Module Two - Theory

Module 2.1 Analysis of Learners: Multiple Intelligences, Learning Styles and Differentiated Instruction

2.1 A - Multiple Intelligences

Task 2A: Video - The Key Learning Community: Cultivating "Multiple Intelligences"

http://www.glef.org/video/frame.php
Take a few minutes to think about how this K-12 Indianapolis school emphasizes exploration and deep understanding over rote memorization. (Run-time 8 minutes)

Multiple Intelligences Explored

Task 2B: Discussion of Intelligence

  1. Can you name each of these people by yourself? Try it.
  2. Why do you think they might be called intelligent?
  3. Check with a partner and see how many you both can name together.
  4. Now join with another set of partners and see how many you can name.
  5. What happens when you collaborate with others?
  6. You may notice that you were able to name more, but found diversity in your reasons for why they are intelligent.
  7. Read the list of intelligences defined by Howard Gardner (below the 'answer key') and try to identify the kind of intelligence each person pictured represents?
  8. Take a look at the pie chart (below the list of intellingences) to see if you agree.
  9. Could any of these people excelled in the other’s profession?
  10. How do you respond to our culture's need to define one person as more intelligent than another?

Do not scroll down until you are ready to see the answers to all 11 pictures.

Multiple Intelligences Defined

Howard Gardner (Harvard University) has identified nine areas of intelligence. They are:

  • Interpersonal- relates well with others, discerns others’ moods, motivation tempermnets, intentions. Likes to persuade, influence, manipulate, mediate and counsel others.
  • Intrapersonal- assesses one’s own emotions, moods, intentions, motivations potentials.
  • Linguistic- understands phonology, syntax, semantics of language and uses language to communicate, explain and remember.
  • Logical-Mathematical-understands logical structures such as patterns, relationships and propositions. Likes to quantify, experiment, conceptualize and classify.
  • Visual-Spatial – perceives the visual world accurately
  • Musical – understands and expresses musical components such as melody and rhythm
  • Bodily-Kinesthetic – is able to control one’s bodily motions and handle objects skillfully
  • Existential/Philosophical – enjoys reflecting on the meaning of things
  • Naturalist –has the ability to recognize and classify the flora and fauna in one’s environment. Enjoys caring for living creatures or whole ecosystems.

Task 2C: Your Multiple Intelligences

Take the Rogers Indicator of Multiple Intelligences [PDF] inventory. For each statement, mark the appropriate box. Think carefully about your knowledge, beliefs, preferences, behavior, and experience. Decide quickly and move on. There is no right or wrong, good or bad, no expected or desirable responses. Use your heart as well as your head. Focus on the way you really are, not on the way you “ought to be” for someone else.

  1. What is are your areas of strength?
  2. What did you learn about yourself that surprised you?
  3. Return to the above URL and select an article on Multiple Intelligences to read.
  4. Go back and think about question #4 above: Is it justifiable to say that one person is more intelligent than another? Has your perspective change? If so, in what ways?

Share with a partner something you have learned about multiple intelligences that will help you to better meet your student’s needs.

2.1 B - Learning Styles

Learning Styles Self Assessment

Learning Styles are different approaches or ways of learning. They are the composite of characteristic cognitive, affective, and physiologiacal factors that serve as indacators of how a learner perceives, interacts with, and responds to the learning environment. (Keefe 1979 -- yes, quite dated. With the advent of recent instructional technologies, others are sure to emerge)

Three traditionally accepted learning styles are:

  • Visual Learners - They learn best through visual displays, pictures, digrams, illustrated textbooks, overhead transparencies, videos, flipcharts, and handouts.
  • Auditory Learners - They learn best through verbal lectures, discussions, talking things throughand listeneing to what others have to say.
  • Tactile/kinesthetic learners - They learn best through a hands-on approach, actively exploringthe physical world around them.

Although the above three learning styles are traditionally accepted, Multiple Intelligence (MI) theory states that there are at least seven different ways of learning. Therefore there are "nine intelligences - (see Gardener's list above). Actually, most people have the ability to develop skills in each of the intelligences. However, in education we have tended to emphasize three learning styles: visual, auditory, and kinesthetic.

