MI+B2+Chapter+4


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Tiarra
While I can’t imagine any of the teachers I had in high school taking the time actively teach my peers and I about MI theory, I believe it is important for each student to know their strengths and preferences when it comes to the way they learn. In one passage Armstrong states, “This is a learning model not for deciding which exclusive group one is a member of, but for celebrating all of one’s potentials for learning” (32), which I think is a highly accurate and beautiful way of putting it. People in general, especially students, love to learn about themselves and uncover their strengths, so I can understand why speaking to a class about their individual learning styles would be productive and fun for teachers and students. Who hasn’t taken one of those online tests, What Intelligence am I? or What Famous Icon from History am I? etc… Allowing students to learn about themselves in this way would be highly beneficial to everybody involved. I think it might be a good first day of class exercise and may find myself implementing such tactics in the future. 

Justin C.
This chapter introduces ways that teachers can show their students what MI theory is all about. There were several good ways mentioned in getting students involved in learning what it was all about. First off, it was said that it is important to give a brief overview of what MI theory is before going into it in depth. This gives students the opportunity to have a general knowledge of what is going on. One method that I would like to try in my classroom would be to teach a lesson using the eight different learning styles. With math being my content area, I could do the traditional notes on a board and lecture to appeal to the visual and aural learners. Logical and mathematical learner should be able to learn best seeing that the content is of interest to them. For interpersonal and intrapersonal learners, students could be told to work individually or in groups on examples of the content. For kinesthetic and naturalistic learners, I could move the lesson outside and take data from the environment around us. The last learning style, musical, I think I would have the hardest time incorporating. I am not sure exactly how to go about it other than to think of a creative song rhythm that could go along with the processes being taught.

Grace K.
Chapter 4 of __Multiple Intelligences in the Classroom__ outlined why it is important for students to be informed of and engaged in MI theory. Armstrong notes that if we, as teachers, can get students involved in identifying their own highly developed intelligences, then they can begin giving important input about class design and can also become an advocate for themselves in their current classroom and beyond. Armstrong recommends avoiding lingo and instead using simple terms to teach students about MI theory, with the aim of involving them in a conversation about it rather than simply teaching them. He also advises using differentiated instruction in the lesson about MI theory, both so that students may see examples of MI, and also so each student can achieve a fairly in-depth understanding of the theory via their own learning style. Some of the chapter’s suggestions for how to teach MI theory seemed to be geared more towards elementary aged children, but some of the methods I would use at the secondary level included giving examples of “end states” – well-known people with highly developed intelligences, initiating a class discussion about MI theory and its use in our classroom, using Career Day or other types of community involvement, as well as both field trips and teaching biographies. These all struck me as effective ways to bring MI theory into a secondary level social studies classroom.

Jen R.
Throughout chapter four, Armstrong introduces to his readers the advantages of educating young students on the MI theory. In the text, Armstrong describes the MI theory as being easily explainable to students as young as 1st graders. I learned that once students have gained a better understanding over the concept of MI, it strengthens their ability to personally reflect on their own experiences and intelligences. Once a student is capable of identifying their own strengths and weaknesses within the classroom, they will serve as great resources for the teacher and provide adequate information on detecting the most suitable learning style for the student. Chapter four also identifies and describes suggestions and beneficial strategies for how to teach the MI theory, a few of those include: field trips, career day, lesson plans, experimental activities, readings, displays and etc. For the most part, these suggestions seemed feasible for all teachers and I believe they will continue to prove to be effective ideas for all teachers of the future, including myself.

Chris D.
Chapter 4 of Multiple Intelligences dealt with how to explain or teach the theory of multiple intelligences to others. Sure you could stand in front of a group of people and just lecture them about it, but why use only one of the intelligences when you could use a whole variety or combination of methods to teach the concept. As a student in K-12, I never had even heard about this theory and had just gone about my schooling in a way that made sense to me, but didn’t know what it was that I was actually doing. This concept can and should be taught in the schools, preferably at the elementary level. The vocabulary doesn’t need to be complicated and most people would be able to identify themselves as a type of learner just based on asking them a few questions of what they can do and what they like to do. I feel that this would help students later on in life when they reached high school because they would know exactly what type of learner they were and would be able to do assignments in a way that made sense to them instead of just blowing it off.

