Student Sample

Daisy Buchanan Comic Life
Student Sample



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Chapter 14: Responsive Report Card Formats

If we differentiate in the way we teach and grade, we must also learn to differentiate in the way we present grades on report cards. Unfortunately most schools have report card programs that limit teachers’ abilities to show more than just the regular letter grade. When this is not the case, it is good to show that we grade students against their own progress as well as against the expected standards and the rest of the grade level. Signifying adjusted curriculum appropriately with an accompanying comment explaining how it was adjusted is one good idea. Another is to grade the student’s progress and the standards students their age are expected to meet. Teachers can also give separate grades for each standard, showing whether or not they met each particular standard. The continuous progress report can go over a period of two or more years to show how a student is progressing over time. While all these ideas are solid ones, I prefer the idea of students’ progress and students against expected standards. I feel like this most accurately depicts what a student has learned and mastered, and how well they are mastering what is expected of them. It also lets parents see both sides of the grades we must give.

Chapter 13: Gradebook Formats for the Differentiated Classroom

To truly be a differentiated teacher, one must embrace differentiation in all aspects of the classroom, learning, and grades and this includes gradebooks. There is no one right way to set up a gradebook, and it takes experimenting and thoughtful planning. One general rule of thumb is to categorize based on standards and benchmarks, not on homework, tests, and quizzes. This way, when you look at your grade book you will see what needs to be covered (or uncovered) still in the curriculum and how well students are meeting standards. The feedback you give students, parents, and other teachers will be so much stronger, because instead of saying “Jimmy failed his last test” you could explain that Jimmy just hasn’t grasped the concept of the standard or benchmark and therefore more easily help him work towards mastery. Since I’ve never used a gradebook before, none of these options in the chapter really jump out at me, nor can I think of the perfect way to set up my first gradebook. But I do know that it will be based in standards, not in categories of the type of work being done.

Chapter 11: Six Burning Grading Issues

When recording a grade for something that was not turned in, teachers often put down a zero, but the effects of a zero on an overall grade can be catastrophic, and there for not reflect a student’s true mastery, so a sixty should be recorded instead. Gifted students in advanced classes should be graded on the advanced scale, but gifted students in regular classes should be graded based on the scale of they class they are enrolled in. Students in differentiated classrooms always have as many tools as necessary to aid achievement, which results in weighted grades. When it comes to automaticity verses concept attainment, teachers need teach all students advanced concepts, even if they haven’t quite mastered the basics yet. Lower grades for late work do not reflect actual mastery, but if it is necessary to lower a grade, do so by a few points, not a whole letter grade. It is imperative that regular education and special education teachers work together to form a clear philosophy to help grade students in inclusion classes, or the students can get disheartened. I really feel like all of these issues are major problems out in the field, but I think the author’s solutions to all of them seem to be the best I’ve encountered yet. I will follow his advice in my practices as I grow to understand my own solutions to these “burning grading issues.”

Chapter 12: Grading Scales

The 4.0 scale is more accurate and helps to differentiate better than the 100-point scale because it makes distortion and errors less likely. The 100-point scale is an average based method to determine a grade, and therefore relies on calculating a grade to sometimes even tenths of a point, which doesn’t really reflect mastery at all. When using the 4.0 scale, a rubric is the guide in determining the grade, and while rubrics take a lot of time and effort to make, they become easier the more you do them. Rubric-based grading also forces students to focus more on the goals and the objectives of their learning rather than the difference between an A- and a B+. This also helps students to figure out what they still need to learn and how to improve. If they see their current level of mastery circled and explain in clear terms, they can begin to understand what to work on and what to work towards. I really feel that rubric-based grading on the 4.0 scale is much better than the 100-point scale, and I will implement in my classroom whenever I can. It is far more important for my students to see objectives and expectations clearly spelled out for them and be graded on those than to have their grades based on calculated averages that translate into an almost meaningless lettering system.

Chapter 10: Conditions for Redoing Work for Full Credit

In a differentiated classroom, it is appropriate to allow students to redo work for full credit. This allows the student another chance to display their mastery, and is only fair, because not everyone learns at the same rate, and therefore, not everyone is ready to demonstrate their mastery at the exact same time. The teacher gets the final say in if a student gets to redo their work or not. If it is apparent that the student waited until the last minute or put no effort into their work, then the teacher may not allow them to redo it. When students are allowed to redo their work, they need to sit down with the teacher and create a calendar that will help them get all their work done on time to better ensure success. The format of the redone work may not be the same as the first time around, so that way students don’t just memorize the test or the information- they have to learn it. I think this is a policy I will most certainly have in my classroom. In the real world, redoing work occurs all the time, and students should be allowed that same opportunity.

