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!

Communicative Activitites

Develop of activity:

In this communicative activity we give to the children images of one small boy and one small girl but they are naked. The groups must find out their clothes for win the game.

For getting the clothes, children have to guess a question for each garment, that the others groups have, the others groups will give to their classmates the garment that they demand.

The group that achieves to dress it more quickly will win the game.

We have to analyze our activity according bloom because it´s so useful in the way of know how we develop the cognitive process of pupils with the task.

We have thought about it and we believe that in this activity children will get some possible achieves into the Bloom´s taxonomy like:

ü  Remember: pupils have to looking for information in their memories for the answers.

ü  Understand: they make a list for clothes that they need and they make a way to achieve their aims. We have to develop a strategy.

ü  Apply: in this case we think that we give a material and instructions for them and they use the material and we apply the way to play that we have said. They are able to work with the instruction.

Aims

–                    The learner will be able to ask about possession using the structure “have you got a... ?”

–                    The learner will be able to manage the vocabulary about colours and clothes that they have seen in class.

–                    The learner will be able to use different strategies to understand and to make himself or herself understood in a conversation (non-verbal language, rephrasing, ask for repetition... ).

–                    The learner will be able to express ideas applying his/her knowledge about animals in verbal and non-verbal ways (to pass the requirement proof to get the clothes).

Communicative competence

According to the communicative competences, this activity works sociolinguistic competence because the children can speak in a simulated real context. Regarding to this, it develops specially discourse competence because they have a purpose and they must negotiate with their classmates to get it.

Notions and functions

They would use notions regarding to the clothes topic and colours and the referential functions of the language with the structures “have you got a... ?”, “can you give me a...?” talking about things of the environment (clothes) and asking about possession.

Skills:

In this activity, in relation to the skills, we develop the “interaction”. Students need interacting for play and for achieve the different goals. We believe that “interaction” is basic because, in real life, they must interact each other. Of course, the other skills (listening, speaking and writing) are included in the activity too, but not in a significantly way.

Multiples intelligences

With the big head boys and girls activity we can develop some intelligence like; linguistic, musical, and bodily kinesthetic.

Why we work with these intelligences? Because during the activity our peers have to move around the class, doing some proof like touch and say some parts of your body, or sing a song about fruits…

We think that work with Gardner’s theory is one of the most important parts in the class, because we give them the opportunity to express themselves. 

Classroom language:

Come on class! Please, pay attention! We’re going to play a funny game! For this game, we need four groups. One. Two. Three. Four. Please, each group in a corner… Well. Each group has a “Bighead boy” like this. Look! It’s nice, isn’t it? But… I think they have a problem… They are nude! They need clothes! And you help their to get their clothes. You must go to the other groups and question to your classmates for the clothes you need…But you need pass a proof! Your friends tell you what you must do to get the clothes… Well, remember use the structure “Have you got….?”. Any questions? Ok, Let’s see who dress up their Bighead first!


Criticism:

We really enjoy with our presentation in class. In our opinion, our classmates enjoyed the game and they were very active and motivated.

Obviously, we need to improve some aspects. Overall, we need to improve the “instructions” that we give to our students. Maybe some instructions weren’t so clear and there were some problems to understand the activity, even giving examples we saw some classmates a little confused. Anyway, we think that the activity worked well in class, and we felt that our classmates were much implicated. 

"Tabu"

The first activity we have chosen is called tabu. In groups one member of it will be looking toward the group with the blackboard in his or her back. The other members will decide a definition of the word without using the words of the list.

Here we have some examples of the words:

Our students will have to guess the word computer and blood, without saying the words in the arrows