Learning Styles, Motivation, and eLearning [PDF] is an article that explains how learning styles coupled with multiple intellegence theory can be utilized to develop effective instructional strategies.

Cultural Learning Styles [PDF] is an article that explores how culture impacts learning styles and multiple intelligences, and how we as teachers can utilize cultural understanding to enhance our instruction.

Module 2.2 Bloom's Taxonomy, Gagne's Events of Instruction, Inquiry Based Learning, Differenciated Leanring
"Call it what you want, its all about good teaching"

In module 2.2 there are 4 sections:
Bloom's Taxonomy
Gagne's Events of Instruction
Project Activities Timeline
Inquiry Based Learning

2.2 A - Bloom's Taxonomy

revised version of Bloom's taxonomy:

In 1956 Benjamin Bloom headed a group of educational psychologists who developed a classification of levels of intellectual behavior important in learning. This became a taxonomy.

Bloom identified six levels within the cognitive domain, from the simple recall or recognition of facts, as the lowest level, through increasingly more complex and abstract mental levels, to the highest order which is classified as evaluation. Verb examples that represent intellectual activity on each level are listed here.

  • Knowledge: arrange, define, duplicate, label, list, memorize, name, order, recognize, relate, recall, repeat, reproduce state.
  • Comprehension: classify, describe, discuss, explain, express, identify, indicate, locate, recognize, report, restate, review, select, translate.
  • Application: apply, choose, demonstrate, dramatize, employ, illustrate, interpret, operate, practice, schedule, sketch, solve, use, write.
  • Analysis: analyze, appraise, calculate, categorize, compare, contrast, criticize, differentiate, discriminate, distinguish, examine, experiment, question, test.
  • Synthesis: arrange, assemble, collect, compose, construct, create, design, develop, formulate, manage, organize, plan, prepare, propose, set up, write.
  • Evaluation: appraise, argue, assess, attach, choose compare, defend estimate, judge, predict, rate, core, select, support, value, evaluate.
  • useful website showing verbs, sample questions, sample activities

2.2. B - Gagne's Events of Instruction

Cognitive psychologist Robert Gagne has suggested that well thought out instruction follows these nine events or conditions for learning:

  1. gaining attention (reception)
  2. informing learners of the objective (expectancy)
  3. stimulating recall of prior learning (retrieval)
  4. presenting the stimulus (selective perception)
  5. providing learning guidance (semantic encoding)
  6. eliciting performance (responding)
  7. providing feedback (reinforcement)
  8. assessing performance (retrieval)
  9. enhancing retention and transfer (generalization)

Task 2D: Robert Gagne's Events of Instruction

To what extent to you agree with these nine events of instruction? Do you find that your instructional practice follows this pattern?

  1. Take a look at this Web site http://coe.sdsu.edu/eet/Articles/gagnesevents/index.htm Explore the site by clicking on each condition for learning with a partner.
  2. Consider the project you are planning. How will you make sure that all these conditions for learning are met as your students do their projects?
  3. As you build the timeline and activities for your project, please attempt to meet Gagne's nine conditions for learning.
  4. Read the example of the Project Activity Timeline template in the table below.

Project Activity Timeline Template

Pre-Production

Stage I: Inquire

The Inquire stage has two steps: Engage Learners and Build Inquiry. In these steps, teachers design activities that “hook” the students, introduces the project topic and essential question, and has the students generating questions that help answer the essential question.

Gagne's Events of Instruction

Inquiry Based Learning

Project Activities

1. gaining attention (reception)
2. informing learners of the objective (expectancy)
3.stimulating recall of prior learning(retrieval)

Activity 1: Engage Learners

Student performance tasks:

  • Introduced to the topic
  • Discuss the essential question
  • Connect to prior knowledge

 

4. presenting the stimulus (selective perception)

Activity 2: Build Inquiry

Student performance tasks:

  • Develop probing questions that help answer the essential question (questions that point to specific information)
  • Develop leading questions (students provide their own interpretation of facts)
  • Write a plan for research

 

Stage 2: Investigate

This is where the research begins. Students collect data or information and start to put the research process into practice. This is also where students organize and analyze their research.

