The MI Strategy Bank

800+ Multiple Intelligence Ideas for the Elementary Classroom

Ellen Arnold

• Verlag: Zephyr Press
• Jahr: 2012
• ISBN:
  9781613745717
• Auflage: 2
• Thema: Education
• Thema: Education Teaching Methods

Elementary educators learn to recognize how students learn best—and adjust their lesson plans accordingly—with this handbook's Multiple Intelligence (MI)–based strategies. Starting with a diagnostic interview for each child that helps teachers develop the best instructional methods for their classrooms, this guide provides hundreds of specific teaching methods that strengthen each of the eight intelligences in any classroom situation. Case studies from actual strength-based assessments (one for each of the eight intelligences) outline examples for how these strategies can be applied at any grade level to improve such skills as reading, writing, spelling, math, note taking, and listening, as well as to minimize behavior problems. In this updated edition, 50 specific strength-based interventions that range from vocabulary retention and reading comprehension to self-discipline and task completion show how each of the eight intelligences can be utilized in the teaching of a single lesson. A selection of grade-specific content includes using MI theory to teach story writing, singing, and democracy.

1
STRENGTH-BASED INTERVIEWS

Ten Reasons to Do a Strength-Based Interview

1. Every learner is unique and needs ways to celebrate his or her uniqueness.
2. When students lose the belief in themselves, they cannot be successful.
3. Creative learning is never boring.
4. The responsibility for learning is the student’s responsibility. But before students can take responsibility, they have to know what will work for them.
5. In order to take responsibility for learning, the learner must be metacognitive.
6. One teacher’s strategies may not work for the student, even though they may work for the teacher.
7. Students who aren’t effective in basic skills don’t know what they need to do differently.
8. MI provides a reframe for students, a positive paradigm so they can have hope for success. “Just because you can’t do it one way, doesn’t mean you can’t do it. You just need to do it your way.”
9. Unsuccessful students are tunnel-visioned in their use of strategies. The regular way didn’t work and no one gives them permission to do it in an alternative way.
10. Inappropriate behavior is often a signal of something the student is good at:
    • The mover is demonstrating Body Smarts.
    • The doodler is demonstrating Picture Smarts.
    • The talker is demonstrating People Smarts.
    • The one who says “let’s get to the point” is demonstrating Number Smarts.
    • The hummer is demonstrating Music Smarts.
    • The arguer is demonstrating Word Smarts.

Your job is to help students identify strengths from their areas of competence, and teach them how to build bridges from those areas to the thinking we want them to develop.

The strength-based interview is conducted in five parts:

Part 1: Setting the Tone and Gathering Strength-Based Information

Part 2: Identifying a Problem

Part 3: Brainstorming with the Team

Part 4: Using Strategies Diagnostically with the Learner

Part 5: Following Up

Before You Begin

Put together a supply of materials or props that will help you conduct a strength-based interview.

ITEM	SOURCE
Plastic brain (or Koosh ball or sponge)	www.neuromart.com
3 x 5 cards, some lined and some without lines	Stationery store
Pipe cleaners (cut in half, to use to fidget or build)	Craft shop
Plastic letters/Scrabble tiles in a divided sewing box	Garage sales
White board and colored markers, or white static paper	Stationery store
Cuisenaire rods or attribute blocks	School supply store
Small, battery-operated tape recorder or digital recorder (to replay the conversation so you can take accurate notes and then share them with parents)	Electronic supply store or department store
Franklin Homework Wiz Spell Checker with read-aloud key	www.franklin.com
Icons of eight intelligences, from page 31, on a small felt board (can be done in the shape of a brain)	Make this for yourself
Brilliant Brain Becomes Brainy! (Rochester, NY: Arncraft, 1997)	www.arncraft.com
Eight toys or 3-D objects to represent the eight intelligences or Smart Parts	Your junk drawer

The strength-based interview requires:

• Usually two sessions with the student, each approximately 20 minutes.
• A space where you are relatively free of distractions.
• A student whose primary issues are cognitive rather than emotional.

When you administer this interview, your job is to really listen. Listen not just to the overall content, but also to the wording and phrasing used, the verbs used, the way the learner describes his or her world. The questions below are meant to be options or prompts to get at the necessary information. You do not have to ask all the questions, nor use this exact wording. If you become stuck, the dialogue stimulators below are sure to work, but insert your own personality, your prior knowledge of the learner, or anything you have available to help you get at the key issues:

• How does this learner’s brain work best?
• Under what conditions?
• Using which modalities?
• Using which intelligences or associations?

Part 1:
Setting the Tone and Gathering Strength-Based Information

Goals:

• Set the tone
• Identify the expert
• Have student verbalize individual strengths
• Structure the student into a metacognitive dialogue
• Record (tape or notes) the learner’s perceptions and validate the learner’s experiences

Breaking the Ice

First, open a dialogue with your interviewee: “Our reason for meeting today is to find out more about your brain and how it works. We all have different ways in which our brains are smart, and I want to find out more about your brain.” Alternatively, you can say, “You are the expert on how your brain works. I am going to ask you a bunch of questions to get you thinking about how your brain works best. You are free to answer in words or pictures, or to build things with any of the materials on the table.” Have materials available from the list on page 3 that may be helpful to the child, such as markers, white board, pipe cleaners, plastic brain, Koosh ball, or other props.

Strengths

Photocopy the form on the next two pages. Use this form to ask questions and to record the student’s responses. These questions have bee...