Chapter 6 MI and Teaching Stratagies

This chapter is about teaching strategies for the multiple intelligences. This chapter takes an in depth look at how to teach each one and then goes into depth about each teaching strategy. They included teaching strategies from elementary school to middle school and high school. The teaching strategies not only help the students but the teacher as well. Linguistic intelligence is very easy to develop strategies for. Storytelling is a great strategy for linguistic. To use storytelling you need to list the essential facts you want to convey through the story. Storytelling tells the students ideas, concepts, and goals that you want to cover but tells them in a way that they will remember. Others include journal writing, publishing, brain storming, and tape recording. For mathematical/logical intelligence there are also several teaching strategies they gave. One is Socratic questioning. This is when the teacher does not tell the students the information but rather asks questions and joins in on their conversations. The teacher is the questioner. Others are classification and categorizations, calculations and quantifications, heuristics, and science thinking. These should not be restricted to only math and science subjects. For spatial intelligence one of the ideas is visualization. Having students close their eyes and make a picture in their minds of what is being taught. A good way to do this is to have them create a mental blackboard in their minds. Many believe that this only has to do with writing. Other examples are color cues, graphic symbols, idea sketching, and picture metaphors. For kinesthetic learners one key strategy is a classroom theater. This allows students to move around and have a good time. It can be just a goofy fun short thing or a play that involves preparation and is formal. Others include, body answers, hands-on thinking, kinesthetic concepts, and body maps. Kinesthetic strategies are often overlooked. Musical intelligence has a few cool ideas as well. It is often overshadowed with other intelligences that are more common in traditional education. One for musical intelligence is putting information from a lecture or presentation into a song. Create a song out of what you are teaching. For example, if I were teaching a math equation I might make up a rap or a beat to the equation. Other ideas are discographies, super memory music, musical concepts, and mood music. It is very important for students to learn to work with others. For interpersonal intelligence a student could play board games. These games teach the students the information but they are also able to interact with each other which helps interpersonal learners. Other ideas are peer sharing, cooperative groups, people sculptures, and simulations. Intrapersonal teaching strategies are mentioned as well. One of them is called personal connections. It is when the teacher asks questions that can relate to the students lives. Questions that make the students think about how something relates to their lives. Some students really need time to themselves. Other examples for intrapersonal include choice time, personal connections, one-minute reflection periods, feeling toned moments, and goal-setting sessions. The final intelligence is naturalist. For a naturalist, one of the teaching strategies the chapter gives is bringing plants into the classroom. You can use them as props for background scenery. Not only can you bring nature into the classroom but you could also go on nature walks. To bring nature into the classroom you could also use windows, have a pet in the classroom, or do an eco-study.
The teaching strategies that they introduced in this chapter were really interesting and very creative. Most people in the class got a lot of information out of this chapter and want to use it as a reference in the future. Before this chapter many people in our class did not know many ways to teach for all of the eight intelligences, especially naturalist. Some people thought that some of the ideas and concepts were repeated from previous chapters but everybody got some new ideas to use in the classroom. We all liked how they listed the ways you can teach for each intelligence because it becomes a reference to go back to when we are teaching. Some people related these ways of teaching to their personal lives or their experiences throughout high school or middle school. This chapter helped us all consider how to be a successful teacher for every intelligence in the classroom.