Students in Room 104 recently completed a project called “smart circles.” This project is centered around eight multiple intelligences that are identified by the work of Howard Gardner and others. The third-graders completed inventories that helped them identify their areas of strength. These surveys were designed to help them recognize that they all have some ‘smarts’ in each area. Based on the results of their surveys, a pie chart was created to represent her/his own intelligences.
This project was part of our ongoing community building. It is also part of our ongoing conversations with students about how we are all different, and those differences are to be honored. Finally, it also helped us to think about and better understand ourselves as learners. We all have the capacity to learn. Depending upon our areas of multiple intelligences, or strengths as a learner, different modalities best support our learning.
For example, if we have a lot of musical/rhythmical intelligence, then using music to learn math facts might be helpful. If we have a lot of visual/spatial intelligence, working with arrays or other visual patterns might help us learn our math facts. Kinesthetic learners might be supported by incorporating movement into the learning of math facts.