Chapter 9: Ten Approaches to Avoid When Differentiating Assessment and Grading

Chapter nine is a list of do-nots in differentiated instruction. The chapter covers many items on the list that were the focus of previous chapters. The main idea is avoiding the grading of anything that isn’t mastery. Homework shouldn’t greatly affect a student’s grade, and neither should extra credit. Students should be allowed to try to prove their mastery as many times as they need to. Scaffolding and differentiating are tools within the classroom; we should not withhold them. We should not assess students in ways that will not allow them to demonstrate their mastery, differentiation is all about making sure students have the opportunity to show how they know something, not show us in one specific way. Group grades are another thing to avoid, as they don’t represent what individuals know and feedback is more about group dynamics than student knowledge. Most of this list was already on my own, and now I have more to add and think about as I start teaching.

Chapter 7: The relative Nature of Grades and Their Definitions

The way teachers grade, and how they understand the grades they give, greatly affect how they differentiate instruction. In order to grade fairly, the criteria for grades needs to be the same across the board, and be clear to everyone. Unfortunately, grading usually ends up being subjective and does not accurately reflect student’s mastery. According to research on grading, students who are graded have less interest in learning, test worse, and avoid difficult tasks when presented with them than the students who are not graded in school. Grades are just the teacher’s interpretation of the student’s knowledge; they are not concrete representations of a student’s mastery. Grading scales have always been difficult to go by, because an A for one teacher may not be an A for another. Students should know and clearly understand what the criteria are for receiving an A, and work towards those outlined standards. While getting rid of grades one and for all doesn’t seem to be happening in the near future, working towards fair, clear, and better constructed grading scales, tactics, and practices seems to be the first step in the right direction when I begin teaching.

Chapter 8: Why Do We Grade? And What About Effort, Attendance, and Behavior?

The purpose of grading it to communicate to students, parents, and teachers the student’s level of mastery, and use this information to provide feedback and make informed decisions about what to do next. Grading is already so easily muddled by subjectivity that adding effort, attendance and behavior as factors in grades is too confusing and unnecessary. While participation is important in learning, a student’s grade shouldn’t hinge on how many times they speak up in class: if a student and produce good work and prove that they understand what is going on, they shouldn’t be punished for not raising their hand more. Nor should students who constantly participate in class discussion be given a higher grade when they never do their homework and don’t demonstrate full mastery. In order to grade effort, one would need to be able to define and put it into standards and criteria. While it may seem unfair that some students don’t need to put in a lot of effort to receive a good grade, it’s also unfair for students who tried hard and learned little to receive a good grade for just trying. Attendance is an important aspect of learning: if you don’t show up, you don’t receive an opportunity to learn. But a few missed classes shouldn’t lower a student’s grade if they can still prove mastery of the subject: you never know what is going on at home or outside of school. I firmly believe that effort, attendance, and behavior are all important in life and in school, but they can be communicated in ways other than grades, and that’s how it should be done.

Chapter 12: MI and Cognitive Skills

Gardener has theorized that people do not have “good” or “bad” memories in general, but rather they have varying degrees of memory in different intelligences. People may have a great bodily-kinesthetic memory and can easily remember a dance, but they might have a poor visual memory and cannot keep different works of art straight. Another cognitive skill that MI can help strengthen is problem solving. Thinking through problems and issues in different intelligences can be very helpful: people who are stronger spatial learners can visualize a problem rather than write a mathematical equation to help solve it. One large issue all educators face today is clearing up students’, no matter how old, misconceptions; often people firmly believe in the wrong answer because they were never taught otherwise in a way that made sense to them. The last application of cognitive skills in relation to MI is Bloom’s taxonomy working along side MI to take learning from simply understanding something in one intelligence, to being able to apply, explain, analyze, and evaluate it as well. As a teacher, I will need to use MI not just for teaching understanding, but for teaching problem solving and higher order thinking.

