which card they found. If it IS a noun, they can keep it to add up at the end of the game. If it is NOT a noun, they must put it back AND an additional card they have won or miss a turn.
Play until until all the cards are collected.
Students count up their cards to see who won!
Alternatively, if the cards are places on the board with magnets, students go two-by-two. When you call out “noun” two students rush to the board, the first student to slap a noun gets to take the card. This works better than the ground/ circle because everyone has a 50% chance of winning the card and students do not get trampled…
Check for the latest updates at Multiple intelligences Museum Tour. You will find the latest free worksheets, Multiple Intelligences Quizzes for kids, lesson plans, and links to NEW books by Zoe Clement!
At the end of our math unit, Integers, students were given a choice of three activities: whiteboard tutorial video, board game or video game show. In this example, students are playing a “board game” designed by two grade 7 students. Each player receives three yellow “answer” chips which have either positive or negative integers on them. The blue cards are placed face down. Player A flips two cards over and find the sum or difference to try and match one of their yellow chips. For example, if I flip over a 3 and a 4 and I have a -1 chip, I can claim the cards as (+3) + (-4).
This game is an creative combination of go-fish and memory. Very impressive!
This activity is designed to build context before we dive into a new math unit. In this unit- Transformations, students were given about 25 images of rotation, reflection, translation and Cartesian planes. Working in small groups of 2-3, students looked at the images (in a pile at the front of the classroom) and searched for the ones they thought corresponded to their poster topic. Once all the pictures from the original pile were selected, students then glued them on, drew lines of reflection or rotation, translation arrows or x and y axis and described where the object might be used in real life, and how the math helped to explain movement. Presentations to the class helped to show misconceptions (for example- the rotation of the umbrella was not about the outside but the pole that was being held as a point of rotation).
Multiple Intelligences transform the way we learn, but more significantly it enhances the way we teach. The goal of “Museum Tour” is to provide educators with a variety of graphic organizers, lesson plans, artifacts and materials for implementing Multiple Intelligences in the Everyday Classroom.
“Museum Tour” provides a range of links, documents and resources and provides the opportunity for teachers, educators and students to contribute their own ideas, transforming the classroom into dynamic and integrated learning environment.
“Programs embodying these approaches should excite teachers, engage students, and effect precisely those connections between intuitive and formal knowledge…”
(Gardner, 2004, The Unschooled Mind)
Start your “tour” by exploring the eight intelligences*
– Linguistic (Word Smart)
– Visual (Picture Smart)
– Interpersonal (People Smart)
– Intrapersonal (Self Smart)
– Bodily-Kinesthetic (Body Smart)
– Musical (Music Smart)
– Naturalist (Nature Smart)
– Mathematical-Logical (Logic Smart)
Each “Intelligence Room” includes:
Integrated Reading
Games
Graphic Organizers
Literary Circle Worksheets:
– Character Detective
– Radical Researcher
– Discussion Director
– Word Wizard
– Critical Connector
Activites
And more!
My goal for creating a workbook with lesson plans, ideas and worksheets is to demonstrate that Multiple Intelligences are easily integrated into every lesson. In a general sense, MI provides students with a variety of processing tools, but, on a more eminent level, education that is centered on MI provides alternative to the current system of teaching, particularly for students with complex learning styles. MI accommodates students with learning needs, provides self-esteem to otherwise withdrawn students, creates meaningful connections between students and revitalizes student-centered learning.
After reading Howard Gardner’s Multiple Intelligences (2006), I began to look at the possibility of bringing MI into the everyday classroom. I was initially motivated by the possibility of a classroom environment in which all students could express themselves through an ideal outlet. In a BBC Horizon documentary (2008) on Richard Hale School, I saw the possibilities of MI in the classroom in action for the first time. Here students expressed their knowledge of nuclear fusion kinesthetically, visually, linguistically, and so forth.
Multiple Intelligences transform the way we teach. Traditionally teachers stand at the front of the classroom and relate information to their students for up to 45 minutes, without pause. This teacher-centered approach is affective for visual and linguistic students because they are able to put up their hand and ask questions, write notes, and follow a succession of information. Yet, in my experience, there are always students who do not request the information needed to confirm their understanding, and even fewer students that benefit from scribing the information given to them.
Teachers have long-since recognized this problem. As a way to confirm understanding of a lesson, teachers fall back on three solutions: Q&A (teacher ask a question; students with their hand raised are given a change to answer); worksheets (carbon copy) and tests. While these approaches are effective for many students, they do not address the kinesthetic, nature smart, interpersonal and musical students.
Teacher-centered Teaching:
Studies by Robert Pike (1994) have shown that the focused attention span an adult is 20 minutes. Pike coined the 90/20/8 rule in which a lesson/workshop should span no longer than 90 minute; audience should listen for no longer than 20 sustained minutes of lecture; and every 8 minutes there should be an activity. While teacher known this to be true, if only from the sight of restless students and the constant need to call for “no talking” during a lesson, we still continue to teach this ways. My suspicion it that we are so consumed with getting through” the material that we sacrifice an intuitive knowledge that most of it is not being processed, despite our conviction that students are continually listening.
