Teaching for Multiple Intelligences
through Games and Activities
Herbert Gardner’s Theory of Multiple Intelligences
(Linguistic-Verbal, Logical-Mathematical, Spatial, Musical, Bodily-Kinesthetic,
Intrapersonal, Interpersonal, Naturalist) reveals many ways of knowing the world and
certain individual learning strengths and aptitudes.
Using the topic FOOD, we will explore how teachers can reach and
stimulate every kind of young learner in their lessons through games and activities using
multiple modes.
The theory of multiple intelligences offers four key implications for
education:
1. Everyone possesses all eight intelligences, in varying amounts .
2. Everyone is capable of developing all the intelligences to a
reasonably high level of performance with encouragement, enrichment, and instruction.
3. The 8 intelligences work together in complex ways, always
interacting with each other.
4. There are many different ways to be intelligent. There is no
standard set of attributes that one must have in order to be considered “intelligent”.
All of these points are useful for English language teachers. Applying
this theory to lesson planning and curriculum development helps us to understand our own
personal learning preferences as well as the diversity of our students. With an
understanding of Gardner’s Theory of Multiple Intelligences, we can better know and
serve the learners we work with. As we allow students to explore and learn in many ways,
we can help them better realize and appreciate their strengths, and identify real-world
activities that will stimulate more learning.
We will discuss lessons for a Young Learner’s Unit on the topic FOOD.
By asking questions like these we will try to involve as many intelligences as possible:
Linguistic-Verbal: How can I use language, words and
expressions? (shopping lists, menus, recipes, poems, idioms, dialogues, food-related
folktales – “Stone Soup”)
Logical-Mathematical: How can I bring in numbers,
calculations, logic, classifications, or critical thinking? (counting for shopping,
measuring ingredients, classifying foods, divide pizza, cut cake/watermelon)
Spatial: How can I use visual aids, visualization,
color, art, metaphor, or visual organizers? (shapes and colors of fruits and vegetables;
study and create still-life paintings, organize a fridge or cupboard, create a poster
about healthy food)
Musical: How can I bring in music or environmental sounds, or
set key points in a rhythm or melody? (songs and chants about food and eating, rhyming
words, rhythmic sounds and patterns)
Bodily-Kinesthetic: How can I involve the whole body, movement
or hands-on experiences? (movements from gardening, a dance of fast food or fishing,
miming a cook or waiter’s jobs)
Interpersonal: How can I engage students in sharing,
cooperative learning or large-group simulation? (role play serving and eating a meal,
ordering in a cafР№, moving food from farm to market, setting up a classroom market with
traders and buyers).
Intrapersonal: How can I evoke personal feelings or
memories, or give students choices? (chart preferences for ice cream; experiment with
tastes —sweet, sour, bitter, salty, fishy; discuss memories of best party food, prepare
Red Riding Hood’s basket for sick Granny)
Natural: How can I use the awareness of the natural world and
animals in this lesson? (study where food comes from; hunting and fishing and food, food
and seasons; crafts with seeds; collage, art with fruits, vegetables).
We will also look at how to devise assessments using MI Theory,
which allow students to engage their multiple intelligences and show in more than one way
what they have learned and how they have mastered some aspect of the English Language.
By Erin Bouma
|