MI Chapter 14

This chapter is a great way to end the book. It brought up the idea of there being a ninth intelligence, ninth intelligence, that being the existential. This means “the capacity to locate oneself with respect to the furthest reaches of the cosmos” and then continues on saying that it’s related to “the capacity to locate oneself with respect to such existential features of the human condition as the significance of life” This is not advocating for religion in the classroom, but for students to be comfortable asking themselves questions like “who are we?” I think this is a good idea as long as the idea of religion is not being forced into a student’s brain and it truly stays focused on what this student feels comfortable with.

MI Chapter 13

This chapter focused on the fact that there are many other applications of the MI theory to education. One good example that they used was cultural diversity. This is extremely important because of how diverse the United States has becoming and is still becoming. A good point that Armstrong made was when he stated “it is important to repeat, however, that every culture has and uses all eight intelligences.” What Armstrong means here is that we cannot just assume that a certain race carries a certain intelligence or intelligences because of their race. It is important that educators have broad perspectives and do not make assumptions concerning intelligences because every is different.

MI Chapter 7

Chapter seven focused on the MI theory and the classroom environment. Through this, Armstrong discussed the eight multiple intelligences and the questions that may be posed in the classroom. Along with this activity centers was a main focus. Permanent Open-Ended, Temporary Open-Ended, Temporary Topic-Specific, and Permanent Topic-Specific were the four types that were given. Under each type, there were examples of places where every multiple intelligence would do best at. For example under temporary open-ended, under linguistic, was the game scrabble. This type of activity center was organized into eight scattered tables, and each table had a different game at it. This is a great way to see which student carries which intelligences!

FIAE Chapter 14

In chapter fourteen I really enjoyed the paragraph about dual approach to report cards. This dealt with grading your students on how far they have come along and improved. Along with this, their actual grades according to the standards of their education. I think it is very important that the student is rewarded for improving because students should not work incredibly hard to improve and then just see a mediocre grade because they are not as smart as everyone else. They should be graded on some sort of personal level as well and I feel as if it is important to incorporate this into their report card.

FIAE Chapter 13

Chapter thirteen discusses using different types of grading books for different types of classrooms. I like this idea a lot; I do not think that teachers should be limited to one specific grade book. This chapter is also very helpful because it gives actual examples of certain grading pages that you can use for different types of assignments. A good example is listing assignments in a grading book by the date that they were assigned. This is good way to know when these assignments are due for those students that have not passed them in yet. Along with that it is in an organized manner. I would definitely put the dates next to all of my assignments to stay organized with specific students, especially the ones who consistently miss work.

FIAE Chapter 12

Chapter twelve goes into detail about the two different approaches to grading, the four point scale, and the 100 point scale. It discusses the differences between the two and why each one is used. It also talks about why teachers like each one of these grading scales, and why they do not like them. I personally like the 100 point grading scale because it is easier for me to understand, and easier for me to average, especially in the grade level that I am going to be teaching. When I was in middle school, if I saw a 4.0 on my paper I would have no idea what that meant. If I did that to my own students I feel as if I would have to spend so much time explaining how to use this grading scale when they already know what getting a 100 on a paper is!

FIAE Chapter 11

Something interesting that I read and never thoroughly thought about until reading it was the zero or sixty topic. Wormeli made a good point when he talked about how students can have a test right in front of them and receive a sixty for just being in the classroom. Giving sixties to students when they do not do anything is cheating, like Wormeli says. If they are not doing anything then why do they receive any points? This is a good point that I do not think cross some educators minds. Although he then makes the point of saying that this is for grading purposes and mathematical reasons.

FIAE Chapter 10

In chapter ten it focuses on students redoing work. One quote that I agreed with was “there are times when it’s not worth students’ going through the whole project or assessment from the beginning for a redo.” I feel as if it is ok to redo things that are fixable, such as a paper. The students should be allowed to in some cases, fix errors and get a second chance. Although going through a whole project again that was your responsibility to begin with, and getting a redo because you did it sloppy, is not acceptable. You should do that right the first time! If a teacher lets the student redo the whole project for that reason, it is not fair to the other students that worked hard the first time around.

FIAE Chapter 9

In chapter nine, the third point says “avoid grading practice (homework).” I completely 100% agree! I believe that the only grade that should be counted for dealing with homework is grading whether or not it was passed in, not the actual content. Homework is for practicing the content that you learned in the lesson that day or week. Unless it is a paper that was assigned in advance, a homework assignment due the next day after it was being assigned, is not exactly fair, because what if the student doesn’t understand the material?

