Standard+2

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The teacher understands how children with broad ranges of ability learn and provides instruction that supports their intellectual, social, and personal development.
 * __ 2 Teachers know how children grow __**

Evidence 2:[| Birmingham Grid for Learning- Multiple Intelligences Survey]

Rationale 2: The Birmingham Grid for Learning is a website that provides an interactive questionnaire which produces a wheel to show aptitudes for each of the eight multiple intelligences. This site is used right away in the beginning of the year to introduce 8th graders to learning styles and learning strategies. While differentiation is an important skill educators must have, it is also important for students to be able to learn how to alter or enhance learning activities by using their strong intelligences. Following the creation of their wheel, students printed them and did further research into their strengths and weaknesses. Other links on the site aided students in knowing what learning activities fit their strengths best and identifying when they are being asked to complete a task that might be in one of their weaker intelligences. Knowing where their development in each of the intelligences is can lead them to greater achievement in all classes, not just social studies.

After students printed their wheel, I passed around a wheel for them to fill out. They put their initials in one color in their top two intelligences and their initials in a different color in their lowest two intelligences. This gave me a picture of the class and what kind of instructional strategies would work best for the group and which kinds of activities we needed to work on the most. I have found it helpful to refer to when students struggle with something in class. We can look at their wheel and figure out a plan for using a strength to overcome the student’s weakness. There is great reward in empowering the students to learn to help themselves.

KSD

2.K.2 The teacher understands that students’ physical, social, emotional, moral, and cognitive development influence learning and knows how to address these factors when making instructional decisions.

Eighth grade is a good time to start helping students understand how their physical, social, emotional, and cognitive development impacts their learning. Exposing them to the multiple intelligences allowed them to understand how they learn best and see which aspects of their development were helping them and which ones needed to be more developed.

2.S.2 The teacher stimulates student reflection on prior knowledge and links new ideas to already familiar ideas, making connections to students’ experiences, providing opportunities for active engagement, manipulation, and testing of ideas and material, and encouraging students to assume responsibility for shaping their learning tasks. Most students can identify whether they learn best by listening, seeing or doing by the 8th grade. Using the Multiple Intelligences survey allowed them to connect that to a more analytical break down of how we learn. The eight intelligences gave them a more specific description of what it means to be visual, auditory and kinesthetic. Students could then reflect on what kind of auditory, visual or kinesthetic learner they were, which led to the discovery for them of why they struggle when asked to do certain things in school.

2.D.2 The teacher is disposed to use students’ strengths as a basis for growth, and their errors as an opportunity for learning

Becoming a life long learner is about knowing how to use your strengths to overcome your weaknesses and working on improving those weaknesses. Life and the world do not always cater to our strengths; therefore it is essential that as global citizens students know how to learn things in a way that works for them. Using the Multiple Intelligences survey started students on that path of getting to know themselves better so they can work on weaknesses and use strengths to overcome obstacles.