Do We Match All Of The Numbers, Sometimes?

According to Howard Gardner, Frames of Mind, everyone is born with all seven intelligences.  Each student enters the classroom with different sets of developed intelligences.  As an educator or parent you may recognize that each child has his own unique set of intellectual strengths and weaknesses.  These sets determine how difficult or easily it is for the child to obtain knowledge when it is presented in a particular manner.  This is the source of the term "learning style".

 It is usually impossible for the teacher to match all of her students to the seven intelligences for every lesson.  She must however, strive to make the classroom child-oriented and keep this option open when lesson planning.  Upon more deeply understanding the different math learning styles she can better prepare and offer her students greater successful experiences. When the students have options for how they learn a concept, their comfort level is optimum and the process can only then be successful.  (Example:  If the students must learn double digit subtraction by a teacher showing them by a math demonstration on a white board with numerals while talking, the kinesthetic/musical/linguistic/interpersonal learners may tune out.

Teachers are now opening their classrooms to be more student-centered than traditional teacher based instruction.  They have become aware, by their diverse school population, there is more than one approach to intellectual learning and assessment.  These teachers will start with math learning centers that provide resources and materials for experiences of math operations.  A concrete simulation (e.g. like playing store ) will immerse students into real life situations allowing hands on participation with verbal exchange followed by illustrations to report findings to the class.  This deepens understanding and matches many learners to their dominant intelligence styles (kinesthetic/interpersonal/linguistic/logical/visual). A center can offer an individual project with a well-defined goal to be journaled or recorded with results of the child's processing. (intrapersonal)

To continue this new approach by teachers, when instructing the whole class, the teacher may use a collaborative style with a project based learning activity.  When teaching an individual, the teacher would use the most preferred method for that child's learning style.

The teachers challenge is the following trilogy:

a.  Help students determine which learning style is preferred and dominant.

b.  Establish a plethora of teaching strategies to address the seven multiple intelligences

c.  Embolden their students to latch on to their intellectual strengths

These kindergarten students from Waldorf Pre-School made a knitted ball.  It took the whole school year.   It's length wrapped around the entire school.  What a great tool for measurement!

The greatest service to our students is to prepare them to be independent learners.  Every person has the opportunity to learn and the responsibility to themselves to become educated.  Although we have no control over how the information is delivered to us, we do have control over how we synthesize this information.  Recent research indicates that we can recall twenty percent of what we read.  We remember thirty percent of what we hear, forty percent of what we see.  We can remember fifty percent of what we say, sixty percent of what we do.  As a teacher, I must examine that there is recall of ninety percent of what we see, say and do.  I want to engage these students so they own this knowledge and can repeat it vocally, visualize it, and DO it.