~ The MI News ~
Summer 1999 Edition
(Volume 1, Number 7) |
Publisher Branton Shearer | Editor
Cliff Morris |
Table of contents
1 Welcome message by Clifford Morris
2 Creating caring communities of successful learners by Branton Shearer
3 Multiple intelligences (MI) lesson plans: Part I by Angie Thompson and Mary
Strouse
4 Multiple intelligences (MI) lesson plans: Part II by Clifford Morris
5 For your intelligences only by Clifford Morris
1. Welcome
message by Clifford Morris
Welcome to the August 1999
(Volume 1, Number 7) edition of the MI-News, a newsletter which is provided
free by Multiple Intelligences (MI)
Research and Consulting. The goal of this newsletter is to provide
practical information to those interested in Howard Gardner's MI Theory and to
explore its application via discussion, contact and sharing. We are
extremely pleased to see that such a large number of you continue to subscribe
to our newsletter. Our current count suggests that approximately 3100
subscribers read our viewpoints. We appreciate your support to what we
feel is a most important issue -- using Gardner's MI model so that all,
especially students, may better UNDERSTAND
knowledge.
2 Creating caring communities of successful learners by
Branton Shearer
What are the hallmarks of a caring community? A key
feature is that there is a general sense that one shares important similarities
with the group yet one's uniqueness is respected. Shared characteristics
are often defined in terms of values e.g., honesty, kindness, generosity,
etc. What the MI perspective offers is tangible means for recognizing,
valuing and guiding each students' uniqueness at the same time as guiding these
unique abilities in the cooperative creation of products valued by the
group. The mandate is that a person's uniqueness is valuable to him/her
but also contributes to the quality of the life of the community.
The good news that the MI perspective offers is that the
intellectual strengths each person has to offer is valued because it
contributes to the intellectual capital of the community. Maturing in
American society is made problematic because of our overemphasis and
glorification of each person's uniqueness. The trap of this overemphasis
is that teenagers feel the need to develop their uniqueness as an end in and of
itself. Like teenage fashions (sneakers, T-shirts) that become more
extreme in their uniqueness without serving a purpose or achieving a goal
beyond saying, "I wear it therefore I am unique." The teenager
may not understand, agree with the message or the fashion may in fact be
counterproductive to comfort, health or safety (I think of platform shoes, body
piercing, micro-mini skirts, etc.). The converse of this is the wearing
of exactly matching uniforms in the military, sports or corporate worlds.
"We are IBM men because we wear blue suites." The challenge of
healthy communities are to continually balance the message that each student is
valued for his/her unique intellectual potential and that s/he has
opportunities to use this intellectual strength in creation of valued solutions
or products or services to the community.
Functions of an Educational Community
There are four vital functions of an educational community:
recognition, valuation, support and challenge. A first task of a
community is to recognize and respect the worth of each individual's abilities.
Second, the community bonds the individual to the group by providing a means to
support and challenge the development of the individual in a responsible role.
An important goal of initiation rituals for adolescents is
to facilitate the assumption of a valued role in the community as an
"adult." For girls this usually entails becoming a
"mother" after having survived childbirth. Historically, boys
have survived "basic training" in order to become "soldiers"
or served apprenticeships so that they may become "masters" at their
trade. In this way, both boys and girls come to earn their titles of
"Mr." and "Mrs." And thus the respect that comes
along with their new adult roles. In school, students need to be recognized
for their abilities that will serve them to successfully navigate academic
activities. These activities form the components of a
"curriculum" through which they will run to emerge as young adults
upon graduation.
3. Multiple
intelligences (MI) lesson plans: Part I by Angie Thompson and Mary Strouse
If you are a regular reader, you will note that this is a
new section to our newsletter. In this, and in subsequent issues, we plan
to publish a series of lesson plans especially tailored around Gardner's MI
model. We feel that this (i.e., Summer 1999) issue is an appropriate time
to begin such plans, as during the following weeks, many classroom teachers
will be preparing their programs for the forthcoming 1999-2000 school
year. Hopefully these lesson planning teaching strategies may interest you.
