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You
are here: My Experience Using the Multiple Intelligences
by Nelly Ribot
I first heard of the Theory of Multiple Intelligences when reading Emotional Intelligence by Daniel Goleman (see an update on Emotional Intelligence by Goleman on this site.) I immediately realized it was an idea I'd had in mind for a very long time. I attended lectures, and did a lot of reading on the subject until I felt the need to put theory into practice.
My first attempt was in a first grade classroom of only eleven students. I teach English as a second language, and the theme of the unit I was about to start was "Helpers." The key vocabulary items were the names of community helpers (firefighter, police officer, traffic warden, postman, doctor, nurse,) the names of vehicles they use and their places of work. The target structure to be used was the Present Simple, third person singular. Students were expected to produce sentences like " A firefighter drives a fire engine" or "A doctor works in a hospital". I thought it would be interesting for this group of very active and curious children to engage in a series of tasks and activities around this theme.
I talked to my colleagues about the idea and they all showed interest in participating and helping. I planned to take the students on an outing to visit the various places in town where community helpers work. As mother's day was near, the teacher in charge of the course was introducing the young students to letter writing by having them write to their mothers, so she thought it would be a good experience for the students to go to the post office and send the letters themselves. The music, art and physical education teachers also gave me ideas for several of the tasks. The principal showed great enthusiasm, and was very helpful in organizing the formal aspects of the outing, such as parents' signatures, transportation and schedules.
The trip (which appealed to naturalistic intelligence) featured a visit to the fire station, police station, city council and post office, but on the way we passed shops, banks and other buildings in town. It was a unique opportunity to name them in English while they were actually seeing them. The children were absolutely delighted to talk to helpers, see and touch the vehicles and uniforms, operate the police radio and stick stamps on the letters they were sending home. This eagerness to learn and experience was, in my opinion, the key to success. During the following two weeks, interest and motivation in the activities I introduced never diminished, and all the students in class completed every task. Each activity was focused on a different intelligence, sometimes a combination of two or more.
"My little journal" (verbal-linguistic/ intrapersonal intelligences) was meant to be a brief account of the trip. With the help of flashcards and pictures these six-year-old children, some of whom were still struggling to write in their mother tongue, could not only write the target structures. They willingly added information and drawings of the uniforms, thus integrating the theme of clothes they had learned in the previous unit.
"My city in a box" (visual- spatial/ interpersonal intelligences) was a cooperative learning, hands-on activity, in which students made the buildings they had visited out of cardboard, little boxes and brightly colored paper. They worked in groups, and when each had finished, they built a single model of the town placing the buildings in the correct street. They also added twigs and leaves to represent the parks in town. Finally they modeled the helpers and their vehicles in plasticine or color dough and placed them inside or in front the buildings. I was pleasantly surprised to see that many other objects were added such as furniture, doors and windows. This allowed me to introduce a larger range of vocabulary than I had originally planned.
"The Helpers band" (musical intelligence) was a combination of two activities. First students brought small boxes, yogurt cups, cans, bottle caps, sticks, wire, rice and different types of dried beans from home. The music teacher talked to them about different instruments and their sounds, and each student had to produce at least one instrument. A variety of maracas, little drums and tambourines were the products of this activity. Afterwards, the young musicians sang songs about the helpers to the accompaniment of their own instruments. They also danced and acted out action songs. In one, for example, some of them were traffic wardens and some others were drivers who had crossed a red light.
"How many helpers? (logical-mathematical intelligence) involved working with the information they had gathered during the outing. They wrote about how many helpers worked in each place ,repeated the numbers in English and compared the amounts.
"I am a helper" (linguistic/ interpersonal/ bodily- kinesthetic intelligences) was also a two-part activity. In the English class children role-played short dialogues, for example a police officer asking someone for identification. In the Physical Education class they named the helpers in English and role-played motor activities, like policemen or fire-fighters rushing down a street in their vehicles.
"The Helpers' Mural"(visual-spatial / interpersonal/ verbal-linguistic intelligences) was carried out during the art period. The art teacher focused on the drawing of a human body, leading them to paint the helpers with very detailed uniforms on a three-meter- long piece of paper. This implied sharing the space and materials with the rest of the class. The mural was hung in the classroom and when I walked in, they proudly showed me their artwork. Each one of the students described in English the helper they had painted and the uniforms, and they also added whether the helper was happy, sad or angry.
The last activity was called "Look at yourself in the mirror"( intrapersonal/ interpersonal intelligences) and was held in Spanish. The goal was to help students identify feelings, express emotions adequately, educate for human values and gain awareness of their own strengths and weaknesses. This activity was repeated four times, usually when we had about 10 minutes left before the end of the class. Each time it was focused on a different community helper. We sat in a circle on cushions on the floor. The first time we discussed fire-fighters. The children described what they had seen during the visit to the station and I brought out the fact that in our community fire-fighters work voluntarily. I asked them to identify the values needed to be a fire-fighter. The concepts of generosity, courage and helpfulness immediately sprang out.
Next each child tried to identify which of the values they held and which they lacked, but wished to work towards achieving. We also discussed ways of doing this. On the following sessions we talked about doctors and nurses, policemen and teachers in the same way. The last step was for the group to mention one positive action that each of the students had shown during the project, like lending materials, sharing ideas, helping and comforting others. I was happy to see how much it helped raise their self-esteem !
