Multiple Intelligences at Work An Artifact for Standard #4
Above: On Day 17 of Unit 6, students met a “box problem” as we called it. While looking simple, this allows for all our multiple intelligences to do with it what they can. For our linguistic learners, they need no directions to find what is in the box so long as they understand what Greatest Monomial Factor means. Luckily, our spatial learners will be on the converse, and can meet the logic learners half way, since the logic learners will figure that since there are two red lines of the same length coming out from two terms to go into one box, there must be something to do with a commonality. Visual learners will benefit the most from this exercise, although auditory members of the class can find their way by listening to the teacher’s instructions and overhearing the resulting conversations. Finally, notice that the above slide uses only four colors for the text to keep things simple, but these are grouped according to categories. The red lines stand out the most, giving a big hint to members of the class what they could lead to, and the “Remember this?” text returns our audience to some prior knowledge that intrapersonal learners will be able to dig up in their notebooks.
Above: On Day 19 of Unit 6, we played “a simple numbers game” that again, was left to be extremely simple with the potential to grow more complicated as we went along. Given only three numbers on the board for separate problems, we asked the students to find their factors, then add them. It was that simple….until the questions started arising for the students, “If we add 2 and 4, do we have to add 4 and 2?” or “Do we count 1 as a factor too?” were popular. Again, interpersonal learners will gain an advantage by seeing that there exists a link between factoring these numbers and what the Sum column might bring. Visual learners have been given a little hindrance this time: the horizontal lines that the words sit on are disconnected and there is no vertical line to split the columns…but are either really necessary? Auditory learners will pick up all their clues from the W questions: “What are the factors of 8?”, “What do these add up to?”, etc.