It's not how smart you, but how you're smart: lessons from experience
Antonio García Gómez, Spain
Antonio García Gómez holds a Ph. D in English Linguistics with honours. He presently teaches Primary and Secondary teachers classroom management and motivation at the University of Alcalá de Henares de Madrid. He has also been a regular speaker at events across Spain and has written material for teaching magazines. His current interests are in CLIL teacher training, motivation, and discipline. E-mail: antonio.garciag@uah.es
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References
My personal rocket
The Apples of Antony's eye!
Maths Salad
Musical envelopes
Windowshop celebrities
Cats Like Fish
References
For many years, our school desks have witnessed how our brains were not fed properly and were condemned to starve. We went through all the stages of our education system with more or less success, but we always were left wondering whether or not we were intelligent. For many years, educators and psychologists have conceptualised our ability to learn as one uniform cognitive capacity that can be measured. This artificial measure of intelligence did nothing to judge students' potential and simply revealed students' intellectual shortcomings.
At present, a new education system is in the pipeline that will attempt to prevent the alarming number of students that drop out of school every day. Teachers have difficulty in entering students' heads and this situation leads to frustration and a lack of motivation on the part of the learner and the teacher, and eventually to school failure. In other education systems, such as the British or the North American, teachers have already embraced Gardner's theory. Many schools in these countries, by teaching to multiple intelligences, have restructured their curricula to address the needs of their students.
At the end of the 20th century, Howard Gardner gave teachers a new way to look at the learning process by claiming that intelligence and learning are multidimensional. Thanks to him, teachers confirmed something they have always felt: intelligence is not what you are born with and there is little you can do to change it. Gardner argued that human beings have evolved to have several distinct intelligences to solve any potential problem in their daily lives. In this way, Gardner identified the following intelligences: linguistic intelligence or the ability to communicate to each other; logical-mathematical intelligence or the ability to manipulate numbers or quantities; visual-spatial intelligence or the ability to present the spatial world visually in your mind; musical intelligence or the ability to hear music in our head; the kinaesthetic intelligence or the ability to use the whole or parts of the body to solve a problem; the intrapersonal intelligence or the ability to know and understand ourselves; and the interpersonal intelligence or the ability to understand other people. Although each and every intelligence is relatively interdependent or semi-autonomous of the others, any significant achievement involves a blend of intelligences.
Our education system has traditionally focussed most of its attention on the linguistic and logical-mathematical intelligences, but what about those who show gifts in the other intelligences? Unfortunately, many children who have these gifts do not receive much reinforcement for them in school. Many of these kids, in fact, end up being labelled "learning disabled" or simply underachievers. In the bilingual classroom, the teacher is likely to have even more difficulty in reaching some students in the more traditional linguistic or logical ways of instruction, since content-area instruction is given in an L2. First years have to face a real challenge in the bilingual classroom, as they must learn how to read and write in Spanish and English at the same time.
This new teaching and learning context calls for new measures. Teachers, therefore, have to expand their horizon of available teaching/learning tools beyond the conventional linguistic and logical methods used in most schools if they want their youngsters to succeed. Without any doubt, the theory of MI throws light on this process and suggests several other ways in which the material might be presented to facilitate effective learning. Many teachers may wonder if it is already hard to teach one intelligence, what if there are seven? This is a common misbelief, you do not have to teach or learn something in all seven ways. We have seven different pathways to learning, the teacher should see what the possibilities are and then decide which particular pathways seem to be the most effective teaching or learning tools.
My experience in the bilingual classroom shows that the intrapersonal intelligence is the right way to channel the activation and strengthening of the remaining intelligences. In the first year of Primary education, students are six or seven years old and they are still quite self-centred. As a CLIL teacher, instruction should help students understand themselves, appreciate their own feelings, fears, and motivation if we want them to learn effectively. At the very moment, teachers are able to provide students with an effective model of themselves and learn how to use such information to regulate their own lives, we can say that we have helped students become autonomous learners that not only understand themselves, but have also learned how to learn.
In what follows, I have compiled some useful activities that have proved to activate the remaining intelligences through the presence of the intrapersonal intelligence. Basically, these activities aim at developing self-reflective students:
This is a good way to welcome the new school year with a get-to-know-me project. First, I have each student colour and cut-out an enlarged copy of a rocket pattern. Second, I have students personalise the rocket by writing their names on the door. Then I ask students to cut pictures from discarded magazines of objects that are significant to them (things they like eating, doing, etc.) and glue them to the rocket. Finally, we display the completed projects on a bulletin board titled `Look who's going into space this year!´. Every day some students introduce themselves to their classmates by explaining what they like doing in their free time, what they like eating, their favourite animals, sport, etc. The intrapersonal intelligence channels the activation of the interpersonal, visual-spatial, and the linguistic intelligences.
