MI Chapter 8

Chapter 8 was all about how to manage a classroom that contains all of the 8 intelligences. Just about everybody in the class stated that one of the biggest problems is catching the attention of your classroom. Students have teachers yelling above their voices everyday, and they quickly become desensitized from this method. The book stated that it is best to have some sort of sign that lets students know that it is time to quiet down and pay attention. The other thing that most people pointed out was the need for class transitions. Transitions help your class know instantly that it is time to shift gears and head onto a new topic. Music helps calm your class down and shows them something concrete so they know that it is time for something new.

The opinions of the class ranged from love to hate. People thought that many of the suggestions were very helpful and right up their alley. More people thought that the suggestions were helpful and put many things into perspective. On the other hand, some found the suggestions to be targeted toward elementary students, not toward secondary aged kids. Although some of the tips might be implausible, most saw that there was some foundation laid to build upon in the future. This chapter showed that there is always a time when you can be reaching out to your students' intelligences.

MI chapter 12

One of the many herculean tasks that a teacher has is the student's retention of the lesson. One of the tools against this evil is the brain's responses to the Multiple Intelligences. If a student is naturalist learner, they are more likely to retain knowledge by linking it to animal behavior rather than listening to a lecture, no matter how entertaining that lecture may be. If one can teach to the student's intelligences, they have a better chance of having the students retaining the lesson and working efficiently. By teaching to the intelligences, the teacher is allowing the student to further develop their dominant intelligences.

This chapter presented a very useful pointer in lesson retention. When the teacher can teach to the student's most frequently used intelligence, great things will happen. The student will develop their own intelligences and they will be learning the teacher's material (isn't that just awesome?). many of us thought that notion of memorization was rather wrong and absurd. Many of us also agreed with this chapter. Many of us seemed to think that this chapter gave us a powerful tool to use in the classroom.