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?
Multiple Intelligences in the Everyday Classroom 