5. providing learning guidance (semantic encoding)
6. eliciting performance (responding)
7. providing feedback (reinforcement)

Activity 3: Research Topic Student performance tasks:

  • Research topic and collect data using a variety of resources (including Internet and print resources)

 

Activity 4: Analyze Findings

Student performance tasks:

  • Organize, cite, and analyze findings and check for validity.
  • Discuss and model how to check the reliability of sources and the importance of having multiple sources of information.
  • Discuss and model how to cite sources correctly

 

Stage 3: Synthesize

In the Synthesize stage, students summarize what they have found and create a product that translates their findings.

 

5. providing learning guidance (semantic encoding)
6. eliciting performance (responding)
7. providing feedback (reinforcement)

Activity 5: Summarize Findings

Student performance tasks:

  • Re-examine findings and summarize ideas and form a conclusion

 

Production

5. providing learning guidance (semantic encoding)
6. eliciting performance (responding)
7. providing feedback (reinforcement)

Activity 6: Produce Final Product

Student performance tasks:

  • Decide on and create a medium/product that communicates and translates findings

 

Post-Production

Stage 4: Understand

Students present and defend their findings, and reflect and evaluate their work in the Understand Stage. The ILU approach expects students to also engage in extension activities where they can apply their new knowledge and take what they have learned a step further.

8. assessing performance (retrieval)
9.enhancing retention and transfer (generalization)

Activity 7: Present and Defend

Student performance tasks:

  • Present and defend research findings to an audience

 

Activity 8: Reflect

Student performance tasks:

  • Reflect on learning experience
  • If students worked in a group, they reflect on how they functioned in the group. If they worked individually, they reflect on their process, how it worked and how they could improve on it next time

 

Activity 9: Extend Thinking

Student performance tasks:

  • Extend thinking to further understanding (i.e. apply new knowledge in new situation)

 

2.2 C - Inquiry-Based Learning

An old adage states: "Tell me and I forget, show me and I remember, involve me and I understand." The last part of this statement is the essence of inquiry-based learning. Inquiry implies involvement that leads to understanding. Furthermore, involvement in learning implies possessing skills and attitudes that permit students to seek resolutions to questions and issues while they construct new knowledge. Based on John Dewey’s philosophy that education begins with the curiosity of the learner, inquiry-based learning is one of the most important teaching practices used today in the classroom. With the inquiry method of instruction, students arrive at an understanding of concepts by themselves and the responsibility for learning rests with them.
Students can take more responsibility for:

  • Determining what they need to learn
  • Identifying resources and how best to learn from them
  • Using resources and reporting their learning
  • Assessing their progress in learning

Task 2E: Reflection on Inquiry-Based Learning

Project-based learning is strengthened through inquiry based learning. Take a look at DalesCone of Experience and then reflect on these questions:

  • To what extent does the project you are planning require students to use higher order thinking skills?
  • To what extent will your project allow students to retain what they will learn as a result of doing this project?
  • How can you assure the project you are planning prepares them for the standardized tests they must take?

Pair and share your responses to those questions. Remember, they are goals and not defining criteria.

2.2 D - Differentiated Instruction

Readings and Resources

Readings:

This Multiple Intelligences PDF document includes the following articles:

  • Multiple Intelligences Theory and Teaching
  • Seven Intelligences - A Summary
  • Teacher Checklist
  • Student Inventory Form
  • Student Profile
  • Parent Survey
  • Lesson Plan Guide
  • Project Assessment Form

Web Resources:

Module 2.3 Understanding by Design

Enduring Understanding and Deep Learning

Our goal as teachers is to make sure our students understand the important concepts and ideas they are learning. We need to ask ourselves what it is that we want our students to truly understand from our lessons -- understandings that will last for the rest of their lives. Reflecting on your own education, how many lessons or ideas did you learn that you truly and deeply understood and still retain today? Some of those lessons may have been intentional on the part of your educators, and others may not have. In this section, we will emphasize that learning happens -- sometimes by design and other times by default. Your students will learn things from you, so lets look at how to increase that the likelihood of the 'right' lessons being taught. Think about your curriculum. What deep learning do you want your students to keep forever. Chances are that the answer to that question may be quite different from the State's content standards, your Districts curricula frameworks, or the objectives stated in your lesson plans. Do your students really understand why they are learning what they are learning? Do we really understand why our students must learn what we are teaching?