Chapter 11: MI and Special Education

Special education sadly tends to focus on what students can’t do instead of what they can do. Being lower functioning than average in one intelligence does not mean that a student isn’t going to be well versed in another intelligence. MI theory supports the idea that forcing students who have disabilities or difficulties to focus only on what they struggle with and rarely let them explore the intelligences they excel at is no way to teach. A dyslexic student might struggle with reading, but be a brilliant spatial and bodily-kinesthetic learner. MI suggests that rather than try to work on reading in a linguistic sense, work on it in the intelligences the student excels at. Students in special education with IEPs need to be taught in all the intelligences, just like students in mainstream classrooms. Everyone is smart in different combinations of intelligences, and special education students are no different: we just need to learn to teach to them in a style they understand. I am currently in an Alternative Education classroom at Mt. Blue and the way my mentor teacher handles students with learning disabilities, behavioral problems and “at risk” home lives is MI theory at it’s best. I hope to continue learning from her different ways to teach students who may not have the set of intelligences teachers are used to.

Chapter 8: Grading and Reporting Achievement

Grading is not about letters or checks and minuses, it is about giving appropriate, useful feedback to students so that they may progress and become better learners. A grade must represent a student’s ability to meet milestone goals set in place by standards that are clear to the student. Assessments and grades are two different things, and grades do not need to include assessments. Assessments are used for reporting student knowledge at a particular time and figuring out misconceptions a student has or how far long they are in learning, and there for should be used to help teacher see where to go next and not in the grade book. Using mean averages to calculate grades is a poor idea at best, because it doesn’t reflect what a student knows as an end result of their learning process. Bad grades at the beginning when understanding was weak shouldn’t weight down thoughtful understanding at the end of a unit. When I grade, I will need to do so by the school’s standards and procedures and while I may not agree with them, I can help my students to understand my grading system and what it means as well as how it must translate into the pre-set report card grades they must receive in the end.

Chapter 8: MI and Classroom Management

Management and control in the classroom can also be taught through the multiple intelligences. One of the first steps towards managing a classroom is getting the attention of the students. Using a hand signal, a word, a clapping patter, or simply going silent are all different ways to get students focused on the teacher while still utilizing different intelligences like bodily-kinesthetic, linguistic, musical, or intrapersonal, respectively. Another important time to be able to manage the room is during transition periods, like before and after lunch, recess, and at the end of the school day. Using MI cues get students in the “zone” can be very useful to save time and quickly get back on track. Class rules, group forming, and individual behavior can all be managed with more grace if teachers implement MI strategies that their students respond to. Which strategies I choose to use will largely depend on what intelligences my students are. As I get to know my students, I will be able to try different ways of managing classroom activities and occurrences that best capture their attention and respect.

Chapter 14: MI and the Existential Intelligence

Gardener has some what proposed a ninth intelligence that meets the majority of his criteria: Existentialism. This intelligence hasn’t been fully supported by enough evidence to become an official intelligence, but it is worth knowing about and understanding. It focuses on the ability of an individual to see their place in the “big picture” of their life, their world, and their universe. It also includes an understanding of life, death, fate, and an ability to fully experience love or total immersion in art. While this sounds like a “spiritual” or “religious” intelligence, it is not: it simply means an individual strives to answer and understand the big issues and questions that many religions also try to answer, because it is human nature to want to understand. It can be difficult to integrate into a classroom setting, and will often not be included in lesson plans to teach to this intelligence, but it can be done by asking students to think deeper about the subjects they are studying. To me, the existential intelligence is really just trying to answer deeper and more broad “essential questions” and should be used to further probe students’ understanding of material and big questions.

Chapter 13: Other Applications of MI Theory

Multiple Intelligence Theory is relevant not only in the classroom, but in all aspects of life. People of all intelligences can use computers, which are becoming a bigger and bigger part of our culture. Photoshop, Microsoft Word, Google Earth, and Garage Band are all programs that work very well with different intelligences. Cultural Diversity also naturally incorporates the Multiple Intelligences. Different cultures value different intelligences, such as navigation, song, dance, and written word. But all cultures use all eight intelligences. What children want to “grow up to be” relies heavily on their favored intelligences and will likely lead to a career in a field that requires participants to be very strong in their intelligence. This means that I will need to tie intelligences into things other than the classroom, and help students to see that this isn’t just a way of learning English, but a way of leanring throughout life.