In this issue, we have two contributors, Angie Thompson and Mary Strouse.
Angie Thompson, our first contributor, writes
"I am very interested in MI theory and how it relates
to alternative teaching and assessment methods. I am a sixth grade science
teacher and I recently began using the MI theory to design my lessons.
They have been quite successful and the parents have responded
positively. Students love coming into my class knowing that they will be
able to complete assignments in their dominant intelligence. I never have
a discipline problem and my students are always actively engaged. I plan
to further enhance my curriculum this summer to include the MI theory in each
unit. It is a great deal of work, but well worth it. I would love
to hear from others!" Angie can be reached at kybryce@salsgiver.com
Mary Strouse, our second contribution, writes:
As the school librarian in a school of fifth and sixth
graders, I have the pleasure of introducing students to the process of
information problem solving, more traditionally known as the research
process. I use my own version of lesson planning techniques to teach
students, strategies synthesized from several information problem solving
models. Throughout, I incorporate the following five ways to achieve this
objective.
1. Ask yourself the
question, "What information do I need?" Then, locate the
information
2. Read (watch, listen), Think, Remember
3. Organize
4. Present
5. Evaluate
Students who visit the library to work on project based units follow these
steps every time. Along the way, in the course of their two years at our
school, they are introduced to some specific skills to help them with the nuts
and bolts of reaching their goals. Infusing Multiple Intelligence
theory and practice into this model is an easy leap, as this model already
allows for student centered learning. MI makes the model all the more
student centered. Here is how I accomplish this interesting process.
Underlying the instruction and practice of this process and
skills is the introduction and study of theories about information. Many
are calling the times we live in "The Information Age." Indeed,
information has become a prime commodity in our times. With this in mind,
and in the hopes of educating students in the science of information, lessons
are often infused with thinking about information, not just using or
manipulating information. So, at any given time, students who visit my
library will learn and practice a process, study a content area, and think
about the nature of this "new" commodity called 'information.'
Since information comes in a wide variety of media, it is well suited to access
through the activation of multiple intelligences. In fact,
students are already fairly free to use their intellectual strengths to learn
in the modern "media center" environment.
For this, I have selected one unit to demonstrate how the
addition of multiple intelligence approaches can improve student
motivation, learning and intellectual growth. In this fifth grade
unit, students research the life of an explorer, then write and illustrate a
picture book biography. The unit covers all phases of the information
problem solving process, includes four days of teacher lead lessons and
additional days in the library for independent work. The five topics
presented by the teacher/librarian include: Questioning - specific to an
explorer's life; reading, thinking, and remembering strategies; presenting
information in pictures and text along with book construction guidelines; and
how to write a bibliography.
Topic 1: Presenting: The Explorer Picture Book Project
Objective: Students will use information problem solving process to
research the life of an explorer well enough to produce a product that
demonstrates synthesis of new knowledge.
Lesson one: Asking, "What information do I need to
know?" The teacher proposes the following questions that students
must answer. In the traditional approach, the teacher lead a
discussion of questions to expand the students concept of these deceptively
easy questions to include enough material to write a book. The teacher
writes on the board or on the overhead while the students copy the information
onto their paper. On the other hand, with the MI infused approach,
the teacher sets up scenarios in several of the intelligences to stimulate
student thinking about the following five questions.
.
1. What was his childhood like, especially his education?
2. Where did he explore?
3. When did he explore?
4. How did he get there?
5. What were the results of his exploration?
.
1. What was his childhood like, especially his education? Students
need to understand that education had a very different meaning in the 16th
century. Using the intrapersonal and the interpersonal intelligences,
ask the students to consider how they might learn if there were no
schools. Ask the students to share their ideas while considering the
statement, "There was no such thing as explorer school."
2. Where did he explore? Where means a geographic location identified
by place names, but also a place with land forms, climate, plants and
animals. The continent, modern country name, longitude and latitude are
all ways to describe "where," but this is meaningless to most people
until you describe what the country is like. Students need to know that
"where" also means a description of what the place looks, smells,
sounds and feels like. Have students use there senses to describe
"where" Shaker Heights is. Use the naturalist intelligence.