Part of the disconnection between real life and school is that students don’t fully understand why they are learning the things they are learning. Consequently, it is critical that we, as teachers fully understand why the students must learn what we are teaching, and how this learning will benefit them in life. We must also be able to help our student understand what the deep learning or enduring understandings are so they can make these connections for themselves.

Enduring understandings often result from the use of higher order thinking skills. According to Grant Wiggins and Jay McTighe, they involve the 'big ideas' that give meaning and importance to facts. It is the enduring understandings or deep learning that allow students to transfer knowledge from one topic to another, from one class to another, from school to life. Identifying the enduring understandings or deep learning allow us to provide the conceptual foundation for the basic skills we must teach. They are general rather than specific. For example if you teach money as part of a math unit your enduring understanding might be that value is a function of supply and demand or that cost is based on how much demand there is for a product in relationship to how much of the product is available. This is what you will want your students to really “get” and keep throughout their lives. You will then teach the appropriate money/math skills for your grade level standards in relation to this enduring understanding.

Enduring understandings are not obvious to the students and sometimes not even to the educator as well. We must guide students to “uncover” or discover these enduring understandings through well-designed learning experiences. Essential understandings are not the why, how, which or how to. Those infer the focus of the topic not what should be understood as a result of the learning the topic and extrapolating meaning to their lives or other academic areas. This is done by modeling the posing of essential questions and helping your students learn to ask essential questions themnselves. Jamie McKenzie has the best information on essential questions on his “From Now On” Web site.

Task 2F: Enduring Understandings

Read the following example and reflect on the questions that follow the example. A teacher designs a technology-enhanced project regarding the principles of DNA for her 8th grade science class. After teaching the concepts, she gave them a fill-in-the blank test and concluded that they understood DNA because the students scored high on their tests. The next step in her unit was for the students to create a simulation of DNA on the computer. The first day the students started to make their simulations the teacher said to herself, “Wait a minute. They don’t understand DNA!” Students went back to the textbooks, asked the teacher numerous questions and discussed concepts with their peers. When their simulations were complete the students did indeed understand DNA.

  • What did the students do to indicate to the teacher that they understood DNA?
  • What happened that indicated they did not understand it at a deeper or enduring level?
  • How can some forms of student assessment be deceptive?
  • What did the students do to indicate they REALLY understood DNA?
  • How could the instructional use of technology been used to contribute to enduring understanding?

Task 2G: Understanding By Design

Grant Wiggins and Jay McTighe have published part of their book called Understaning by Design on the Web.
Go to: Understanding by Design and read the online chapter 1 of their book. As you read, think about how you teach and plan curriculum.
Then compare that model to the backwards design model that McTighe and Wiggins discuss.

  1. Consider your curriculum. What big questions do you ask yourself when you plan curriculum? Where do you begin and how do you progress through lesson planning and implementation? Now think about the project you will plan during this institute. With your project partners or with a partner discuss and record the enduring understanding you would like your students to have by doing this project.
  2. Wiggins and McTighe divided indicators of “understanding” into six facets: explanation, interpretation, application, perspective, empathy, and self-knowledge. (These not hierarchical; a good lesson doesn't need all of them, and they may not apply to all students.)
  3. Take a look at the list of performance verbs and the Questioning for Understanding page from the McTighe and Wiggins materials. Form some key questions for your project.
  4. Save any documentation you may have created from this task because it will be useful when you are forming your project plan using my-ecoach.

Module 2.4 Constructivism & the Role of Reflection

Here are a few web resources on Constructivism and the Role of Reflection in Learning:

Module 2.5 Project Based Learning

History of Project-Based Learning - A Constructivist Approach

John Dewey, American philosopher and author of Democracy and Education wrote about student-directed, student-centered learning more than one hundred years ago. He saw democracy as a tool that each person could use to further his or her unique talents to make a productive contribution to society. He felt that when a student has a hands-on experience, learning is enhanced by the "doing," and this active learning produces more understanding of content than the traditional authoritarian instructional model of the time.