Chapter 7: MI and the Classroom Environment

Not only is it necessary to teach to the multiple intelligences, it is necessary to organize, arrange and decorate a classroom keeping them in mind. A classroom should be set up with many things to stimulate each intelligence. This could mean having pictures on the walls, pets in the room, music in the background, or many other intelligence-stimulating surroundings. But it is not only about how the classroom appears, but also how time is managed, how the teacher speaks, and how students are exposed to experiences. Activity centers can be placed around the room and may be permanent or temporary. Have sketchpads and paints at a spatial area, headphones and CDs at a musical area, clay at a kinesthetic station, anything to help stimulate students’ intelligences. In my mind, the set up of my classroom will be very important. The classrooms I functioned the best in were always ones that had an area for me to feel comfortable in, whether that be a beanbag over by the bookshelf or an area for me to spread out my work and get organized. I hope to create a classroom in which all students feel stimulated and comfortable.

Chapter 9: Bringing it All Together” Curriculum and Instruction Through the Les on UBD and DI

Teachers who use backwards design and differentiated instruction to strengthen their teaching methods generally follow nine “rules.” These “rules” create a framework for teaching and learning with respect, supporting students’ needs, and teaching and accessing in a fair and effective manner. By looking at a unit plain about nutrition aimed at 5th and 6th grade students, the reader can see how a well-constructed unit can and must morph into a unit that addresses different students’ needs. The use of pre-assessment as well as continuing assessment throughout the course of the unit can help the teacher understand what misconceptions or understandings students’ have and how they can be addressed to make sure the students are on-task and learning at an appropriate level. This chapter also suggests a litany of ideas that teachers can use to differentiate their units and lesson plans so that all students can benefit. The chapter really brought to life the idea that even the most well constructed and well thought-out unit will need to change as new information is presented to the teacher. I will need to use the results of assessments to shape my lessons and help me learn how to reach and teach all of my students.

Chapter 7: Teaching for Understanding in Academically Diverse Classrooms

Understanding requires more than the memorization of facts and the ability to pass a test. “Active intellectual work” is necessary for students to truly gain understanding (108). Essential questions help students to use higher order thinking and begin to understand what they know, what they don’t, and what they wish to learn by using deep critical thinking. Teachers should remember that the ladder framework isn’t really how students learn. Learning does not happen sequentially, it is not always necessary to know the basics to explore the deeper questions; often, exploring big ideas helps to teach the basics. The WHERETO framework is also helpful in leading students to true understanding. All these ways of helping students think deeper and question further and understand better are essential for teachers to use in order to assist their students in deeper understanding.

Chapter 6: Responsive Teaching with UBD in Academically Diverse Classrooms

Teachers who wish to teach effectively must create a curriculum that built up from the most important and relevant ideas within a discipline. Students should learn the skills and knowledge the curriculum is teaching, but more importantly, students should know how to apply their knowledge and see how it is relevant to their lives. Students should know the goals of the curriculum and how they can meet them. All students should be focusing on the big ideas and how it relates to them. Just because student needs to catch up on basic skills before they can fully understand a lesson does not mean they should be left out of seeing the big picture. This means that as a teacher, I need to know what my students’ strengths and weaknesses are so that I can teach to both to ensure that I strengthen all their knowledge. My students will gain a better understanding of my subject that is applicable to their lives and presents knowledge in a clear manner that displays it’s importance.

Chapter 6: MI and Teaching Strategies

Expanding on the previous chapter, Armstrong goes into detail about multiple ways to teach to each intelligence. Instead of using expected examples, he lists ideas that are novel and do-able. Rather than reach linguistic students only in English, tell them a story in science. Use color to help students organize their ideas, opinions, and facts. Don’t just play music in class: set vocabulary words to a rhythm, put the names of the fifty states into song-form. The possibilities for each intelligence are endless, and reading about ideas and examples just sparks more for me. Coming up with new ways to convey information or get students to think is exciting and invigorating to me. While it may be a challenge, learning teaching strategies to teach to all of the intelligences is a task I look forward to.

Chapter 5: MI and Curriculum Development

Teaching to different intelligences isn’t a new concept: Plato, Rousseau and countless others throughout history have made note of different ways of learning. Now, this concept has transformed into a way of teaching that is essential in the modern classroom. MI teachers need to be able to shift from one intelligence to the next in their teaching to ensure that they reach all students. Most classrooms are focused on the teacher delivering the content through lectures, notes, worksheets, and textbooks. In an MI classroom, the teacher spends time brainstorming and planning different ways to teach to all the intelligences. When planning a curriculum, I will need to be constantly thinking, “how can I translate this to a different intelligence?” The goal is to be able to create lessons, units, and curriculum that cater to all types of learning, and this can be done through asking questions, considering the possibilities, brainstorming, creating suiting activities, making a plan, and setting it into action.

