Chapter 3

This chapter seemed to be very straightforward, at least more so than the other chapters. The chapter comes right out and says that the most effective way to figure out what student's intelligences are is observation. Observe how the child misbehaves, if they are loud and talk out they are probably intrapersonal, if they doodle then they are probably artistic, so on and so forth. Another way might be to record observational data in a journal. Taping the children, or going to their parents can sometimes be very effective ways of figuring students out. Talk to other teachers or adults who have had students before and ask them about the students and how they are. Some of the more simple strategies would be to have the students take the MI test and practically tell you themselves, observation could possibly miss something important. One of the more interesting ways the book mentioned was to set up tables emphasizing the strengths of intelligences and have the students go from one to the next.

How did we connect to the reading?
We agreed that as we learn to teach and learn to connect with our students, it's going to be important to connect to our students on their level. That is to know their intelligences so that we might be able to teach them more effectively. Danielle especially liked the idea of allowing students to pick an activity without promt so as to be able to observe the students own decision and go from there. Katie Rose and I were just excited about the challenge of going into a classroom and figuring out the MI's of every student. Mike was playing with the idea of having to spread himself out, realizing that if he really wants to reach everyone, he's going to have to figure out how. As much as we like the idea of being able to go to so many people, we all wonder if the teachers teachign the studets before they get to us will even know what to look for when we ask about the student's inteligences. I personally am worried about the amount of time and effort this will take, I will have probably over 10 students a semester, and to get to know each one intimately and to research each one sounds tedious, especially year after year.