Jonathan B.
Chapter four discusses teaching the MI theory to students. The author suggests a short introduction to the theory, without using the complicated language used by teachers to describe the model. For instance, the teacher replaces “linguistic” with “word smart.” Measuring MI can be introduced with short activities, biographies, or field trips. This will allow a student to reflect on their intellectual capability in terms of MI where they might have been previously bound by a “traditional” mindset regarding academics. In my classroom, I would have a short MI activity on the first day. This would work in conjunction with accessing the resources discussed in chapter three. This will not only assist me in teaching the students to their strengths, but it will allow the students to tap into their strengths and meet the challenges I present according to their MI status.

Danny K.
Chapter four discusses how students should be taught and they should know the importance of the MI theory. If students are more aware of how they learn it can benefit them in so many ways. Students who know what intelligences they are highly developed in can use those intelligences more affectively in and out of the classroom. If the students are also aware of their intelligences that they are undeveloped in, they can learn ways to help develop those intelligences. As a teacher the first day of class I would do an assignment to help make aware to my students what intelligences they are developed and undeveloped in. After doing this I would throughout the whole year try to help them use their different intelligences to help improve their other intelligences. I would make sure they knew that everyone has all of the intelligences and all of the intelligences can be used together for better learning.

Kaitlin T.
There is an appropriate way for each student, young or old, to learn about the MI Theory. Regardless of age, a person has experienced words, numbers, pictures, the body, music, people, his or herself, and nature. One way for students to learn about the MI theory is by being taught a lesson eight different ways. A teacher, once complete with the lesson, should ask the students which way they were most comfortable learning. This allows the teacher deep insight into how students approach a topic. I was excited to hear that one of my favorite boardgames, Cranium, covers most of the multiple intelligences; if I ever get the opportunity, I would love to allow my students to take a break from conventional learning and for them to take it easy for a class period (perhaps before winter or summer break). It’s undoubtedly important that teachers know how their students learn best, and I don’t believe there is a better way to discover how a student learns best other than by asking him or her!

**Tyler**
Chapter four discusses the benefits of teaching students about multiple intelligences, and then goes about explaining ways to teach them. As far as the benefits go, I would like to point out that you really have to be careful that you don’t shape someone by telling them they are smart this way, but not another way. It does cover that in the book, but even if you don’t explain it to a student like that, they may go on thinking that way. I for instance took a few tests saying I was an INTP personality. It nailed me spot on, but I took those traits and almost magnified them. Basically, I took all of the traits too far, in which case they become negatives

Dan B.
Chapter four of //Multiple Intelligences// talks about the ways that you can explain MI to your students. They give a lot of ideas about how a teacher could do this, you could give ask the students questions about how they learn, you could provide them of people who have certain intelligences; for example Toni Morrison is a verbal learner or Ray Allen would be bodily kinesthetic learner. They also offer more fun and interactive ways of teaching your students about MI, such as doing a scavenger hunt that requires students do do tasks that would make them use their multiple intelligences. I had never really thought about teaching my students about the MI theory, but after reading I think that it would be a good idea. You can help the student discover how they learn best, which will help their future performance in the classroom. If you can help a student perform better in the classroom then you will have done an essential part of the teachers goal, which is to help the student succeed.

Will L.
Chapter four goes over the ways a teacher can explain the MI theory to their students. This can be done without actually confusing the students. For example, ‘linguistic’ can be described as being “word smart.” The chapter also goes over various activities that can be done with students. For example, students can share a reflective moment amongst themselves, share an idea with the student next to them during a discussion, writing a story or drawing a picture about something they like.

Grady B.
In this chapter, which deals with teaching students themselves about MI theory, I found a number of ideas that I could see myself employing in my own classroom. As the chapter stated, I feel that the easiest way to bring MI to students is to directly explain the theory to them (pg. 45). I felt that most of the activity methods seemed a bit too immature for a high school, but I liked the spirit of the chapter, which seemed to be that there are indeed many ways to bring MI into the classroom. I liked the idea of using famous people to illustrate the different intelligences, as well as using field trips to see where these intelligences are used in the real-world. The suggestion of letting students read the literature themselves, is also something I could see myself doing. All-in-all, I agree that with consistent modeling, students can gain an individual grasp of how they best process information.