Chapter 5: Tiering Assessments

Tiering is when a teacher adjusts assignments and assessments to suit students’ abilities and interests. It does not mean less work for students having a harder time and more work for students who have already grasped the concepts. Through the use of tiering, teachers are able to provide assignments for all students based on their readiness level that will still allow them to meet standards and expectations. Learning contracts, learning menus, and tic-tac-toe boards are great examples of using tiering to suit students’ needs and interests while still bringing them up to speed on the gaining of required knowledge. Like most things in teaching, tiering is a learned skill and the more it is practiced, the better we are able to do it. In order to teach in a differentiated classroom, we need to be able to tier and do so effectively. In my classroom, I will need to fully understand my students and their needs as well as the standards they need to meet in order to tier effectively. Giving students options and say in how I will do this will be a great way to involve them in their learning and show me what I need to know about them.

Chapter 6: Creating Good Test Questions

Tests are meant to assess students’ knowledge, and therefore should include only clear, important information that will reflect mastery. Using all one type of question, like multiple choice, is repetitive and won’t reflect mastery of a student who doesn’t think in multiple choice terms. Questions should be varied and require students to provide their own answers at some point. Unclear and tricky questions should be avoided because they don’t assess students’ mastery, but rather if they can comprehend a muddled question. But in writing clear questions, it is essential to not give away the answer because of grammar, statements in previous questions, and so forth. And while prompts must be clear and not give anything away, it is fair to include common errors in a list of answers. Differentiated instruction is all about students’ work over time, not just a snapshot of their abilities, because of this, multiple small tests work better than one large, high-stakes one at the end of the unit. All of this boils down to the fact that I will need to create tests that vary in question format, have clear directions and questions, and make sure that the end result is a reflection of the mastery of my students.

Chapter 10: MI and Assessment

If one teaches to the multiple intelligences, it makes no sense to test to only a few. While assessment usually consist of pen, paper, and a litany of questions to answer, MI assessment seeks to prove an understanding of knowledge in any form that gets the job done. Students who learn in different intelligences should be allowed to demonstrate their understanding in ways that best suit their learning styles. Students should be allowed to submit essays, songs, videos, dioramas, photographs, anything that shows they know the material. If students are being taught to strengthen their intelligences and become accountable for their own learning, they should have a say in how they get to demonstrate their learning. Portfolios are a great way to do this, and they can be anything from physical manila folders to online compilations of student work. Portfolios can be used for self-reflection, celebration of knowledge, sharing of achievement, and competency. With endless possibilities for assessment in MI, I feel confident that I will take the time to learn and understand how to evaluate student knowledge in many different ways. After all, they deserve to explain their understanding in a way that makes sense to them.

Chapter 4: Three Important Types of Assessment

Portfolios, rubrics, and self-assessment are all essential in a differentiated classroom. Portfolios provide a long-term look at a student’s work and progress throughout a period of time and can be valuable to help see improvement. Rubrics, either analytic or holistic, are great for assessing papers and projects that can go into portfolios. Rubrics are a learned skill and are never perfect and can always be revised and reused. Student self-assessment is wonderful because it allows the students to reflect on their progress, their strengths, and their weaknesses. I am partial to all three types of assessment and will likely be happy to use all of them in my teaching. I’d use analytic rubrics to grade assignments and allow students to use the same rubrics to assess themselves and then put all the works and filled in rubrics into a portfolio for later review.

Chapter 5: Considering Evidence of Learning in Diverse Classrooms

True assessment is evidence of leaning because it fairly assesses whether or not a student has mastered a subject and is able to apply the knowledge gained in real-world situations. Assessment that is reliable needs to see knowledge displayed in multiple ways. Giving multiple vocabulary tests in the same format is not fair assessment as it does not assess all students fairly or show mastery in multiple ways. Declarative knowledge, procedural knowledge, and disposition are three different goals for education; it is necessary to formulate different assessments for each type because they are all different. One cannot measure different types of knowledge with one blanket assessment. All students need to be able to prove their understanding of what is being taught, but how they do so should be up to them. In order to be a productive and effective teacher in a differentiated classroom, I must assess my students before, during, and after a unit, and I must do so in many different ways to insure that all of my students can demonstrate their knowledge in a way that works for them.