3. When did he explore? When can be told in dates, but dates are
meaningless unless you describe what the times were like.
4. How did he get there? Getting there is more than mode of
transportation. It is also navigation and directional finding along with
the supplies and tools needed to survive the trip. Use the kinesthetic
intelligence. Ask for a student volunteer. Assign the task of taking two sets
of encyclopedias to a part of the building unfamiliar to students. In order to
carry out this task the student will need to get directions, have permission to
be in the hallways, and will need to figure out how to get more books than
he/she can carry back to the desired location. Connect this experience to
wondering what the explorer might need to "get there:" someone to fund
the trip, navigational techniques and people and supplies as well as a mode of
transportation.
5. What were the results of his exploration? Results can mean what happened to
the explorer, what happened to the country who sent him, what happened to the
people and land he explored. Uses Mathematical/Logical intelligence.
Lesson 2: Reading, Thinking, and Remembering
Strategies
This is the really crucial part of the process, and one that
students frequently want to skip. Traditionally, the teacher/librarian
shows some text on the overhead. Students read the contents, spent some
time thinking out loud to discern meaning and need. For example,
"Thinking is divided into several steps. What does it mean? Do I
need to know this? Where does it fit?" This procedure
enables the teacher and the students to identify key words that can later be
written in the form of notes, for memory retrieval later.
MI activation: introduce and demonstrate multiple
ways to "remember" and suggest that students use at least two of
these (eight) methods:
Musical:
Put the action in words to a familiar tune. For one, "Here's the
story, of an explorer named Pizarro, who was leading some bad solders all alone
... (to the tune of "The Brady Bunch")
Bodily / Kinesthetic: Act out the scenes as described in
the literature
Linguistic / Verbal: Identify the key words in the text
to help trigger memory
Logical / Mathematical: Make a list of key facts
Spatial: Draw maps, record information in a mind map
Interpersonal: Tell someone about what you read
Intrapersonal: Spend some time thinking about
your reading. That is, try to make connections between the new
information and things that you already know
Naturalist: Picture the events in the environment in which it
happened. Describe the setting as well as the action.
Lesson 3: Presenting information in pictures and words.
Arrange the students into small groups, giving them a
picture from a picture biography. Have them identify information about
the person about whom the book is written. Students should then classify
the information as fact or inference. An example could be a picture of
people standing around a fire in a village of grass huts. Fact: the
people lived in huts made of grass. Inference: the people told stories
around the fire at night. This involves the interpersonal and the logical
intelligence. This activity is followed by requirements given in lecture
form: Teacher talks, writes on board, students listen write in note
books. This involves the linguistic intelligence.
Lesson 4: How to write a bibliography
Note: This part of the lesson is given before the students
begin locating the information.
Information comes in many packages: (Show students and pass
around information packages - activates kinesthetic intelligence) that include
print (books and magazines) audio tape, video tape, CD-ROM, computer disk,
computer, and a person (expert). Discuss the difference between the package
and the information; the same information may come in more than one package.
Keeping track of information means recording three things
that identify the information and its package. The person who is responsible
for creating the information (author), the name of the package (title) and the
company that distributes the information (publisher). Students are given a
rough draft form to record this information before beginning the locate
information step. As students get close to completion of their picture biography
book, this part of the lesson teaches students to put bibliographic information
in a standard format for presentation as the last page of their book. This part
of the lesson is given a few days before the due date.
Teacher explains: A standard format eliminates the need to
use labels to identify each part of a bibliographic record. Word order combined
with punctuation in a standard format is used to identify the three parts of a
bibliography. Demonstrate the format using the "Bibliography symphony."
(Uses Musical and Kinesthetic intelligence). Use posters for the words
and musical instruments for the various punctuation marks and build a
visual/musical bibliography.
Bibliography Rough Draft
Author: ........
Title: ........
City of Publication: ........
Publisher: ........
Date: ........