FIAE Chapter 8

In this chapter, there is a part where Wormeli talks about low grades, and how they do not motivate students. I think this is very true. Whenever I get a low grade, a lot of the time it brings my confidence level down, and I can convince myself that I am not that smart of a student. I think this has to do with the teachers that I have had. When I get a bad grade and they do not tell me or encourage me that I can do better I am convinced that that specific teacher has no confidence in me. I think it is important as a future educator to give students confidence and encouragement after they receive a lower grade, otherwise they will not have motivation.

FIAE Chapter 7

I completely agree with Bowdring when he stated “I fear we’re on a grade inflation roll these days. Colleges have to offer more and more redemption classes because high school students are going to college with less and less mastered for their high grades. Teachers have to hold students accountable for the material so those grades mean something.” I see students here at UMF doing this exact thing and I see where it comes from while I am out on the field. It is very frustrating that my mentor teacher does not assign her students homework. I asked her one time if the students knew we were having a test the next day, and she was like “no they will not study anyways.” This shows that she has absolutely no confidence in them studying. It was very frustrating to hear, I want to make sure that I give my students homework, and assignments to complete or it will not benefit them in their future education.

Chapter 6: Creating Good Questions

Chapter six was titled “Creating Good Test Questions” and that is exactly what the chapter offered. Wormeli made a good point that caught my eye, “Provide a “T” or “F” for students to circle on true/false questions. This way there will be no questions about how to interpret sloppy formed T’s and F’s.” This is such great advice! This has happened so much in my school experience. A student will approach a teacher and say that was supposed to be an F, and the teacher will assume that the student is just trying to get away with getting some extra points. Along with this, Wormeli suggested that we focus on not necessarily using traditional questions when assessing and giving assignments. I completely agree, I think that multiple choice, true/false, and matching all get very boring and redundant for students. They have these types of questions in a lot of their classes, and I think it would be good to add variety into how they are assessed.

Chapter 5: Tiering Assignments

In chapter five titled “Tiering Assessments” I really liked how Wormeli suggested critiquing your assignment or assessment with someone else that teaches a similar subject. This allows you to make sure that you are achieving what you intended to. Along with this, because the teacher you are looking to for advice teaches a similar topic they will know what you should be trying to teach the students. Wormeli included tiering questions that you could approach your colleagues with as well that would be very useful. Also, I liked how Wormeli gave samples of tiering tasks. The one I liked most was the learning contracts. This enables the student to work at their own pace, on something that interests them. Even though the teacher will tell the student what they need to work on, the student can do their assignment in a way that they enjoy.

Chapter 4: Three Important Types of Assessment

In chapter four of Fair Isn't Always Equal Wormeli explains the three important types of assessment. I found this chapter very useful, even though I had already had background knowledge of these types of assessment. The first type of assessment was portfolios. I aggree with Wormeli when he states "portfolios can be as simple as a folder of collected works for one year or as complex as multi-year, selected and analyzed works from different areas of a student's life." I think that portfolios are a great, organized way to show your best work from the past. For example, I had research projects assigned in high school, and once we were done, some teachers suggested that we compile our research, and the research paper into an organized portfolio so we can later to refer back to this work of ours. The second type of assessment was rubrics. As a student I have always loved rubrics. I always found it so much easier to go about completing an assignment when I have a rubric to follow. Lastly was student self-assessments. I enjoyed self-assessing myself in high school on papers because it allowed for me to be honest to myself on how I completed my work. As a future educator I hope to use these types of assessments in my classroom.

Chapter 10: MI Theory and Assessment

Chapter ten of Multiple Intelligences in the Classroom discusses the use of assessment and the MI theory. The chapter defines authentic assessment which I found to be very interesting. Armstrong tells us that "the most important prerequisite to authentic assessment is observation." He then gave us a long list of all the ways in which teachers can observe their students. One that I found interesting, and useful for me in the future is checklists. If each student was to have a checklist of the work that they have done, including the progress that they have made, the student would most likely be more organized and probably be more motivated because they can physically see what they have done, and how well they have completed the task. Another part of the chapter that I found interesting was MI portfolios, and "The Five C's of Portfolio Development." The five C's (Celebration, Cognition, Communication, Cooperation, and Competency)supported why we should use these MI portfolios.