At that time, the economy was changing from an agriculture base to a manufacturing base. Schools changed to meet the new challenges of the economy; the twentieth century worker needed to be less of an artisan or farmer and more of a highly disciplined individual with highly specialized skills, capable of living within rigid limits and time-schedules. This was the educational model of the industrial age.

The invention of the Intelligence Test in 1905 by Alfred Binet had a dramatic impact on U.S. culture, and education. Lewis Terman, a Stanford University psychology professor, believed that IQ tests could be used to gauge the intelligence of the general the population. Consequently intelligence tests were used to rank order people from being imbecilic to being geniuses. Schools began to place students in classes based on their IQ scores. Thus, IQ scores determined the type of education they received which in turn placed them in the appropriate socio-economic strata of society. During World War I, the U.S. Army embraced intelligence testing to determine which inductees would go to the front line and which would get the desk jobs.

This sorting of people was based on two types of intelligence—verbal and performance. The verbal tests were based on a knowledge of vocabulary, and the performance tests included items such as arranging a set of pictures into a sequence that could tell a story, or to remember sequences of numbers. Other forms of intelligence were not recognized.

During the past century research in cognitive psychology and learning, gave rise to use of project-based learning in many schools. This model of teaching and learning has changed the view of education as a training model to an empowerment model. Jean Piaget, a Swiss psychologist who studied the development of intelligence, identified four stages of mental development in children.

Research in cognitive psychology and learning, coupled with the enormous changes the world has experienced this past century, has given rise to the impetus for using a project-based learning strategy for teaching. This model of teaching and learning has changed the view of education from a training model to an empowerment model.

Multiple Intelligences and Project-Based Learning

Howard Gardner, Professor of Cognition and Education at the Harvard Graduate School of Education, has demonstrated that there are multiple types of human intelligence. During the second half of the twentieth century, he developed his theory of multiple intelligences and influenced how curriculum and instruction should be thought of to meet the learning needs of all students.

In the 1960s, Jerome Bruner, psychologist and educator, studied and wrote about perception, learning, memory, and cognition in young children. Bruner describes learning as an active process, in which the learner is the transformer of existing ideas and concepts into new knowledge.

Models of Project Based Learning (Seven Elements of PBL)

Project-based learning is an instructional strategy and not a curriculum. Michael Simkins, Director of the Challenge 2000 Multimedia Project, defines project-based learning as, "a method of teaching in which students acquire knowledge and skills in the course of designing, planning, and producing a multimedia project." The Challenge 2000 Multimedia Project identifies seven dimensions of project-based learning supported by multimedia.

According to The Challenge 2000 Multimedia Project:
“Project-based learning (PBL) is a model for classroom activity that shifts away from the classroom practices of short, isolated, teacher-centered lessons and emphasizes, instead, learning activities that are long-term, interdisciplinary, student-centered, and integrated with real world issues and practices."

Higher Order Thinking Skills
As we develop curriculum for our students we will want to promote critical thinking and higher order thinking skills. Bloom's Taxonomy is a useful tool to help make sure we are extending our student's thinking skills. All too often curriculum can be aimed just at the two lower thinking skills of recall and comprehension. Project based learning with technology integration allows us to foster the four higher order skills of application, analysis, synthesis and evaluation.

The SCANS (Secretary's Commission on Achieving Necessary Skills)
The SCANS (Secretary's Commission on Achieving Necessary Skills) suggests that in order for our students to successfully enter the work force they need to develop the following critical thinking skills ( This list is taken from: http://www.academicinnovations.com/report.html):

  1. Creative Thinking--generates new ideas
  2. Decision Making--specifies goals and constraints, generates alternatives, considers risks, and evaluates and chooses best alternative.
  3. Problem Solving--recognizes problems and devises and implements plan of action
  4. Seeing Things in the Mind's Eye--organizes, and processes symbols, pictures, graphs, objects, and other information
  5. Knowing How to Learn--uses efficient learning techniques to acquire and apply new knowledge and skills
  6. Reasoning--discovers a rule or principle underlying the relationship between two or objects and applies it when solving a problem.