Regarding assessment, I created a chart with names of students and the names of each activity. I did not use numerical grades, but decided on a color code: green for competence, yellow for working on, and red for underachievement. Luckily I did not have to use red! I also noted how the students progressed after each activity. I was really satisfied with the outcome. I felt that my young students had really enjoyed the classes and learned a lot, and many parents told me that as well. It was such a rich and rewarding experience that I wanted to try with my older classes.
My objective was now to provide an active context that would invite my 14 and 15-year-old students (8th and 9th graders) to use English as fluently and naturally as possible. This way they would be able to apply the vocabulary and structures they already knew , as well as incorporating new ones according to their needs. I tried other projects. A good example was an exchange project with a school in the United States which featured e-mail exchanges, a package of gifts and pieces of work on the students themselves, their families, the school, our town and our country. The group I had last year was particularly interested in art, music and drama. Knowing that success requires students' involvement , I suggested some topics to be developed in a project but let them have the final choice. 2003 was Vincent Van Gogh's 150th birth anniversary, so they picked his life and work as the theme for the project. Its title was Vincent Van Gogh: 150 years later.
First, I worked with the art teacher who advised me on how to proceed with some of the tasks. She kindly came to my class to start with the project work bringing a slide projector and slides. On a bare wall in the darkened classroom, we were amazed to see Van Gogh's work from his first sketches, to his last painting "Wheatfield with Crows. Meanwhile, she passionately told us (in Spanish) about his life and patiently answered all our questions. After that, the 16 students divided into four groups of four and set out to work, devoting two one-hour periods a week, during a month.
Again I tried to include activities highlighting all eight intelligences. Each group researched Van Gogh's biographical data in English and visited art galleries on the Internet. Dealing with specific vocabulary was not difficult, since they had knowledge of what the art teacher had taught them, in their mother tongue. They also used library books and many of them brought books (in English) from home. They also brought reproductions they had at home or had borrowed from relatives and friends. Once they had gathered the information, each group narrowed down on a particular period in Van Gogh's life: his birth, childhood and early work, his life in France and late work and death. The last group concentrated on the auctions and prices of the paintings present-day.
The students prepared drafts in class, while I circulated around assisting students, giving feedback, guiding and assessing their work. The rest was done outside of class. Each group made posters and signs that highlighted the main points of their work, presented information in the form of charts and copied and pasted the most relevant letters from Van Gogh to his brother Theo and other artists of the time (which are paramount when trying to understand his life, feelings and art). Using small, even-colored cut outs from magazines they made collages which were real metaphors of Van Gogh's life and work. (One was a spiral which was white in the center, then had the bright colors that he used in his paintings, ending in a black circle to represent how his life started, progressed and ended . Another showed the pieces of paper chaotically arranged, to depict his insanity. A third one had Van Gogh's face against a background of his flames, and another was their own interpretation of "Church in Auvers", which according to the students, represented the artist himself.)
We also worked with Don McLean's version of the song "Starry, Starry Night". I printed copies of the lyrics for everyone. One of the boys, who is a talented guitar player, learned how to play the song himself and the rest of us sang along. We also invited the music teacher to join us on the organ. They researched which trees, flowers and crops Van Gogh depicted and looked up the names in English and Spanish. Before the final presentation we devoted one period to practice in front of classmates, who gave feedback for improvement. This was also an excellent opportunity for me to assess their work in a more relaxed atmosphere.
Invitations were sent to parents, school administrators, teachers and other students. On the big day the students presented all the work done and the results of their research. They also explained how doing the project had affected them and their learning. Most of them said that they had found out how fascinating a painter's life could be and that they could now recognize Van Gogh's art from other painters. The presentation closed with the whole group singing the song which had many parents in tears.
My experience using MI to teach English as a second language has yielded successful results with students of different ages and abilities, and has been accepted with much enthusiasm by parents and community members. It allows each student to draw from his or her own strengths to approach learning. I know I will keep trying new ways of implementing MI in my classroom, since teachers are always in search of something better to offer his or her students. Winds of change are also blowing here in Argentina. Awareness of the fact that education needs to be transformed are increasing. It is my opinion that MI is a perfectly acceptable addition to our school curriculum and an invaluable tool for educational transformation. I hope that many other teachers will want to face the challenge. It's absolutely worth the effort.
Professor Nelly Ribot currently teaches English as a second language at Los Médanos School in Trenque Lauquen, Argentina. She teaches young students at primary level and adolescents in Junior High School. Next month she is starting a new job as pedagogical advisor of the English Department at kindergarten level and grades 1,2 and 3. She is also going to help with projects using the theory of MI in the rest of the English classes.
She was born 7 December 1961 in Trenque Lauquen. This is a small town in the Buenos Aires province, in the middle of the pampas, where she grew up and lived until the age of 18. Then she moved to Buenos Aires to attend college and graduated as an English teacher from the Instituto Nacional Superior del Profesorado Joaquin V. Gonzalez.
She started to work as an English teacher at the age of 20, before graduating, offering private tuition to young children. In 1986 she started working at Cultural Inglesa de Buenos Aires, teaching young children, adolescents and adults. She also taught crash courses in companies to people who needed English for business or travel.
In 1991 she married Orlando Lo Gullo, a soil engineer, and moved to Trenque Lauquen two years later. Nelly and her husband love nature and enjoy the peaceful and clean environment that Trenque Lauquen offers. They have two daughters: Agostina, who is 10 years old and Mercedes, who is 6. Email: nellyaribot@hotmail.com
© March 2004 New Horizons for Learning
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