This is one of my most popular back-to-school activities that is sure to put a polish on a great school year. First, I cut an apple shape from red, green, or yellow construction paper for each student. Then, I instruct students to decorate their apple patterns to resemble themselves. Construction paper of assorted colours, yarn, scissors, crayons, and glue are needed to personalise their apples. When students have their apples ready, I display the completed cut-outs on the bulletin board covered with construction-paper branches. During the first days, we go and pick up four apples, these four apples will introduce themselves to the rest of the class. The intrapersonal intelligence helps strengthen the interpersonal, linguistic, visual-spatial, logical-mathematical intelligences.
This is a good way to digest basic mathematical operations and learn some vegetable names and shapes in the bilingual classroom. Using vegetable-shaped cut-outs for this purpose such as tomatoes, carrots, lettuces, etc., I program one vegetable pile with the first half of a mathematical operation (4+4) and I write the solution on another vegetable pile (= 8). To play the game, two or more students turn all the vegetables facedown on a table, each player takes a turn selecting two vegetables and turning them face-up, if both vegetables taken each from a different pile match, for instance (3 + 3 = 6), the student must say out loud "3 + 3 = 6. I like (name of the first vegetable) and (the name of the second one)", the player keeps them and takes another turn. If the pair does not match (2 + 3= 9), the player says "I don't like (name of the first vegetable) and (the name of the second one) and returns them to their facedown positions and it becomes the next player's turn. The play continues in this manner until all vegetables have been matched. The player with the most pairs wins and we will display our maths salad on the display area to refresh youngsters' forgetful minds. This activity can be adapted to any other content area such as Science (e.g. students should match mammals, reptiles, etc). The intrapersonal intelligence activates the intrapersonal, linguistic, and logical-mathematical intelligences.
Although children love playing musical chairs, we usually do not have enough room to carry out this activity. Moreover, my musical envelopes not only get around common noisy problems and lack of space to move around, but it also channels youngsters' enthusiasm into a version for content-area instruction (for instance, Science). To prepare for the game, I create a class supply of simple questions of the desired skill level on separate half-sheets of coloured construction paper (E.g. Are spiders insects?, Are cows mammals?, Are bees reptiles?, etc.). I write the question on one side of the paper and the answer on the other side. Next, I give each student an envelope and instruct them to pass them round clockwise. After making sure students have understood what they have to do and to which person they have to pass the envelope, I play some tape-recorded music and have students pass around the envelopes without moving around. When the music stops, each student gets the envelope they happen to have in their hands, opens the envelope, reads the question, and says the answer out loud. To check whether or not they were right, students look on the back of the card. We continue in this manner for a desired amount of time. Since there are as many envelopes as students, no one sits out or misses a turn as in the traditional musical chairs, and everyone gets plenty of practice!. Any other content are can be presented. This activity facilitates the activation of the musical, interpersonal, logical-mathematical, and linguistic intelligences.
When working on clothes, I have each student cut out, personalise and decorate a construction paper T-shirt, skirt, pair of socks, trousers, etc. Using discarded magazines, they have to find pictures where celebrities they admire are wearing such a piece of clothing and glue these pictures to their selected piece of clothing. We then display all their clothes using clothespin and lengths of heavy string as if they were on display on a shop. During this unit of work, I ask a few students to tell something about their clothes. Celebrities are just a good excuse to catch students' eye and make sure they will go to the display area and see who is there and review clothing without realising!. This activity helps students activate their visual-spatial, interpersonal, and linguistic intelligences.
Students enjoy all the movement involved in this fun game. I pick six students to be fishermen. I assign each fisherman a different number from one to six and post that number on his "boat" or desk (Sometimes we play this game in the gym, then I use hula-hoops instead of desks). I then have each remaining student (or fish) roll a die to determine his/her number in the game. Write the number on a sticky note and attach it to the fish's shirt. When all fish have been assigned a number, give a signal for them to "flip the fins" to the ocean of their choice: Atlantic ocean (corner number 1), Pacific ocean (corner number 2), Indian ocean (corner number 3), Southern ocean (corner number 4), and Arctic ocean (in the middle of the class). Each fisherman then rolls the die twice. The first roll determines which ocean she or he will visit. The second roll determines which numbered fish can be taken from the ocean (a fisherman who rolls a one and a four will visit ocean one (Atlantic ocean) and take all fish wearing fours. Fishermen ask fish which ocean they are living in and who is wearing the number selected at random. After each fisherman has had a turn, he or she returns to his own boat with the fish he or she took. The fisherman counts the total number of fish, he or she brought with him or her and adds it to the number of fish already at his/her boat. The fisherman with the highest number of fish is the winner.
Teaching and learning in the bilingual context is, without any doubt, a hard task. Both teachers and pupils should do their best to succeed. The integration of the Multiple Intelligences theory into our teaching practice seems to be the key to success. Fortunately, many teachers have realised the increased importance of encouraging learners to explore and exercise all of their intelligences.
Gardner, Howard. (1993). Multiple Intelligences: The Theory in Practice. New York: Basic.
Smith, R. (2004). Conscious Classroom Management. Unlocking the Secrets of Great Teaching. SAGE: Publications. Corwin Press
Theobald, M. A. (2005). Increasing Student Motivation. SAGE: Publications. Corwin Press
Please check the Methodology and Language for Primary Teachers course at Pilgrims website.
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