With the advent of cognitive psychology as the predominant paradigm in education, educators have become increasingly interested in helping students develop thinking strategies. How students think has become almost more important than what they think about. MI theory provides an ideal context for making sense out of students' cognitive skills. The eight intelligences in the model are themselves cognitive capacities. Hence, to develop any or all of them in the ways described in previous chapters is to facilitate the cultivation of students' ability to think. It may be helpful, however, to look more specifically at how MI theory applies to the areas most often emphasized by educators espousing a cognitive approach to learning: memory, problem solving and other forms of higher-order thinking, and Bloom's levels of cognitive complexity.
Memory
Classroom teachers have always seemed troubled by the problem of students' memories. “They knew it yesterday, but today it's gone” is a familiar refrain. “It's as if I never even taught it. What's the point?” many teachers lament. Helping students retain what they learn appears to be one of education's most pressing and unresolved issues. MI theory provides a helpful perspective on this age-old educational problem. It suggests that the notion of a “pure” memory is flawed. Memory, according to Howard Gardner, is intelligence-specific. There is no such thing as a “good memory” or a “bad memory” unless and until an intelligence is specified. Thus, one may have a good memory for faces (spatial/interpersonal intelligence) but a poor memory for names and dates (linguistic/logical-mathematical intelligence). One may have a superior ability to recall a tune (musical intelligence) but not be able to remember the dance step that accompanies it (bodily-kinesthetic intelligence).
This new perspective on memory suggests that students with “poor memories” may have poor memories in only one or two of the intelligences. The problem, however, may be that their poor memories are in one or both of the intelligence areas most frequently emphasized in school: linguistic and logical-mathematical intelligence. The solution, then, lies in helping these students gain access to their “good” memories in other intelligences (e.g., musical, spatial, and bodily-kinesthetic). Memory training, or work involving memorization of material in any subject, should therefore be taught in such a way that all eight “memories” are activated.
Spelling is an academic area that has typically relied heavily on memory skills. Unfortunately, most instructional approaches to studying spelling words have involved the use of linguistic strategies only: Write the word five times, use the word in a sentence, spell the word out loud, and so forth. MI theory suggests that problem spellers may need to go beyond these auditory, oral, and written strategies (all linguistic) to find success. Here are some examples of how the orthographic structure of linguistic symbols (i.e., the English alphabet) can be linked to other intelligences to enhance the retention of spelling words:
- Musical Intelligence. Spelling words can be sung. For example, any seven-letter word (or multiple of seven) can be sung to the tune of “Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star,” and any six-letter word can be sung to the tune of “Happy Birthday to You.”
- Spatial Intelligence. Spelling words can be visualized. Students can be introduced to an “inner blackboard” or other mental screen in their mind's eye. During study, students place words on the mental screen; during test time, students simply refer to their “inner blackboard” for help.
Other spatial approaches include color coding spelling patterns; drawing spelling words as pictures (e.g., the word “sun” can be drawn with rays of light emanating from the word); and reducing spelling words to “configurations” or graphic outlines showing spatial placement of stems.
- Logical-Mathematical Intelligence. Spelling words can be “digitalized,” that is, reduced to a series of 0s and 1s (consonants = 1; vowels = 0); spelling words can also be coded using other sorts of number systems (e.g., assigning a number to a letter depending on its placement in the alphabet: a = 1, b = 2, etc.).
- Bodily-Kinesthetic Intelligence. Spelling words can be translated into whole-body movements. Other bodily-kinesthetic approaches include tracing spelling words in sand, molding spelling words in clay, and using body movements to show patterns in words (e.g., stand up on the vowels, sit down on the consonants).
- Interpersonal Intelligence. Words can be spelled by a group of people. For example, each student has a letter and, when a word is called, students who have the letters in the word form the word with the other students.
- Intrapersonal Intelligence. Students spell words developmentally (i.e., the way they think they're spelled), or students learn to spell words that have an emotional charge (organic spelling).
- Naturalist Intelligence. Students can spell words using natural materials (e.g., twigs, leaves, or stems), or code spelling words using animal names (e.g., a = ant; b = bat; c = cat; d = dog).