Chapter 2: Mastery

Mastery is being able to use and apply knowledge in contexts other than the one it was learned in. Many different forms of assessment and tracking the progress of the student in multiple ways over time can determine mastery. Just because a student can complete a project or talk about a subject and sound knowledgeable does not mean they are. Using written responses helps to see how well students know something, because in writing, it is harder to graze over the parts one does not know. Students should be able to prove their mastery in multiple ways in a differentiated classroom. This means that I need to assess my students multiple times throughout a unit to make sure they are on the right track. It also means I will need to figure out how many ways to let them prove their knowledge.

Chapter 3: Principles of Successful Assessment in the Differentiated Classroom

Chapter 3: Principles of Successful Assessment in the Differentiated Classroom
In a differentiated classroom, assessments and lessons are made clear to the students. There should be no surprises on tests or worries about what will be on it: the students should be well informed about what they will be assessed on and how. Pre-assessments should be used before starting a unit, and the information we learn from them should be used to shape the unit and lessons we are going to teach. Formative assessments should occur frequently and help us to determine where students stand in their understanding of the subject mater: formative assessments are essential. Summative assessments should be created before the unit is fully planned. All lessons should help guide the students to understand and master the material that is on the summative assessment. This means that as a teacher, it is my job to be clear about assessments and make sure there are no surprises for my students when they take any test or quiz: they should already know what will be covered.

Chapter 1: The Differentiated Instruction Mind-set: Rationale and Definition

Teachers have been using differentiation for years; it just wasn’t call that yet. Now, differentiation has a name is being adopted as a model of teaching that all teaches should use. The goal is to allow students to show their mastery of the subject being taught in any form that allows them to best show all that they have learned: the goal is to be fair. A differentiated classroom is one in which students learn to advocate for themselves, see each other’s differences as strengths, and begin to understand themselves as learners. Students who learn in a differentiated classroom go on to do better in all learning settings, because they know how they learn best and can adapt better. My goal is to make my classroom a differentiated and fair learning environment for all my students. If I succeed, it means my students will too.

Chapter 4: What Really Matters in Planning for Student Success?

The goal of teachers should be finding different wants to teach students so that they can all learn what is necessary for them to succeed. Differentiation is important in teaching students, because everyone learns differently. When starting a unit, some students will be proficient at the abilities needed to work through the unit, while others don’t have the necessary skills and some possess almost all the knowledge already. Because of these gaps in student standings, it is the job of the teacher to assist students in reaching the goals of the unit as well as progressing past their former knowledge. Teachers also need to create environments in which all students can respect each other and work well, together and apart. Students need to learn how to become aware of their goals and how to meet them as well as how to set new ones, and this can be done with the aide of a teacher, and then students can develop to the point where teacher assistance is limited or unnecessary in creating practical goals. This all impacts me as a teacher because I will need to plan units for my class as a whole, but assist students individually and teach groups of students differently in order to have them all finish the unit with the knowledge they were supposed to learn. This may mean different lessons or projects for different students, working with students individually or in groups, and paying attention to make sure none of my students fall behind.

Chapter 3: What Really Matters in Learning? (Content)

The problem with standards is that they can be too specific, too broad, and too numerous. A good approach to standards is to think of them as “big ideas” (27) and essential questions instead of a confining statement to be met. A good way to assure that standards are met, addressed, and taught to is backward design. There are three stages to backward design: the first is determining the end results, the second is determining that student work will prove they have met the end results and the third is the plans and activities that will teach students how to do the work. By using backwards design teachers avoid simply teaching everything in the curriculum without a goal in mind and planning activities or work that do not help students to truly learn the material. When I teach, backwards design will be essential in my creation of units to assure that I am meeting required standards but also teaching students how to prove they know the information.

Chapter 4: Teaching Students About MI Theory

Multiple Intelligence Theory can easily be explained to any age group; the concepts are easy to grasp because everyone has all of the intelligences. After explaining each intelligence in age-appropriate terms, one can ask questions of the students about the intelligence that all should be able to answer yes to (Who here can read? That makes your word smart.) This will help students realize that everyone really is smart in eight different ways. Another important way to concretely explain the intelligences is to get out of the classroom and experience each intelligence on a field trip. Other ideas are reading the biographies of famous people who are known for a certain intelligence, do quick activities in the classroom, and have students learn about each other’s intelligences. The main goal is to help the students to understand the intelligences and their roles inside and outside of the classroom and recognize that we are all smart, just in different ways. This means that when I teach, I need to familiarize my students with the multiple intelligences and help them to understand which ones they. By doing this, my students and myself will be better able to learn and expand our knowledge.