By providing the opportunity to respond to a lesson through varied mediums, however, the possibilities for whole-class engagement and comprehension are dramatically increased during teacher-centered learning. The Socratic method is one (Linguistic) way to engage students. Other ways include “Think, Pair, Share”, mind-mapping, tableau, Labs, etc. In a teacher-centered MI lesson on fractions, a teacher might pause after an explanation of the difference between ½ and 1/3 and asks students to pick a “nature smart” way of expressing their knowledge.
“A pig is ½ the size of a horse.
A dog is 1/3 the size of a horse”
To demonstrate “Kinesthetic smart” / “Interpersonal smart” could divide themselves half and half and then have 1/3 of the class stand separately from the others. For “Visual smart”/ “Logical-mathematical smart” students could develop a number line, placing the physical numbers in sequence, from largest fraction to smallest, and so forth.
In this way, MI theory takes the traditional teacher-centered approach and gives it a new spin, helping students to become active participants in their learning.
The MI teacher-centered role is about providing opportunities to explore all eight intelligences at various times and in various contexts. The class performs these activities as a whole as a whole. Learning through the Multiple Intelligences in this way allows students to develop significant cognitive abilities while simultaneously developing social and physical skills. The key to taking teacher-centered learning to the next level is to remain open-minded to new strategies and ideas.
Student-centered Learning:
For me, student-centered learning is the ultimate aim of Multiple Intelligences. After conceptualizing the possibilities of teacher-centered learning and MI, I have begun to look at ways to alter conventional worksheets/lesson plans that appeal to the linguistic/logic learner and to explore the possibilities of intellectual expression through creative arts, music and nature.
Contrary to the age-old philosophy that worksheets and graphic organizers are the “lazy” teachers best friend, I believe they are often the perfect springboard for deeper learning. During a novel study unit, I introduced the concept of MI worksheets to my students. After completing their novels, students chose one of eight MI worksheets on “Character Development.” Body Smart students, for example, were asked to re-create two key scenes from their novel that captured the “character” of the protagonist. These students spent 25 minutes creating their 2-D or 3-D claymations, completing the worksheet with a “caption” that described the scene and writing the corresponding page numbers. As students gathered for Lit Circle Discussions, they were asked to describe their work in detail. The result was that many students, who often felt shy during class discussions, were more than eager to show off their artistic abilities, inadvertently demonstrating a deep understanding of their character’s personality, life and experiences in the meantime.
The student-centered approach is also an effective tool for otherwise struggling students. I have found, for instance, that students with weak writing capabilities excel when given clay or drawing tools as an alternative to linguistic-dominate worksheets; withdrawn students often become engaged and participate with like-minded students during student-centered activities; and students with hyperactive tendencies are seen to be focused on their activity.
The challenges of student-centered MI activities are the initial planning needed to create eight successful activities/graphic organizers, as well as the necessary materials. I often found, for example, that the worksheets themselves did not take long to create, once I had the basic concepts in mind. Thomas Armstrong created a mind-map in his book Multiple Intelligences in the Classroom (2009), which was instrumental in helping me form my first lessons. I am confident that with this chart, any subject can be diversified.
Once the initial concept is conceived, it took perhaps 2-3 hours to create the necessary graphic organizers. In my previous experiences, I have often spent up to 6 hours planning a lesson that did not include 8 individualized lessons, which only goes to show—as far as I am concerned—that no extraneous additional labour is needed to create multi-faceted lessons. Keep in mind that student-centered activities, such as these, are not daily activities, but likely once or twice a week.
The second challenge I faced was gathering the materials (clay, construction paper, sugar cubes, etc); these often take a great deal of planning and, due to limited funding, were kept to a minimum. Clay was the greatest expense, in my own experience. I found effective to purchase a 12 pack of clay from a dollar shore and cut these in half horizontally, providing each student with 3 colours (see Appendix for examples of the incredible pieces of art created from these small samples of clay!).
Providing enough photocopies was the third greatest challenge, as I did not want to print 30×8 worksheets. Before printing/purchasing supplies, I simple asked the students which “smart” they hoped to explore and provided the necessary numbers based on these requests.
Individual/Facilitator:
The final MI approach is to create stations in which several students work together to complete an activity. For a calumniating activity in Social Studies, for example, I provided eight activities in which students could work individually or in groups: create stained-glass windows using the themes we had talked about in previous lessons (Visual); create a gothic arch using sugar cubes (Logic); write a newspaper article that describes the construction of a new cathedral (Linguistic); listen to Gregorian Chants and write the lyrics (Music); look at a Medieval calendar depicting the four seasons. Compare and contract the seasonal activities then and now (Nature); and so forth. Station activities work best when students are grouped together, with the necessary materials organized at one location.
Traditionally, Western Education has been dominated by the linguistic and mathematical-logical. My goal has been to create a ready-to-use teacher resource package that addresses a variety of learning styles. It is my hope that these tools not only encourage teachers to introduce multiples intelligences into their everyday lessons. I am convinced that the MI approach is a catalyst for “deep” learning and multiple expressions of understanding, which raises the question: why aren’t more teachers using this?
Multiple Intelligences in the Everyday Classroom 