The task for the teacher, then, is to help students associate the material to be learned with components of the different intelligences: words, numbers, pictures, physical movements, musical phrases, social interactions, personal feelings and experiences, and natural phenomena. After students have been exposed to memory strategies from all eight intelligences, they will be able to pick out those strategies that work best for them, and be able to use them independently during personal study periods.
Problem Solving
Although research studies suggest that over the past few years students in the United States have improved their performance on rote learning tasks such as spelling and arithmetic, they place U.S. students far down the achievement ladder in comparisons with other countries on measures of higher-order cognitive processes (Fiske, 1987, 1988). In particular, U.S. students' problem-solving abilities have been regarded as in need of significant improvement. Consequently, more and more educators are looking for ways to help students think more effectively when confronted with academic problems. Unfortunately, the bias in the recent critical-thinking movement has been in the direction of logical-mathematical reasoning abilities and in the use of self-talk or other linguistic strategies. MI theory suggests that thinking can and frequently does go far beyond these two areas. To illustrate what these other forms of problem-solving behavior “look” like, it may be helpful to review the thinking processes of eminent individuals whose discoveries have helped shape the world we live in (see Gardner, 1994; John-Steiner, 1987). By studying the “end-states” of specific problem-solving processes in these great people, educators can learn much that can help foster the same sort of processes in their students.
Many thinkers have used imagery and picture language (spatial intelligence) to help them in their work. The physicist John Howarth described his problem-solving processes as follows:
I make abstract pictures. I just realized that the process of abstraction in the pictures in my head is similar to the abstraction you engage in dealing with physical problems analytically. You reduce the number of variables, simplify and consider what you hope is the essential part of the situation you are dealing with; then you apply your analytical techniques. In making a visual picture it is possible to choose one which contains representations of only the essential elements—a simplified picture, abstracted from a number of other pictures and containing their common elements (cited in John-Steiner, 1987, pp. 84–85).
Others have used problem-solving strategies that combine visual-spatial images with certain kinetic or bodily-kinesthetic features of the mind. For example, Albert Einstein frequently performed “thought-experiments” that helped him develop his relativity theory, including a fantasy that involved riding on the end of a beam of light. When asked by a French mathematician to describe his thinking processes, Einstein said they included elements that were of a visual and muscular type (see Ghiselin, 1955, p. 43). Similarly, Henri Poincaré shares the story of how he struggled for days with a vexing mathematical problem:
For fifteen days I strove to prove that there could not be any functions like those I have since called Fuchsian functions. I was then very ignorant; every day I seated myself at my work table, stayed an hour or two, tried a great number of combinations and reached no results. One evening, contrary to my custom, I drank black coffee and could not sleep. Ideas rose in crowds; I felt them collide until pairs interlocked [italics mine], so to speak, making a stable combination. By the next morning, I had established the existence of a class of Fuchsian functions, those which come from the hypergeometric series; I had only to write out the results which took but a few hours (cited in Ghiselin, 1955, p. 36).
Musicians speak about a very different kind of problem-solving capacity, one that involves access to musical imagery. Mozart explained his own composing process this way: “Nor do I hear in my imagination the parts [of the composition] successively, but I hear them, as it were, all at once. What a delight this is I cannot tell. All this inventing, this producing, takes place in a pleasing lively dream” (cited in Ghiselin, 1955, p. 45). Einstein acknowledged the operation of musical thought in a logical-mathematical/spatial domain when, referring to Nils Bohr's model of the atom with its orbiting electrons absorbing and releasing energy, he wrote, “This is the highest form of musicality in the sphere of thought” (cited in Clark, 1972, p. 292).
There are even processes unique to the personal intelligences. For example, a commentator reflecting on the interpersonal intelligence of Lyndon B. Johnson said, “Lots of guys can be smiling and deferential. He had something else. No matter what someone thought, Lyndon would agree with him—would be there ahead of him, in fact. He could follow someone's mind around—and figure out where it was going and beat it there” (Caro, 1990). In a more intrapersonal fashion, Marcel Proust used simple sensations like the taste of a pastry to evoke inner feelings that swept him back into the days of his childhood—a context that provided the basis for his masterwork, Remembrances of Things Past (see Proust, 1928, pp. 54–58). Finally, in the naturalist domain, a study of Charles Darwin's notebooks reveals that he used the image of a tree to help him generate the theory of evolution: “Organized beings represent a tree, irregularly branched, . . . as many terminal buds dying as new ones generated” (Gruber, 1977, p. 126).
