The Multiple Intelligences Theory, by Howard Gardner

Do all the students learn in the same way? Do the teachers provide the same opportunities of developments to all of them? Is assessment always fair?

According to Gardner's theory, there are different intelligences. Regarding to that, the intelligence is a combination of skills that allows to solve problems. Each person has a different capacity in each area of intelligence and it's can be influenced by biological development and by the environment. So, he says that each pupil has some interests and facilities to resolve the problems in a way. In order to assess in a fair way, the teacher would have to take into account all the intelligences and he or she would have to provide the children opportunities to show what they have learnt in different forms, attending to the multiple intelligences, and not only through the traditional written exam (the same for all the class as we see in the picture). This could be more time consuming for the teacher than traditional approaches methods, because teacher would have to prepare variety and dynamic activities and tests (using TIC resources, role-plays, debates, portfolios, diaries, moving activities, … ).

This is an explanation about in what consists each intelligence:

The following information is a video in which we can watch how Gardner explains their theory. The video also gives examples of known people that have developed some intelligences a lot.

These are some examples of activities to take into account all the intelligences in our lessons:

LINGUISTIC INTELLIGENCE

Readings (stories, simplified books, comics,...), debates, role-playings, words games (like Scrabble), writing comments about the readings, ...

LOGICAL- MATHEMATICAL INTELLIGENCE

Classifying words by categories, problem solving activities, ordering words or pictures in a logic structure, inventing titles for a reading or listening text, making hypotheses about how could end a story, ...

VISUAL-SPATIAL INTELLIGENCE

Explanations by power point with pictures and mind maps, videos and films, recording activities, imaginations games, constructions projects, activities with maps, …

KINESTHETIC INTELLIGENCE-BODY

Role-plays, Total Physical Response activities, objects constructions, moving activities...

MUSICAL INTELLIGENCE

Listening, rhythm or stress activities, songs (for example, a rap to remember specific vocabulary), poems to work intonation, rimes to remember grammatical rules, ...

NATURALISTIC INTELLIGENCE

Organizing an environmental discuss, classifying the animals depending on their characteristics, inventing and describing their ideal pet, describing naturalistic scenes, ... 

INTERPERSONAL INTELLIGENCE

Playing games in teams (for example a taboo words activity), doing role-plays, jigsaw tasks about readings or listening, ...

INTRAPERSONAL INTELLIGENCE

Through self-assesment, diaries, learning portfolios, writing a comparison between he or she and the protagonist of a story and saying what would he or she do in their role, ...

We have tried to present this information attending to Multiple Intelligences Theory.
We hope that you like it!