Summary
Adding ways to activate Multiple Intelligences improves this
unit in two ways. First, by introducing new concepts by using techniques
that incorporate aspects of different intelligence areas, student interest is
aroused and motivation is increased. For one, having students handle
different information packages instead of just hearing about them will give
students two ways of assimilating the information: linguistically and
kinesthetically. Second, having students choose and use intelligences
that they are strong in to process information (as during the reading, thinking
and remembering stage of the information problem solving process) will increase
engagement of students in the task as well as provide them the best vehicle for
assimilation and allow for optimum synthesis.
4 Multiple intelligences (MI) lesson plans: Part II
by Clifford Morris
Approaching Gardner's Intelligences ... or Teaching Reading
in Other Ways
In what follows, I highlight how I recently
approached some of Howard Gardner's (eight) INTELLIGENCES as I taught oral reading
and reading understanding to a small group of public school special
learners. At the outset, I must tell you that all of the students who
were involved in this doctoral thesis pilot project of mine were firstly
identified by my employer as exceptional
learners, more precisely, as students supposedly possessed with a learning disability.
I say "supposedly" deliberately because in my minds their LD label
meant the opposite ... simply that they learned differently. But according to the schooling system, all of
them were of the traditional learning disabled (LD) type... unable to keep up
with the regular reading program. Their overall reading grade scores were
located approximately two grade points below their chronologically aged grade
four peers.
In short, it was my job to upgrade their overall
reading skills. And since they had continuously encountered numerous
academic and social problems learning to read via conventional classroom ways,
it became my task to find an alternate way for them to do reading. The
rest is academic history and shall thus only be detailed most briefly
here. This note, then, simply outlines what I did to have these special
learners enjoy the reading process. The resulting activities worked well;
the students, their regular grade four classroom teacher, and their parents
were all pleased with the final accomplishments. Thus I was pleased.
I had eight special students (four boys and four
girls) perform the following reading activities. I wanted to reinforce
within these children the understanding of what it actually meant to
"comprehend" the words of a speaker in a short story ... especially
the words spoken within the quotation marks of a story's character.
Overall, I felt that the activities approached four of Howard Gardner's eight
intelligences, namely the linguistic
/ verbal, the bodily /
kinesthetic, the visual /
spatial, and the social /
interpersonal intelligence. For this exercise, each student was asked
to construct one small hand puppets, the intent of which was to have the
puppets bring "alive" a part of the regular grade four Language
Arts program. But wait, I am getting ahead of myself here. Let
us stop and go back to the beginning ... stretch out the schoool yeeaaar ...
and see what actually happened.
In September, I selected as my special reading
program the Merrill Reading Skilltext Series. As an entrance point, I
selected from this remedial language program, the Carlos reader (readability level
3). To the reader not familiar with special education packages for school
aged LD children, the Merrill Series represents a logically planned
supplementary skills reading program well used by special education teachers
who work closely with youngsters from grades one through six. This
package has been successfully used for many years by various special needs
instructors.
The rationale behind selecting this program was
to provide exciting materials that would steadily improve word decoding, oral
reading, vocabulary development, reading comprehension, phonics, and practical
study skills, in short, language development. All of my special learners
were limited in some of these areas. The Merrill program achieved these
objectives by providing carefully devised, systematic, skill development
exercises based on interesting and motivating one paged stories. The
Carlos reader represented just one of the many readers in the program.
Before outlining the five steps, here is one additional comment. I sought
a remedial grade four reader with interesting stories, specifically one paged
episodes that would be motivating, short and easy to read. The Carlos
reader was not only at their readability level but this reader seemed
practical, in that within every episode a little boy called Carlos continued as
the main character and the hero.
To review most briefly the central theme of the
(Carlos) booklet, one Saturday morning while with his mother at her place of
work, Carlos purchased and brought home a broken down robot. After
repairing the old rusty piece of junk, he decided to train the robot to be his
personal assistant, thus he labeled the robot MOSH (short for My Own Special
Helper). In each of the 42 stories, Carlos tried, usually unsuccessfully,
to train MOSH to complete many household and neighborhood chores. The
students easily identified with the contents of these stories! Here then
are the five steps that we followed throughout the course of the school year.