How these “end-state” cognitive processes translate into classroom practice may seem at first elusive. It is possible, however, to distill certain basic elements from the problem-solving strategies of the geniuses of culture and create strategies that can be learned even by students in the primary grades. For example, students can learn to “visualize” their ideas in much the same way Einstein performed his thought-experiments. They can learn to sketch metaphorical images that relate to problems they are working on much as Darwin worked with natural images in his own notebooks. The following list indicates the wide range of MI problem-solving strategies that could be used by students in academic settings:
- Linguistic Intelligence. Self-talk or thinking out loud (see Perkins, 1981).
- Logical-Mathematical Intelligence. Logical heuristics (see Polya, 1957).
- Spatial Intelligence. Visualization, idea sketching, mind-mapping (see Margulies, 1991; McKim, 1980).
- Bodily-Kinesthetic Intelligence. Kinesthetic imagery (see Gordon & Poze, 1966); also, accessing “gut feelings” or using one's hands, fingers, or whole body to solve problems.
- Musical Intelligence. Sensing the “rhythm” or “melody” of a problem (e.g., harmony vs. dissonance); using music to unlock problem-solving capacities (see Ostrander & Schroeder, 1979).
- Interpersonal Intelligence. Bouncing ideas off other people (see Johnson, Johnson, & Holubec, 1994).
- Intrapersonal Intelligence. Identifying with the problem; accessing dream imagery, personal feelings that relate to the problem; deep introspection (see Harman & Rheingold, 1984).
- Naturalist Intelligence. Using analogies from nature to envision problems and solutions (see Gordon & Poze, 1966).
Once students have been introduced to strategies like these, they can choose from a cognitive menu the approaches that are likely to be successful for them in any given learning situation. This kind of cognitive training can prove far richer than the traditional “thinking skills” program, which all too often consists of worksheets containing games and puzzles or overhead sheets detailing the five-step sequence involved in solving a math word problem. In the future, when students are urged by a teacher to “think harder,” students will have the luxury of asking, “In which intelligence?”
Promoting Christopherian Encounters
In his book The Unschooled Mind, Howard Gardner (1991) addresses the tendency of contemporary schooling to teach students surface-level knowledge without ever affecting their deeper understanding of the world. As a result, students are graduating from high school, college, and even graduate school still holding on to many of the same naive beliefs they held as preschoolers. In one example, 70 percent of college students who had completed a physics course in mechanics said that a coin tossed up in the air has two forces acting on it, the downward force of gravity and the upward force coming from the hand (the truth is, only gravity exerts a force) (Gardner, 1991, p. 154). Supposedly well-educated students, who can spout algorithms, rules, laws, and principles in a variety of domains, still harbor, according to Gardner, a mine field of misconceptions, rigidly applied procedures, stereotypes, and simplifications. What is required is an approach to education that challenges naive beliefs, provokes questions, invites multiple perspectives, and ultimately stretches a student's mind to the point where it can apply existing knowledge to new situations and novel contexts.
Gardner suggests that a student's mind can be expanded through the use of “Christopherian encounters.” Although Gardner uses the term specifically in reference to exploding misconceptions in the field of science, this phrases can serve as a beautiful metaphor for the expansion in general of a child's multiple intelligences to higher levels of competence and understanding. Just as Christopher Columbus challenged the notion that the earth is flat by sailing “beyond the edge” and thereby showing its curved shape, so, too, Gardner suggests that educators challenge students' limited beliefs by taking them “over the edge” into areas where they must confront the contradictions and disjunctions in their own thinking. It's possible to apply this general approach to multiple intelligences theory by suggesting examples in which students' minds might be stretched in each of the intelligences:
- Linguistic Intelligence. Moving students beyond the literal interpretation of a piece of literature (e.g., the novel Moby Dick is more than a sea yarn about a whale).
- Logical-Mathematical Intelligence. Devising science experiments that force students to confront contradictions in their thinking about natural phenomena (e.g., asking students to predict how a ball rolled straight from the center of a rotating merry-go-round will move as it reaches the edge and then discussing the outcome).
- Spatial Intelligence. Helping students confront tacit beliefs about art that might, for example, include the prejudice that paintings should use pleasant colors and depict beautiful scenery and attractive people (e.g., showing students Picasso's painting Guernica, which does not contain those characteristics).
