In my college level middle school methods class, we spend some time working with Gardner's Theory of Multiple Intelligences which later the students use to help them with differentiation in a lesson plan and in an integrated teaching unit. Although I feel that they understand the concept when I finish the section, sometimes there is confusion evident in their teaching projects. I feel that the activity below will help identify for me whether the students understand how to work with different intelligences in terms of how they teach their classes, plan their activities, and develop their assessments.
Objectives:
On a concept map created in bubbl.us, the student will identify Gardner's Multiple Intelligences.
Using a teacher supplied list of various classroom activities and assessments, the students will classify the activities/assessments by connecting them directly to the Multiple Intelligence they feel the activity/assessment best fits as well as making secondary connections that might also exist.
After the student has completed connections, the student will then explain why they made the connections between the activities/assessment and the Multiple Intelligence(s) and include these explanations on the concept map.
This activity which I will ask students to print off and turn in, will not be graded but will be used as a formative assessment to make certain that students understand how activities and assessments can be adapted to different types of students in a class. My main focus in looking at this assessment would be the explanations of why a student placed an activity/assessment in a certain category. The explanation will best show me those who understand the concept and those who do not understand. With this knowledge, I will be able to work individually or in small groups with those students who have not yet grasped the concept completely and hopefully this will help them develop better lesson and unit plans.
This is an example of a concept map that has been started using this activity.
The focus of my college level educational technology class is to create awareness of how technology can be integrated into content area teaching and to provide students opportunities to learn about resources on the internet. Because of my focus, we do a lot of hands on activities and discussion of how different digital resources might be used in a Math, English, Physical Education class, etc. The text book used in the course is supplemental and has valuable information that is important to know, much of which is the vocabulary. I am not someone who sees a lot of value in strictly pen and paper assessments and because I want the students to get hands on experience with technology and to think about how technology and resources discussed in class can be used in their own teaching, I don’t have a lot of objective, fact based assessments. Because of this, I am not certain that students truly get the most basic concepts or understand when I use certain terminology. I currently give quizzes which are part objective and part case study based. Many students do not do well on the vocabulary/objective based section of the quizzes. Ultimately, I am not certain that they are working on being able to know those terms.
Recently, I found out about Quizlet, a website which allows a teacher to create a list of vocabulary/definitions relevant to his/her class topic. Once generated, the terms can be used to create flashcards and games for review as well as a quiz based on the vocabulary entered by the teacher. This website will allow me to share a resource with my students for their own future use as well as require them to interact with the vocabulary in a fun, interactive way prior to their quiz.
Objectives:
The students will review the vocabulary relevant to the chapter currently being studied with immediate feedback.
The students will experience the use of a website that they can make use of in their professional career.
The week prior to a quiz, the students will be directed to the quizlet website where I have developed a vocabulary list for the three chapters that will be on the quiz. The following link takes the reader to the vocabulary list for Chapter 1. (Quizlet allows the teacher to add to and edit vocabulary lists that are already developed.)
Assessment: Because quizlet.com does not have the functionality to allow teachers to see the results of their students’ scores on their quiz, I would require that the students take screen shots of the activities they complete and most especially the quiz they used to review. These screen shots should be placed in the student’s technology lab portfolio. Basically, the assessment will be scored on whether it has been completed or not since the objective is stating that the students will just “review” the vocabulary. I do anticipate (hope!) that the students will also score better on the vocabulary sections of the quizzes as a result of this activity as well.
This is a picture of my family, (Kendi, me, Kevin, and Brianna) at the Golden Gate Bridge in San Fransisco, CA, USA. This picture was changed when my husband photo shopped out two people who were off to the left of Brianna and I created the puzzle look at http://bighugelabs.com/
