Review and respond to two classmates. Discuss one way that you can personalize instruction in the classroom for your students and share a strategy that can be used to help students develop the use of their intelligences. 

What does Gardner mean?

1. Cultivate desired capabilities and talents in our students. – I believe this means that as an educator we must take the knowledge that our students already have or have the ability to achieve and build from there. Helping our students develop based on what they already know can help them achieve academic success.

2. Approaching a concept, subject matter, or discipline in a variety of ways. – To me, this means there is always more than one way to learn something and there is also more than one to focus on discipline. As an educator we know that not all of our students are going to learn the same way and it is our responsibility to find out what strategies meet their needs.

3. Personalizing education as we take human differences seriously. – Human differences can mean the way we learn, what language we speak, and what culture or environment we come from. Embracing each of our student’s differences will allow us to reach the student on a personal level and work more closely with each student and family.

What would implementing Gardner’s theory look like in the classroom and what kind of students would these strategies benefit?

                When implementing these strategies in the classroom the teacher is able to help his/her students work to the best of their ability.  Some students may struggle in areas where other students excel.  As a teacher we need to accept the differences of our students individually.  Reaching our students on such a personal level will look like the teacher reviewing spelling words by playing a movement game, or reviewing information for a test by playing a game of jeopardy rather than going over a study guide.  In order to capture the attention of our students we must make their learning environment warm, inviting, safe, and fun.  Our students will retain their information when they are better engaged. 

                I think implementing these strategies will reach all students in our classroom.  Because all students learn on a different level we must work hard to implement each strategy to fit each student we have.  I know this can be accomplished because I have seen a classroom that functions like this.  All of the students are engaged and the teacher implements several different ways for her students to learn. What works for one, may not work for the other, but each student will grasp the concept and learn from the strategy that fits their own need.

The theory that most intrigued my mind is the theory of multiple intelligences discovered by Howard Gardner. The reason why this theory caught my attention was because of the challenges the theorist proposes. Howard Gardner had an idea that since all humans learn differently, there are different ways we process learned information as well. Gardner believes humans process information and possess eight different types of intelligences. The following are the different types of intelligences Howard Gardner refers to; verbal-linguistic intelligence, logical-mathematics intelligence, visual-spatial intelligence, musical intelligence, naturalistic intelligence, bodily-kinesthetic intelligence, interpersonal intelligence and last intrapersonal intelligence.

Gardner feels educators should not just look at one specific theory or at only one specific traditional way of allowing students to learn and grasp new knowledge. Lesson plans should be appropriate as well as modified to meet the needs of each student in order to have a successful learning outcome. As an educator, we must all be able to address the potential and multiple intelligence of each of our students. By doing so, the students will succeed and grow by having a personalized instruction molded to their specific needs.

When Howard Gardner proposed the multiple intelligence theory, he wanted everyone to know how humans have different strengths as well as weaknesses and we all apply them to already learned knowledge in different ways.