Incorporating Various Learning Styles

H2 – Honor student access to content material.

The “Multiple Intelligence” concept draws a direct connection to the H2 learning standard “honor student access to content material”. While it may not have much to do with physical resources and access in the form of classroom time, access to content material and learning styles go hand in hand.

Owen Edwards discusses seven different intelligences ranging from Visual-Spatial to musical to linguistic and how each student is able to learn through all of the intelligences but often, one type comes more naturally (2009). From this information, an educator could take a “one size fits all” method of instruction and accept that some students will learn at a faster pace and others might struggle immensely. Similarly, the teacher could plan for a few of the intelligences; maybe those that are more common in their specific classroom and cater to a wider range of students. Allowing children to learn in a way that is most comfortable will produce students with a passion for learning and a built up confidence as they witness their success in school.

The Birmingham Grid for Learning is a valuable tool for both students and educators to explore in order to figure out what their personal learning style is. Teachers may not have time to explore each student’s unique style balance, but providing the survey and grid to students early in the school year will allow for self-reflection by both the students and teacher. As a math educator, I would like to take the time to explore my student’s learning styles and show them my own learning style. This allows students to relate to me and allows me to survey what the best approach to teaching will be for each class. To the left is the Birmingham Grid for Learning with my own learning style results that I would have my students complete.

Incorporating all learning styles in a math classroom will prove to be challenging but highly possible and will benefit each child who will be able to relate and learn the material via their own strengths. Lectures and providing notes for students to see will appease visual-spatial learners, hands on geometry projects will favor kinesthetic learners and having students work together and explore and explain concepts in groups targets those who favor linguistic learning. I found it interesting that as humans, we all learn by incorporating each intelligence and just as Edwards noted in his interview with Howard Gardner, we do favor one or two processes over the others (2009).

Birmingham Grid for Learning – Multiple Intelligences (Secondary). (n.d.). Retrieved February 23, 2015, from http://www.bgfl.org/bgfl/custom/resources_ftp/client_ftp/ks3/ict/multiple_int/index.htm

Edwards, O. (2009). An Interview with Howard Gardner, Father of Multiple Intelligence. Retrieved February 23, 2015, from https://mountainlightschool.files.wordpress.com/2010/05/sis-session-7-reading-gardner.pdf

Family Involvement in Moral Education

H4 – Honor family/community involvement in the learning process.

Values and citizenship are ideas that are often “caught not taught”. This means that through observation, practice and reinforcement of good behavior, students are formed into successful members of society. This is where families and the community come into play. These entities are the examples that students need in order to be able to mimic and learn good practices from. Kirk’s article addresses just that by mentioning that “the recovery of virtue in America depends in great part upon the reinvigoration of family” (1987). The venn diagram below shows how all pieces of a child’s life, family, school and community, contribute to the student’s success. Family involvement in student’s education takes different forms in different families. Some parents can help their child with their homework, no matter the subject, while other families cannot. Regardless of the level of academic support families can provide, they can provide morally sound examples of how values and citizenship are just as important in being successful in school. Contributions include academic as well as moral support and modeling.

An effective way to be sure that families are involved in this endeavor of improving the values and behaviors of our students is to address the subject directly. Parents and family members need to be informed that they, as much as the educator, is responsible for setting a good example. During a “back to school night” or parent meeting at the beginning of the school year, I will discuss the yearly academic goals and go over the content we will be learning. I will tell parents about homework requirements, assessments and other classroom activities their students will do. In addition to this information though, I will talk about classroom expectations and how they can help their students be successful in their behavior. Respect, communication, politeness and strong effort will be the focus. As parents, they can uphold these values at home so that students are constantly surrounded by morally sound people. With the outside influence and ability to observe good values in all aspects of their life, students will be molded into sound citizens and classroom management will be more successful.

Kirk, R. (1987). Can Virtue Be Taught? The Wise Men Know What Wicked Things Are Written in the Sky. Retrieved from https://mountainlightschool.files.wordpress.com/2010/05/sis-session-6-reading-kirk1.pdf