Do you wonder how to use MI in your lesson planning?

You will already be providing for some of the students'  Multiple Intelligences in the lessons you plan, so it is only a step or two further to provide for all your students' learning needs.

How well you plan your lessons will influence how successful your lessons will be for the students and as a result how much they learn and understand, so you need to take time to plan carefully, so that every child succeeds.

Here are some points to guide you. In each lesson, all students should be:

• increasing their knowledge;
• learning new skills;
• developing a deeper understanding of the subject;
• and acquiring attitudes acceptable to the community in which they live and the wider world.

In the 20 page booklet  MI and Lesson Planning there is a lesson plan template, on pages 3 and 4, which will help you incorporate MI into your planning.  There is no one 'right way' to plan a lesson.  This example is only one way and you can adapt it to suit your class and your school. On the template you will enter the objectives of the lesson, questions you will ask to assess what your students already know and activities to match the different intelligences, as well as noting down what resources you will need and which students will need particular help. 

Once you have planned lessons using this template you can save them to a computer for you or other teachers to use in the future.  Each class of children will be different, so adjustments will need to be made each time you use one of these lesson plans but the overall planning will already be done for you.  If your school builds up a bank of lesson plans over one year (which does, I admit take time), in following years and with following classes very little time will need to be spent in planning so you can use this 'saved' time to develop some other aspect of your teaching or improve on the lesson itself.

In my next blog I will let you know about some of the subjects and lessons that are suggested in the same booklet.  They cover most subjects and all ages from KG to G12.

Come back in a few days and find an example of a lesson matched to your teaching needs.

With best wishes,

Margaret
Margaret Warner
Dip. S.M.S., A.C.P., M.A. Ed.
International Education Consultant

MAW Education    http://www.maweducation.co.uk
MAW Publications http://www.discover-multiple-intelligences.com

Assessment templates http://www.discover-multiple-intelligences.com/mawbookletass.htm

Lesson plan templates http://www.discover-multiple-intelligences.com/mawbookletlp.htm

Looking for MI tests for Pre-school and Kindergarten?

Learning Begins At Home

Many teachers come to my website saying that they teach pre-school children or Early Years grades. Some of them want to know more about assessing this age group.

Before you start assessing the children in your class at this age you need to find out what they have already learned before they ever come to school.  This can be done during a visit to the child’s home before they come to school or, if this is not possible, on a visit to your classroom before the child starts school.

We all start learning as soon as we are born (even before) and parents have a great responsibility in helping the new born baby find their way around the world they have come into.  Babies use all their senses to learn: feeling, smelling, watching, tasting and listening to sounds and sights around them. The pre-school teacher should provide the same experiences for them to learn through when they begin school, so that learning can take place in a range of ways.

The Early Years classroom can be divided into different areas of learning and these can be very roughly matched to Howard Gardner’s multiple intelligences as follows:

Areas of Learning                                                Multiple Intelligences

Communication, language and literacy                   Linguistic
Problem –solving, reasoning and numeracy           Mathematical     
Creative development                                              Visual / spatial                                    
Creative development                                              Musical 
Physical development                                              Bodily / Kinaesthetic                                         
Knowledge and understanding of the world           Naturalistic                                                          
Development Matters (PSE development)              Interpersonal                                                       
Personal, social and emotional development          Intrapersonal                                                       

When you meet with the child for the first time you need to talk to his parents or carer and find out what stage of the learning process the child has reached before they start school.  You will need to take this into consideration when you start planning the learning environment and your lessons.  Each child will have learned different things and be at different stages, even though there will be similarities between them.

To help you assess what stages the child has reached in these different areas of learning two alternative check-lists are given you in the booklet Multiple Intelligences and Assessment. 

You can photocopy the one you prefer and use it when talking to and observing the child.  They also give you questions to ask his or her parents.

Now you have this information you can think about what you are going to provide for the child once he or she starts school.  In my next blog I am going to show you how you can find out (assess) what a child or a student’s strongest and weakest multipleintelligences are through observation.  This should be of interest to you whatever age you teach, from pre-school to college-aged students.

Come back in a few days time and find out more to help you with your teaching.

With best wishes,

Margaret
Margaret Warner
Dip. S.M.S., A.C.P., M.A. Ed.
International Education Consultant

MAW Education      http://www.maweducation.co.uk
MAW Publications   http://www.discover-multiple-intelligences.com

Assessment templates http://www.discover-multiple-intelligences.com/mawbookletass.htm

Lesson plan templates http://www.discover-multiple-intelligences.com/mawbookletlp.htm

Introducing MAW Publications

Welcome to MAW Publications, especially if this is your first visit.

MAW Education was established in 1995 and found, over the years, that many teachers were looking for short publications to help them practically in the classroom.

Whilst the two websites maintained by MAW Education http://www.maweducation.co.uk and http://www.discover-multiple-intelligences.com have often provided teachers with what they were looking for in terms of general information and through articles, there has been an increasingly growing demand for more detailed information of different areas of teaching.

MAW Education decided in 2011 that a special branch should be set up to service that need and MAW Publications was established.

Over the next few weeks we will be bringing you information about what MAW Publications can provide for you, the busy classroom teacher.

Meanwhile why don't you look at one of the publications and see if it is what you are looking for?  You can either go to the main website for discovering more about Multiple Intelligences or directly to the publications on MI and Lesson Planning or MI and Assessment.

Come back in a few days time and find out more to help you with your teaching.

With best wishes,

Margaret
Margaret Warner
Dip. S.M.S., A.C.P., M.A. Ed.
International Education Consultant