The term Multiple Intelligences refers to a framework for considering the strengths and weaknesses of children. These intelligences are broken into eight categories; spatial, math/logic, naturalist, music, interpersonal, intrapersonal, kinesthetic, & linguistic. We all have some degree of each intelligence, though there are those who are more gifted in certain areas, or in combinations of areas, than others. After taking the multiple intelligences assessment, I wasn't very surprised at the results because I've never excelled in something drastically more than others. Most of my numbers were all in the same ballpark. Does that make me a jack of all trades... or a master of nothing? Regardless, taking this quiz made me really think about the different ways children learn. Depending on the student, different strengths need to be sharpened to encourage the development of well rounded individuals. Do certain intelligences work together and increase as other specific strengths do, or are they less intertwined than that? I took a look at the correlation of the music & intrapersonal scores of my classmates to see if those two intelligences were closely related. My results concluded that there really isn't any huge relation between the music intelligence and intrapersonal intelligence. While the scores for music fluctuated from 1.5 to 4.5, intrapersonal scores stayed relatively consistent around 3-3.5, fluctuating only slightly.
I believe the use of multiple intelligence quizzes is extremely important for the classroom, especially among younger students. This allows teachers to gauge the learning styles of her students while appealing to each child's strengths and weaknesses individually. This would be an excellent tool to break the classroom into groups based on their strongest intelligence area in order to teach in a way that is specifically designed for each intelligence, and also groups based on their weaker intelligences in order to strengthen those as well. This would encourage a higher retention and understanding in our students since we'd be teaching them in ways we know are tailored to their needs, but also in strengthening the areas which scores were lower. I look forward to the use of these types of assessments to gauge my students at the beginning of the school year, and then again at the end to see what areas have improved!!
So, I'm not going to lie; setting up a blog myself was not an easy task. It was like the blind leading the blind, all my classmates and I were trying to figure out how this site works, and collectively we became very frustrated with the lack of instruction (I know, that was the point of the exercise). BUT, we figured it out :)
If I was to set up blog activities for my students, first I would make sure to do a brief tutorial on how to navigate the site, not because I don't think they couldn't figure it out on their own, but because I think children need a bit more direction than adults. Although, with that being said, my ten year old niece can figure out just about anything by simply playing around on it for five minutes... but that's irrelevant. To ensure my students and I are all on the same page, I would go over it briefly and then begin.
Activities I would start with would be simple things like creating a username and password (and of course make a list of all of their names and passwords, because let's be honest, there's going to be days where students forget their passwords in the beginning of this unit.), filling out their bio (I'd give a list of three or four things I want included. For example: favorite color, food, song, movie, etc.). Also, I would take a picture of each student and have them upload that as well. We will call those "warm-up" activities. Once they've set it all up, I'd have them all find each other and make a class group so we can all see what everyone else is posting, etc.
Once my class is familiar with navigating the site, I would post some sort of topic I'd like them to write about. It would most likely be a creative writing type, short story (nothing too long or in depth yet). Then we'd go around to each blog and l;ave a positive yet constructive (not generic) comment on each students' story. Early on, I want to teach my children to accept and apply (when appropriate) other peoples criticism (opinions) because that is, in my opinion, an extremely important life skill. There will always be someone there to give you feedback whether you want it or not, so I feel it is important to get my students exposed to responses in order to develop grace when faced with real life criticism (positive or negative).
Learning objectives would be things like, becoming familiar with being presented with material and being able to come up with positive, constructive comments. Also, I would like my students to be able to find useful blogs from people around the country (or world) and apply their strategies and techniques to their own assignments and experiences. I think blogging in the classroom can be a useful tool for communication and finding what other people are doing in similar situations, but I think the main way I'd use a blog in my classroom is to keep the parents up to date on the units we are working on, classroom announcements ("Happy Birthday, Billy!" or "Reminder no school on Monday!"), etc..
Overall, I think this experience has taught me to be patient and trust the process. There are reasons instructions were left out and there are reasons we were expected to teach these things to ourselves. It may have been irritating at the time, but I have learned more about teaching myself and learning from my peers than I would have had instructions been laid out in front of me.