Chapter 3: Describing Intelligences in Students

In order to teach to students’ intelligences, it is first necessary to know what their intelligences are. There are many resources one can use to start learning about each student’s preferred intelligences. Looking at how they act when they are not participating in class is a great way to start noticing how they learn. If they are not being taught to, they are going to start doing something that does hold their interest. Collecting evidence, such as papers, photographs, and recordings, is another great way to start forming a picture of a student’s intelligences. School records are another way to gather data, but observing how well students did on tests and what their grades were, one can see if they tend to do better in gym or in English, which can point towards bodily-kinesthetic or verbal. Talking to parents is also key, because they’ve seen their child grow up and learn in ways different from those in school. But to really understand a student’s intelligences, one needs to ask the student. In order to learn how to teach my students, I will need to collect many different types of data and consult many resources to understand their individual make-up of intellgiences.

Chapter 1: The Foundations of the Theory of Multiple Intelligences

Originally, intelligence was measured almost solely by the Intelligence Quotient test, leaving one’s intelligence to be measured by only a number. Then Howard Gardener came along and developed his theory of multiple intelligences, the idea that there are eight and maybe more intelligences that can be measured in a number of ways. All people are capable of having and developing all the intelligences. Some intelligences unfortunately seem more valued more than others, with linguistic and logical being the two most taught to in schools. The intelligences do not function separately, but rather work as a collective unit, requiring more than one to complete most daily tasks. Gardener’s multiple intelligence theory will have great impact in my classroom because I will need to be aware of my student’s intelligences and help they to develop all of them, not just advance their obvious stronger intelligences.

Chapter 2: MI and Personal Development

Teachers need to determine what their strongest intelligences are in order to help their students develop their intelligences as well. Because some intelligences are stronger than other, teachers are more likely to teach in a way that represented their strong suits. But intelligences are not just biologically drive; they can be cultivated, strengthened, and unfortunately, impaired or blocked. Biology, such as genetics, personal experience, and culture all play roles in how one’s intelligences develop. Just because someone shows mastery of one intelligence does not mean they cannot go on to master more or even all of them. Because intelligences can be strengthened and even stunted by bad experiences or physical brain damage, it is important for teachers to not just teach to students’ obvious strengths, but also teach to their less developed ones to build them. And I as a teacher will need to work on my other intelligences so that I can better learn to teach students with multiple intelligence strengths different from my own.

Chapter 2: What Really Matters in Teaching (The Students)

UBD/DI focuses not only on the idea that a teacher should know their students learning styles, but also what impacts their life outside the classroom and how it affects their learning. Students’ relationships with peers and parents greatly affect their performance in the classroom. Social and economic status as well as gender, race, and previous exposure to learning are all important factors of how students learn. Attending to all of these issues and influences is a difficult task, but the teacher is not expected to create individualized lesson plans for each student to best meet their needs. Teachers are expected to recognize different ways of learning, such as the multiple intelligences and teach to those to meet the needs of all the students. This impacts me greatly as a teacher because I will need to learn to understand what influences my students and rather than teach to each individually or all in a blanket fashion. I must see patterns of difference in the way my students learn and incorporate their learning styles into

Chapter 1: UBD and DI: An Essential Partnership

Understanding by Design and Differentiated Instruction are two ways of thinking about teaching that work together to create guidelines and support for teachers who want to insure they reach all their students when they teach. Both models support idea that teachers must be aware and responsive to their students, the learning environment in which they work, the subject matter they are teaching, and the way they deliver the information. By focusing on these four parts, teachers are better able to analyze how their students need to be taught and what they can do to meet students’ needs. UBD/DI is all about making sure all students that walk into a classroom have their personal learning styles and their level of understanding recognized, taught to, and supported. When I step into a classroom, I need to be prepared to adapt my curriculum, lessons, and teaching style so that I can insure that none of my students are left in the dark or lag behind. Everyone learns differently and at different speeds, it is my job to present information in ways that everyone can comprehend and make sure that at the end of the day everyone has a better understanding of the material. UBD/DI will be a cornerstone in my teaching practices. The more I advance my knowledge of UBD/DI and my students’ needs, the more I will be able to advance my students’ knowledge of the material.