Chapter 2 Synthesis and Abstract

Abstract-
Chapter two of Thomas Armstrong’s Multiple Intelligences in the Classroom emphasizes how important it is as an educator to be aware of your own intelligences to be able to use the theory of multiple intelligences in your classroom. Armstrong descriptively explains how we identify our own intelligences, and how we identify our intelligences through experiences in our lives. For the intelligences that you are not particularly strong in, Armstrong provided advice as to how to go about being able to work with other intelligences even though you have not developed them yourself. For example, not being hesitant to ask other teachers that you work with that are stronger in areas that you may not be, like music. Along with this Armstrong advised that we should use our own students as resources because often they have expertise in other areas that we may not. To conclude, he discussed the “Activators and Deactivators of Intelligences.” In this section Armstrong explained how we may have developed our individual intelligences. Overall, Armstrong stresses understanding our own individual intelligences to be successful with our students’ intelligences.

Synthesis-
Everyone has certain intelligences in which they are proficient, and then other intelligences that would be considered a weakness. To understand what intelligences we carry, we must reflect on real life experiences. Some of us though that multiple intelligence surveys were very useful in going about understanding what intelligences we carried. What most of us thought were important in this chapter was that we need to be able to understand and have knowledge of what our own intelligences are to be successful educators. Along with this many of us agree that we can all improve in those certain intelligences that we consider our weaker points. In addition, when going about improving our intelligences, we uncover students talents or interests through letting them help us with improving our weaker intelligences.

Chapter 5: Considering Evidence of Learning in Diverse Classrooms

Chapter five of Integrating Differentiated Instruction and Understanding by Design gave me a good understanding of the assessment principles that are crucial to student understanding. One thing that I particularly liked was how it said “Including a variety of assessments is important not only from a measurement perspective but as a matter of sensitivity to varied learners.” From this I know that I can give assignments that I know certain students will have less difficulty due to the fact that this particular kind of work that I am giving them targets their strengths. If you focus, and consistently stay with the same kind of learning style your whole class is not going to work. Differentiated instruction is extremely important in this case, and you need to know the different kinds of assessments to cover all the different types of learning styles that the students carry in your classroom.

Chapter 3: Principles of Successful Assessment in the Differentiated Classroom

In chapter three of Fair Isn’t Always Equal, Wormeli discusses the importance of assessment. He made a good point when he said “Students achieve more when they have a clear picture of the expectations.” For example Wormeli suggested that we as teachers should try to give the students and end-of-unit test on the first day of teaching the unit that way they know exactly what we want them to learn out of this unit. While learning the unit, and going through it, they will be able to refer back to that test and fill in the answers as they go. When the test finally comes they will have mastered the information because it was presented to them before that test day. I had never thought to do this until reading this chapter, and now I strongly believe that starting a unit almost backwards is actually very beneficial for the students!

Chapter 2: Mastery

Mastery is not exactly what most people may think it is. For example, a student may think that they have “mastered” the Spanish language because they got an A in the highest level Spanish class in their high school. Although the real test to see whether or not you have mastered the language would be using it in a Spanish speaking country when you needed something, like having to ask where the bathroom is. Mastery is being able to use what you have learned in the future in a completely different setting. Another example, similar to Wormeli’s, would be if you memorized a list of vocabulary words and their definitions and aced the test that week, and thought that you mastered it. Mastering these vocabulary words would be being able to use these words in a future essay or just in dialogue with a friend. I think that it is important to focus on testing your students to make sure that they are not just temporarily memorizing information. It is important to make sure that your students are retaining information that they can use in a different setting.

Chapter 1: The Differentiated Instruction Mind-Set: Rationale and Definition

In the first chapter of Fair Isn’t Always Equal, Rick Wormeli goes into detail about what exactly differentiated instruction is, and why it is so useful in the classroom. He made very good points about how beneficial differentiated instruction is for our students in the long run. One point that Wormeli made that I especially liked was “when we differentiate, we give students the tools to handle whatever comes their way—differentiated or not.” This is so true! By using differentiate instruction in the classroom we are allowing our students to be able to do things on their own, and experience different things. If we went through the same agenda everyday that would be what they would expect all the time. Although when the schedule changes every day, it keeps the students focused and more interested because they are not expecting what is going to happen in the classroom.