- Bodily-Kinesthetic Intelligence. Moving students beyond stereotypical ways of using their bodies to express certain feelings or ideas in a dance or play (e.g., helping students explore the wide range of body postures and facial expressions for expressing Willy Loman's sense of defeat in Arthur Miller's Death of a Salesman).
- Musical Intelligence. Assisting students in undoing stereotypes that might suggest that good music should be harmonious and have a regular beat (e.g., playing students Stravinsky's Rite of Spring—a piece that caused a riot when first played because it clashed with the listeners' beliefs about what was good music).
- Interpersonal Intelligence. Helping students go beyond the imputation of simplistic motivations in studying fictional or real characters in literature, history, or other fields (e.g., helping students understand that Holden Caulfield's impetus in Catcher in the Rye involved more than a desire for a “night on the town,” or that Adolf Hitler's rise to power was motivated by more than a “thirst for power”).
- Intrapersonal Intelligence. Deepening students' understanding of themselves by relating different parts of the curriculum to their own personal life experiences and backgrounds (e.g., asking students to think of the “Huck Finn” or “Laura Ingalls Wilder” part of themselves).
- Naturalist Intelligence. Challenging students to critically examine the scientific evidence supporting the theory of evolution compared to the theological idea that the earth was created 6,000 years ago.
Multiple-intelligence theory must be seen as more than simply a process by which students celebrate and begin to activate their many ways of knowing. Educators must assist students in developing higher levels of understanding through their multiple intelligences. By making certain that “Christopherian encounters” are a regular part of the school day—in each intelligence—educators can help ensure that the unschooled mind will truly develop into a powerful and creative thinking force.
MI Theory and Bloom's Levels of Cognitive Complexity
Almost forty years ago, University of Chicago professor Benjamin S. Bloom (1956) unveiled his famous “taxonomy of educational objectives.” This survey included a cognitive domain, and its six levels of complexity have been used over the past four decades as a gauge by which educators can ensure that instruction stimulates and develops students' higher-order thinking capacities. The six levels are as follows:
- Knowledge. Rote memory skills (knowing facts, terms, procedures, classification systems).
- Comprehension. The ability to translate, paraphrase, interpret, or extrapolate material.
- Application. The capacity to transfer knowledge from one setting to another.
- Analysis. Discovering and differentiating the component parts of a larger whole.
- Synthesis. Weaving together component parts into a coherent whole.
- Evaluation. Judging the value or utility of information using a set of standards.
Bloom's taxonomy provides a kind of quality-control mechanism through which one can judge how deeply students' minds have been stirred by a multiple-intelligence curriculum. It would be easy to construct MI instructional methods that appeared compelling—owing to the wide range of intelligences addressed—but that kept learning at the knowledge or rote level of cognitive complexity. MI activities for teaching spelling, the times tables, or history facts are prime examples of MI theory in the service of lower-order cognitive skills. MI curriculums, however, can be designed to incorporate all of Bloom's levels of cognitive complexity. The curriculum outline presented in Figure 12.1 (pp. 118–119) shows how a teacher can articulate competencies that address all eight intelligences, as well as Bloom's six levels of cognitive complexity.
Figure 12.1. MI Theory and Bloom's Taxonomy Ecology Unit: Local environment—trees in your neighborhood
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Bloom's Six Levels of Educational Objectives
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Intelligence
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Knowledge
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Comprehension
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Application
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Analysis
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Synthesis
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Evaluation
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Linguistic Intelligence
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memorize names of trees
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explain how trees receive nutrients
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given description of tree diseases, suggest cause of each disease
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describe how each part of a tree functions in relation to the whole
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write a paper describing the life cycle of a tree from pre-seed to post-seed
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rate different methods of controlling tree growth
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Logical-Mathematical Intelligence
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remember number of points on specific trees' leaves
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convert English to metric in calculating height of tree
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given height of smaller tree, estimate height of larger tree
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analyze materials found in sap residue
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given weather, soil, and other information, chart projected growth of a tree
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rate different kinds of tree nutrients based on data
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Spatial Intelligence
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remember basic configurations of specific trees
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look at diagrams of trees and tell what stage of growth they are in
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use geometric principles to determine height of tree
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draw cellular structure of tree root
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create a landscaping plan using trees as central feature
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evaluate practicality of different landscaping plans
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Bodily-Kinesthetic Intelligence
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identify tree by the feel of the bark
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given array of tree fruits, identify seeds
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given type of local tree, find an ideal location for planting it
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create different parts of tree from clay
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gather all materials needed for planting a tree
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evaluate the quality of different kinds of fruit
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Musical Intelligence
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remember songs that deal with trees
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explain how old tree songs came into being
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change the lyrics of an old tree song to reflect current issues
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classify songs by issue and historical period
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create your own tree song based on information in this unit
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rate the songs from best to worst and give reasons for your choices
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Interpersonal Intelligence
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record responses to the question “What is your favorite tree?”
