I definitely agree with Fred’s claim. It is important to take into account that we are all different, so, learning is not only going to occur a different paces for each student but is also going to require different approaches. For example where one student may benefit from a pneumonic the next may better off with a diagram and this is because, “we all have these different intelligences in differing strengths and capacities for expression (Koch, 2014, p. 102)”. In the text Koch says, “Do not present activities, materials, ideas, and concepts in just one way! Because people learn in different ways and through different personal strengths, it is important to plan your lessons with multiple ways of knowing in mind”.
So even though sometimes things may seem repetitive it’s important to present the same thing in different ways because with each presentation we’re reaching a different audience, and that really is one of the beauties of teaching.
“I really wanted them to make the writing come alive. You know, really trying to use sight, sound, smell, touch and taste. Have all of those things become vibrant in their writing (Cengage Learning: Multiple lntelligences)”, is what Fred had to say about his writing workshop and it makes me feel like he is truly committed to teaching with multiple intelligences in mind. When he is doing his writing workshop he’s engaging the auditory learners, and the visual learners but also everyone else because he‘s prompting them all to think in their own way.
To be honest, I never imagined that a writing activity could be this interactive, I like the idea. This has changed the way that I View writing workshops because before I had only thought of them to be something that you just assign and grade but being a part of the assignment seems to be a better approach.
In Fred’s writing workshop he was catering to auditory learners. visual learners. and kinesthetic learners. When he tells the students to touch their faces and feel if they have a beard and touch their shirts to describe how they look. When helping the auditory learners, he’s doing this all along because he’s talking the children through the process. The music he plays helps the children get their minds in the mood for the activity also. I liked the music because I wouldn’t have thought to play anything just because writing is something I’d previously imagined to be a quiet uninterrupted activity. I also really admired how he asked the children to use their imaginations and allowed them to think freely within themselves about what they had learned and already knew that could be applied to their assignment. “Unless we meet and interact with people from many walks of life and with different ways of being in the world, we run the risk of closing our minds to all that is possible in the human condition.
With this in mind I think it’s important to be a compassionate teacher that can empathize with students so that they feel like we like them, that way they’ll be more confident to ask questions when there’s a missed concept, it’s about teaching people to trust themselves. Sometimes when you think you can’t do something as a student you can shy away from learning things that appear too difficult, this is what teaching with multiple intelligences in mind strives to avoid. If we approach teaching with different ways of knowing in mind, less students get left behind and sometimes in order to know how someone learns we need to teach them to trust themselves which is a big part of self-esteem.
An Approach to Teaching in Different Ways of Knowing in Mind. (2022, Oct 18). Retrieved from https://paperap.com/an-approach-to-teaching-in-different-ways-of-knowing-in-mind/