Ubd/DI Chapter 4: What Really Matters in Planning for Student Success?

In Chapter 4 I learned that it is often beneficial to steer away from traditional teacher-student dynamics. It is often not enough for a student to act purely as a receptor and the teacher as a source of knowledge and direction. Teachers should loosen their curriculum so that students can discern where their interests lie. Students will usually motivate themselves if they are given the freedom to pursue their own interests, to some extent. Differentiated teaching allows for teachers to reach students at different levels, of various interests and learning styles. A way teachers can reach a wide array of students is by keeping the syllabus open for amendment and negotiation. A teacher never knows what the needs of students will be before the onset of the class, so don't ossify the curriculum too hastily.

UbD/DI Chapter 3: What Really Matters in Learning?

In the beginning of Chapter 3 I found myself in agreement when the author stated: "This problem of content "overload" requires teachers to make choices constantly regarding what content to emphasize as well as what not to teach." Teachers often have so much content to work with that they cannot possibly incorporate all of it into their curriculum. This is especially pertinent to my concentration because there is a copious amount of information that could be discussed. However, a teacher has to make conscious decisions of what to exclude. Certain information may be easy to discard, such as events and historical events that deal with minority issues. For example, studying President Andrew Jackson may evoke different interests and emotions among students of various ethnic and racial backgrounds.

MI Chapter 4: Teaching Students about MI Theory

Chapter 4 focused on how a teacher goes about teaching their own students about the eight multiple intelligences. The first way the chapter said to go about defining it was by just directly stating what it exactly meant. Another way was to visually show them using a pie chart. For example instead of saying someone could be an interpersonal learner, they said "people smart." This is more comprehensible to students. The chapter also gave many activities for teaching the MI theory. One that I found interesting was the "Career Day" activity. This allowed students to see how different people used the different intelligences for their jobs.

MI Chapter 3: Describing Intelligences in Students

Chapter 3 of Multiple Intelligences in the Classroom gave a chart of the eight ways of learning. It specifically showed what children under each learning style thought, loved, and needed. I found this as a very useful source because it allowed me to imagine a specific student that would have each of these learning styles. For example, a spatial learner thinks with images and pictures, and loves to draw and doodle. As for a interpersonal learner they need friends and group games, and they love to be organized. Along with the chart describing the eight ways of learning, they also gave a Multiple Intelligences Checklist for Students. This allows students to check off specific characteristics that relate to them, permitting them to see what kind of learner they are.

UbD/DI Chapter 2: What Really Matters in Teaching? (The Students)

In the second chapter I was able to learn how to go about identifying your own multiple intelligences and identifying your own multiple intelligences is important when determining other’s multiple intelligences. This is extremely important when dealing with students. You need to know your own multiple intelligences to understand theirs. It offered a visual of “An MI Inventory for Adults,” which allows you to see what kind of intelligences you strongly possess. Although the chapter makes the point that “no test can accurately determine the nature or quality of a person’s intelligences” (page 21).

UbD/DI Chapter 1: UBD and DI: An Essential Partnership

In this first chapter the idea of combining Understanding by Design and Differentiated Instruction is emphasized. I was able to receive to clear definitions of what each model represented. The chapter also gave seven axioms, each with a scenario, allowing me to understand the two models clearly. The examples gave me an idea of realistic situations that could take place in a classroom.

MI Chapter 2: MI Theory and Personal Development

In the second chapter I was able to learn how to go about identifying your own multiple intelligences and identifying your own multiple intelligences is important when determining other’s multiple intelligences. This is extremely important when dealing with students. You need to know your own multiple intelligences to understand theirs. It offered a visual of “An MI Inventory for Adults,” which allows you to see what kind of intelligences you strongly possess. Although the chapter makes the point that “no test can accurately determine the nature or quality of a person’s intelligences” (page 21).

MI Chapter 1: The foundations of MI Theory

In this first chapter, I was able to get a better grasp on the eight intelligences. It offered a Multiple Intelligence Theory Summary Chart that gave specific details, showing examples of what falls under each of the eight intelligences. I also learned that each person carries all of these eight intelligences, some stronger and some weaker than others. This will help me in the classroom because I will know that some students for example can have very strong interpersonal and musical intelligences, while having mediocre musical intelligence. I now know that you do not just carry one, and have absolutely none of the seven other intelligences.