As you think about the project you are developing, consider how you are developing the SCANS Thinking Skills in your students.

Integrating Technology Projects into Your Curriculum

Studies show that computer use in the classroom does not necessarily mean effective integration of technology into the curriculum as an effective tool to support learning. How we use the technology available to us is more important for student learning than how much technology we use. If we integrate technology into our curriculum using a project-based learning model, students will have the opportunity to exercise multiple intellegences and develop critical thinking skills.

Task 2H: Project Based Learning Activity

Each of you will be assigned to a project team. Each project team will be assigned one of the key questions to answer and will create a 5-minute multimedia presentation to explain one aspect of Project Based Learning.
Go to http://www.lullah.com/pblwebquest/ and read through this webquest to get an overview of this task.

Goals of This Activity

  1. Participants will learn the elements of Project Based Learning.
  2. Participants will become familiar with the Challenge 2000 web site.
  3. Participants will participate in online research.
  4. Participants will complete a short project.
  5. Participants will create and a multimedia presentation

Key Questions (Gayle: revise these questions to match the webquest)

  • What is Project Based Learning?
  • How can you assess student projects?
  • What are the components of a well planned a project?
  • What are the steps involved in planning a good project?
  • How does Project Based Learning work with No Child Left Behind?
  • Why would I want to use Project Based Learning in my classroom?
  • What are the elements or components of multimedia. Elaborate on each and tell how each supports learning in a multimedia project.

Objectives of Project

  1. Each Project Team will research one key question and demonstrate understanding of that element of Project Based Learning by creating a presentation of the information learned for the entire group.
  2. Each Project Team will demonstrate that they are proficient in conducting online research by locating the appropriate information to support their project on the Challenge 2000 web site.
  3. Each Project Team will complete a short multimedia (multiple media) project to present their information to the entire group.
  4. The group will demonstrate that they understand the concept of Project Based Learning by completing a project plan during the duration of the Institute.

Within the allotted time you must collaborate to do the following tasks:

  1. Discuss your assigned question
  2. Determine what kind of presentation your team will give
  3. Do the online research: (See resource URLs)
  4. Plan/storyboard your presentation
  5. Produce your product for presentation
  6. Present multimedia products

Organization Roles Determine who will do the following:

  • Group Leader
  • Research
  • Note Taker
  • Storyboarding
  • Multimedia Production
  • Presentation

Process:

  1. Brainstorm - Meet with your team and decide what format your project will be in. Brainstorm your ideas first. Brainstorming is non-critical. All ideas are initially accepted. After everyone has suggested his or her ideas, narrow the field by having each person select his two top choices. See which product is selected by the most people. If necessary, repeat this narrowing process one more time with the two top choices until you have only one agreed upon choice. Check for consensus before moving on.
  2. Choose a multimedia presentation tool from available sources.
  3. Plan
  4. Record your team's “Essential Question”.
  5. Record the points you want to make in your presentation
  6. Storyboarding
  7. Title Main Points More Main Points
  8. More Main Points Summary Resources
  9. Make Presentation

Reflection/Group Discussion

  • What did you do as you planned your project?
  • What changes did you make during the production process?
  • How did you select what information to include?
  • How did the whole team contribute to this project?
  • Do you wish you had been given more time to work on this project?
  • What else would you have done?

PBL Readings and Resources:

Readings:

This Project-Based Learning PDF document includes the following articles:

  • Promising Practices in Project-Based Learning
  • EWYL Project-Based Learning PowerPoint Presentation
  • The Six A's Criteria for Designing Projects
  • A Passion for Projects
  • Project-Based Learning: Creating a PBL Project
  • What is PBL and Why is it an Important Tool?
  • Multiple Intellegences and PBL
  • SRI Challenge 2000 Year 5 Multimedia Project Report
  • Two Major Elements of PBL

Web Resources:

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