Step 1: Reading Aloud to Students
During our daily language classes of the Fall
school term, we read aloud 25 of the Carlos stories. Firstly, I would
read aloud the story. As I read out loud, all eyes had to follow the
printed text. Sometimes, I pre-recorded the story onto an audio
tape. In this way, I was better able to observe the eye-text connection
of the students. More specifically, I could, at a glance, command them to
pay closer attention to the typed story.
Their auditory and visual learning channels were
always in joint operation, in that their ears were in close contact with the
sounds of the words and their eyes saw the printed text. Moreover, close
attention was continuously given to the tone, intonation, and the speed of
reading aloud and what the simple sentences actually meant. Restated
slightly differently, a special concern was always given to understanding what
was firstly read out loud. For this task, the story's main characters
became more central than the plot or setting.
Whenever the text contained a quote from one of
the characters, I, as the model reader, attempted to change my voice to
represent the intended actions of that character. For example, if the
text quoted that someone shouted something, I always raised my voice into a
scream as I verbalized aloud the contents within the quotation marks.
Next, each students read the same story aloud, always attempting to change
their voices slightly to mimic what the character was trying to state. In
this way I was trying to move these youngsters to another and somewhat deeper
reading level ... a level beyond the initial word decoding and oral reading
stage.
Step 2: Word Search Puzzles as a Spelling Aid
When the students had read the story aloud, they
then completed a word puzzle, the words being from the story just read. I
used this puzzle activity as a vocabulary and spelling drill. To develop
the word search puzzle, pairs of pupils had to select key words from each story
and type them into a word search computer application. For example, a
student selected a partner, both sat in front of a Macintosh computer, opened
their Carlos reader to the story of the day, and typed in their more preferred
25 vocabulary words. Each word had to contain at least five letters.
Once the words were typed and checked for
correctness, the students were then allowed to include in the same puzzle their
own special words ... words such as the initial names and surnames of
themselves and their friends, the names of their parents, their teachers, their
street names, etc. Next, a hard copy of the printed puzzle (including one
copy of the answer sheet) was generated. After receiving a copy of the
puzzle, each student had to search the puzzle for the words, listed
alphabetically below the puzzle maze. The words were arranged vertically or horizontally
within the maze. And to increase visual awareness, the option allowing words to
be placed backwards was often used. To assist in learning how to spell each
word, the students had to circle each letter in every word. If a student could
not locate a word within sixty seconds, s/he could seek the answer sheet for
the correct location. Once the words were located, any 10 words were finally
singled out and studied as homework for the weekly Friday morning Spelling Bee.
In all of the above, I was attempting to
approach Howard Gardner's linguistic
/ verbal intelligence. All of this was initiated during the first and
second school term. It was not until April that I felt that the students
were ready for the final and, as it turned out, the most enjoyable part of this
special education language project.
Step 3: Selecting the Most Interesting Story
Having now read many of the stories from the
Carlos reader, the students were asked to select one story that they enjoyed
the most. For each student, I made an enlarged photocopy of that one
paged selection. Then, they highlighted all the words within the
quotation marks from that selection. Next, one of the school's SETA's
(Special Education Teacher's Assistant) had each student read over the selected
story, always reinforcing the tone, intonation, and feelings of the words that
were placed within each set of quotations. Before continuing, a personal
aside here is in order. One of the most important aspects in teaching
special education youngsters to read is to have them read out loud on a daily
basis ... I repeat, on a daily basis. By hearing their own out loud
verbalizations, I felt that they were better able to grasp the overall
contextual meaning of each sentence.
Step 4: Constructing Hand-held Puppets
Before continuing, I wish to repeat my
expectation for doing all of this. My central objective for using this
series of readers was to upgrade not only the oral reading skills of my special
grade four students, but to provide them with another way for understanding all
of what was being read aloud. To achieve that ultimate expectation, the
students sat down in the centre of the classroom and on a small green
carpet. The carpet was new, clean and comfortable to sit on. There
we proceeded to design and construct eight hand puppets, one per student.
Used socks, small brown paper bags, old shoe laces, scissors, buttons, and glue
were brought in from home and used in the construction of the puppets.
