Wednesday, May 16, 2012

Using Multiple Intelligences to Group Students

How do you group/pair students when you have a cooperative learning activity?  To be honest, I usually just pull Popsicle sticks, but that seems a bit boring sometimes.

I was reading a post by Nancy at Teaching My Friends! about how she uses Howard Gardner's Learning Styles/Intelligences to group/pair her students.  She groups her students based on the learning styles that are best suited for the task she gives them.  It really got me thinking.
So I did some poking around, and found this cool website that neatly describes each learning style and gives practical examples of each in the classroom.
Then I had a few questions for myself:
  1.  How can I collect this information?  Would a survey at the beginning of the year be helpful?
  2. How can I display this information so it would be easily accessible?  A laminated checklist perhaps?

This is what I came up with:

This quiz asks several questions such as: "Would you rather work in pairs/small groups or by yourself?"  It is a great tool to use at the beginning of the year to get to know your students' learning styles and how they will interact with others.  It has an answer key at the end and a chart in which you can tally students' answers for quick reference throughout the year.

You can pick this up at my TpT store.





4 comments:

  1. I love giving a learning survey at the beginning of the year! It's so fun to see how students like to learn.
    Adventures of a Third Grade Teacher

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  2. I'd love to know more about how you use the information, Amber!

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  3. This is GREAT! I'm a huge fan of Howard Gardner's Multiple Intelligences! Thanks for posting it, Heather! I'm your newest follower :)
    Ruth

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  4. So glad I could share something you can use, Ruth!

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