Multiple Intelligences

Lesson Guidance on Multiple Intelligences

"Word/Verbal, Body and Musical Intelligence"

Skye Allen, Kaitlin Bishopp, Andrew Williamson

Grade: 6th grade

Lesson Objectives: The objective of this lesson is to teach students about the different ways they can be “intelligent”; intelligence is not limited to doing well in math, english, or science. Through this lesson, students will explore the different intelligences, including the ones they do not like. We want students to recognize they are unique in their own way.

Materials:

1 Poster board OR large whiteboard

2 Colors of sticky-notes

Pen or pencil

Dry-erase marker

Laptop with internet

Paper

Candy/reward for participation

Activity and Directions

We will begin the group activity with a brief powerpoint in which we will discuss what multiple intelligences are as well as the three types of intelligences we will be focusing on (word/verbal, spatial/movement, musical). We will include careers/hobbies that feature our selected intelligences. Students will be provided with a sticky-note to place on the board under the category of intelligence they most identify with. We will revisit their choices at the end of the lesson.

Next, we will randomly assign students to one of our three selected intelligences. Each group will spend about six minutes at each activity, then rotate at the behest of the instructor.

Word Smart Activity: As a team of 3 or 4, the students will brainstorm and write down objects that share properties, such as “being round.” There will be three categories (round, soft, and pokey), and each category will take one minute and thirty seconds. For each 10 words, the team will receive one point.

Music Smart Activity: First, we will revisit what musical intelligence is. Next, students will listen to about a minute of a preselected song two times. On the first time through, they will only listen. On the second time through, they will use a sheet of paper to write down all the instruments they can hear. A second, different song will then be played for round two. We will count up the  number of correct instruments identified and record their scores.

Body Smart Activity: The teacher will explain the rules of charades. Students must act something out without speaking, the students will only use gestures, hand signs and body movement to act something out. As a team of 3 or 4, the teacher will pick categories for each student to act out. These categories will be: favorite animal, favorite activity or sport, favorite lunch food, favorite subject, and dream career. Each student will have to act out an appropriate choice from each category while the remainder of the students guess what is being acted out (e.g. each student will take a turn acting out what their favorite animal and the other students guess, once every student acts out their animal they will move to the next category). A point will be assigned for each correct answer. The teacher will tally the number of correct answers and record the score.

After all groups have participated in each activity, they will tally up their three accumulated scores from each station and announce their combined score to the class. The winning group will receive the most reward while the other two groups receive some.

We will conclude by debriefing the class on what we went over, wrapping up any questions or concerns, and including a quick knowledge check (i.e. “who here knows an example of a type of intelligence?”)

Rationale and Purpose for Lesson

The purpose of this lesson is to explain what multiple intelligences are at an age-appropriate (sixth grade) level, focus on three intelligences in particular (musical, word/verbal, and body/spatial), and show that individuals possess all nine intelligences, albeit in different amounts. Further, the students will need to work cooperatively in groups in order to win the competition.

Plan for Evaluation

We will create a comment box for students and teachers to provide anonymous feedback. The feedback form will ask for the student’s grade level only. After our lesson(s) we will pass out the feedback form to each student and their teacher. The comment box will be left in the office for students to drop off their feedback.

Follow up

Ideally, we would visit the class two more times over the following month to teach them about the other intelligences.