Step 5: Videotaping the Puppet Show
Finally, the puppets were used to act out the
main characters for each of their selected stories. In turn, each student
went behind a stage and, using their hand puppets, verbalized out loud those
sentences as located inside of the quotation marks of their selected
story. The students had to work well and together as a unit. They
had to be polite and cooperate, work with others quietly behind the stage
curtain, read aloud their highlighted sentences, and, at the same time,
manipulate a hand puppet.
I felt that this exercise approached Gardner's social / interpersonal
intelligence. In other words, my special education students "did the
talking while their puppets did the walking." During all of this, I
videotaped their efforts. Gardner's visual / spatial and bodily / kinesthetic intelligences
were also being approached via this puppet exercise. And to top it all
off, a father of one of the girls in the group was kind enough to made eight
copies from my original video. All took a copy home. That evening,
their parents watched them reading ... on TV!
5 For your intelligences only by Clifford Morris
In the June 1999 issue (Volume 1, Number 6) of the MI-News,
Christopher Cryan commented that he viewed MI simply as a Cop-Out. At the
end of that comment, he stated that he welcomed responses. Two such
readers, Marta Anders and Kathy John, did just that. Their comments are
listed below, following Christopher's original comment. Feel free to
email us with additional communications of this nature. They will be included
in forthcoming issues. Here then is
Christopher Cryan's comment, followed by comments from Marta and Kathy.
MI serves as a Cop-Out by Christopher R. Cryan
The liberal intention of MI theory in Cognitive Psychology
is all at once uniquely fascinating and potentially damaging. I fear that
widespread acceptance of this relatively new way of understanding intelligence
among educators may undermine their goal: to prepare our children to compete
and to realize success in the working world. To illustrate my point,
consider a child who performs poorly in the classroom.
His mathematical and reading skills fall significantly below
the average for other children within his age group. However, this child
happens to possess a "different kind of intelligence." He is
able to draw remarkably well, or throw a baseball remarkably fast. MI
theory hurts this child by postulating that his intelligence is categorically
typified, thereby eliminating any need to work on his mathematical or reading
skills. MI serves as a cop-out. "You just don't possess this
type of intelligence." This is an extreme example and perhaps a bit
oversimplified, but the concern is valid. I would welcome any response
via e-mail.
Christopher R. Cryan
ccryan2@yahoo.com
Response #1 by Marta Anders
Mr. Cryan, in response to your comments in the June 1999
issue of the MI-News newsletter, I respond as follows: Yes, there is a
danger of limiting labels, and it will happen when a valuable tool like MI gets
put into the hands of lazy educators. ANY educational theory can be
misused. We shouldn't keep MI out of the classroom because some teachers
may not use it effectively. The joy of MI is that the child does poorly
in the classroom will be afforded a way to gain some positive labels, to learn
how he is best successful, then to use the knowledge of how he best learns to
help him in weak areas. The child you describe isn't doing well in math
anyway, not in a traditional classroom. But in a true MI classroom, he
will be shown how to use his kinesthetic skills to learn math. I suggest
reading some of Thomas Armstrong's books to see how MI is applied in the
classroom. Success in school -- no matter the educational theory behind
it -- will lead to success in adult years.
Marta Anders
hiswitness@earthlink.net
Response #2 by Kathy John
Mr. Cryan, in response to your comment in the June 1999
issue of the MI-News newsletter, I feel that I could address your concerns with
a real example. My daughter is one who is extremely good at drawing, and
in fact has been evaluated and determined by a neuro-developmental evaluation
to be highly visual-spatial. That's good. However, in fourth grade,
she had a math teacher who only taught to those strong in math or linguistics -
she only used the blackboard to teach such difficult subjects as double digit
multiplication and fractions. My daughter believed herself to be
"stupid".
I purchased a manipulatives-based math program, which allows
the student to "see" the math happening. She was completely
comfortable with this method and overcame her math anxiety: because I used her
strongest intelligence to strengthen a weaker intelligence. They are not
separate from one another. I hope this clarifies the intelligences
somewhat for you, as it has for me.
Kathy John
Kathykjohn@aol.com