Introducing MI

Day 6 of new school year. Introduced MI to my primates today by asking what "MI" or "multiple intelligences" is? No response. Now I have had half the class for a year already and we spoke about MI quite often (in my opinion) last year. This told me--obviously, not enough to make a lasting impression. SO I pulled out the visual model (a white oaktag cut out head w/the 8 different intelligences shown in simple pictures) that I used last year and asked if this jogged anyone's memory. Suddenly, it did (the power of a visual aid!) They recognized the visual, but were unable to really give any specific comments. So I asked them all to really look at the pictures and try to figure out what "MI" or "multiple intelligences" is--suddenly, several hands were in the air: "music" "making friends" "working together" "math" "writing skills" "skills" "painting" (I'll try to scan in the pics I used later).

My response to this was, "Yes! Those are all different intelligences that we all have in our brains. MI is how we solve problems and how we create products that matter to our community. Each one of you has all of these intelligences--maybe even more!--and we each use them in different ways to do different things. You might use your musical intelligence more then I do, and I may use my body intelligence more than you to do the same thing. One important thing to remember is that we never use just one intelligence at a time, for every problem we solve or product we create, we use several different intelligences to do it."

I then asked my primates to think of 3 things that are really easy, and 3 things that are really hard for them to do. I provided examples. such as "listening, playing a certain game, solving a puzzle, or creating something with their hands". Because everyone is different, we'll all have different answers to this question--and that's what makes our world work--different people solving problems and creating products in different ways.

Each primate then created a self-portrait on a large piece of oaktag (cardstock--whatever you call it!), using pre-cut face cut-outs of different skin tones. I asked them to match their skin tones as best they could--recognizing that no one's would be exact. It was very interesting to listen and observe this process as students compared skin tones--something I think we are conditioned to avoid. This was very non-threatening though, and was a forum to discuss and point out that many of use have similar skin tones, but no one is exactly alike--much like the way MI works.

Next, primates filled in their faces (correct eye color a must and no extra features such as mustaches, earrings--unless they have earrings, boogers dripping out of a nose--which did happen and I had to ask the primate to do his whole thing over because the directions were to take this project seriously. You got to love early childhood.

I reminded them to continue thinking about the hard/easy question, and we even spent the last 10 minutes working w/o talking so we could concentrate on this question. Throughout the day I pointed out different situations that primates might choose as either hard or easy when we complete the project tomorrow. For example, several students made some detailed observations of the illustrations in a book I read to the class. I commented at how detailed their observations were, and that may be something that is easy for them--noticing details. Or, it may be something that is a hard thing for someone else. Later on the playground, I commented on how quickly one primate went through the monkey bars and that was another example of something that may be easy or hard for someone. I'd say I got about 4 or five comments/examples of different things throughout the day, and I believe addressing these directly and explicitly linking it to the MI question I asked them to ponder will contribute to more genuine answers tomorrow.

In the past, I have done variations of this project--always at the start of the school year. At first I just casually addressed MI, and focused more on the aspect of different strengths and challenges of each individual in the group. I usually did the whole project in one day or chunk of time. I also have used these projects when discussing goals w/primates and considering how something that's easy for us may help us get better at something that's hard. It's an evolving project, but I feel this latest approach is so far the most powerful. Only time will tell......

Something unrelated, (but truly, everything is related), I'm doing this year is talking about letters and numbers as symbols. Just like we use pictures as symbols (American flag, crosswalk signs, etc), letters and numbers really are just lines drawn in certain ways that represent something...like this symbol: (A), represents the letter A, and so on. I'm trying to establish a relationship between something familiar and easy for primates to relate to--pictures, colors, familiar symbols-- (you know how they all know that the big yellow M means McDonalds after their first happy meal, even if they don't get that it's the letter M--LOL), and letters and numbers. This may address a spatial connection using their visual modality for struggling readers, or just emerging readers, who don't rely heavily on their linguistic intelligence. again, only time will tell, but I feel confident that this is targeting and addressing a different kind of intelligence to engage primates in a linguistic activity.