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determine the most popular tree in class by interviewing others
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use survey results to pick location for field trip to orchard
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classify kids into groups according to favorite tree
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arrange field trip to orchard by contacting necessary people
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rank three methods to ask others about tree preference
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Intrapersonal Intelligence
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remember a time you climbed a tree
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share the primary feeling you had while up in the tree
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develop “tree-climbing rules” based on your experience
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divide up your experience into “beginning,” “middle,” and “end”
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plan a tree-climbing expedition based on your past experience
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explain what you liked “best” and “least” about your experience
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Naturalist Intelligence
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learn to discriminate different tree leaves by sight
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describe how other living beings (e.g., humans, animals) benefit from trees
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create a system for classifying different tree leaves
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analyze the function of a given tree in terms of the larger ecosystem in which it finds itself
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develop an approach for protecting specific types of trees in your neighborhood from damage or disease
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evaluate which trees in your neighborhood are most eco-valuable to the surrounding environment
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You needn't feel a compulsion to include all these tasks in one unit. In fact, you may at first want to develop a thematic curriculum without reference to MI theory and Bloom's taxonomy. Then, use the instructional model displayed in Figure 12.1 as a road map to help you stay on course in your efforts to address a number of intelligences and cognitive levels. It may become apparent, for example, after laying the MI/Bloom template over the curriculum, that some easily incorporated musical experiences are missing from the unit, or that there are no opportunities for students to evaluate experiences—something that can be easily remedied. MI theory represents a model that can enable you to move beyond heavily linguistic, lower-order thinking activities (e.g., worksheets) into a broad range of complex cognitive tasks that prepare students for life.
For Further Study
- Write ten to fifteen random words on the board (words that are at students' level of decoding and comprehension). Give the class one minute to “memorize” them. Then cover the words and ask students to write all the words from memory (in any order). Provide immediate feedback. Discuss the strategies that students used to remember the words. Then teach them memory strategies using several intelligences:
- Linguistic. String the words together in some kind of intelligible story.
- Spatial. Visualize the story taking place.
- Musical. Sing the story to a set tune or a tune composed on the spot.
- Bodily-Kinesthetic/Interpersonal. Act out the story, emphasizing the body movements involved for each of the words.
- Intrapersonal. Associate personal experiences (and accompanying feelings) with each word.
Practice these strategies using another list of words, and then have students write the list from memory. Discuss what was different this time (have students talk about which strategies seemed most successful to them). After using this procedure with two or three more lists, have students use these memory strategies for curriculum-related material (e.g., history facts, spelling words, vocabulary).
- Have students solve a brainteaser or other logical-mathematical problem involving higher-order thinking processes. Allow students ten to fifteen minutes to use whatever strategies they wish. Let them know they can work with other people, walk around, ask for resources, and so on. Then have students share their particular strategies or problem-solving processes, writing them on the board as they are given. After everyone has had a chance to share, go over the list of strategies and note which intelligences have been tapped. Ask students: Are some strategies more successful than others? Are certain strategies or problem-solving processes more fun than others?
Using other types of problems, repeat this activity. Keep a list of problem-solving strategies organized by primary intelligence. Display the list so students can refer to it throughout the year as a resource in guiding their own study habits.
- Develop a thematic unit—or take a unit that youve already developed—and note which intelligences and levels of cognitive complexity are developed through the activities in the unit. List additional activities that might enhance the intellectual breadth and cognitive depth of the unit.
- Create “Christopherian encounters” for materials in your curriculum that will stretch students' minds, challenge existing beliefs, and bring students' multiple intelligences to higher levels of functioning.