Learning Styles Assignment

As a reader of trashy fashion magazines, I love taking quizzes and questionnaires. Usually, the ones in Cosmo or Marie Claire tend to be on the “What your man says about your work ethic” or “How your fashion style give messages to others” or some other frivolous topic. I take those quizzes for fun and take the results for what they are, but even though they’re fun, they’re not very useful. On the other hand, the multiple intelligences inventory that I recently took was helpful—although rather unsurprising.
I took a multiple intelligence quiz from Surfaquarium.com that I accessed through a link on the www.enhancelearning.ca website that was provided to us on the assignment sheet. I previously had taken the personality profile that gives you a letter code (I’m EFNP) and I thought it was dead on. I knew of Gardner’s multiple intelligences from T&L 302/303 and I had a good idea of what I might be, but I wanted to take the “test” and see what it had to say. The results were not really all that surprising, I scored 10/10 on the interpersonal portion, which makes complete sense because when I was little punishments were when I had to be in my room by myself. I have a need to be around people, and I love performing and public speaking as well. Really, when others tell me that they need “me” time, I just laugh and say that’s what sleeping is for. The only thing that surprised me was that my next highest set was the interpersonal category. I have no idea why. I guess maybe if I love getting to know others so much, I must have to have a good grasp of who I am myself. I love the idea of integrating the MI inventory into my classroom. It would be a great way to start out the school year because students could get to know each other and as a teacher I could get an idea of what areas of intelligence are represented well, or not at all in my classroom. I think that would help me modify my instructional practices to meet the needs of my students. I’m also a big fan of letting students “choose their own adventure” (remember those books? They were great!) and giving them some options in how they are going to demonstrate their learning. For example, if we are learning about Romeo & Juliet they can either categorize character relationships, or write a summary, or build a model of the Globe theatre, etc. I think that not only does that help students be successful (and as an English teacher doesn’t give me 150 eight-page papers to read) but it also adds a richness to the classroom by letting student’s interests be applied to the subject matter that they have to learn.

After we all took the MI test in class we went to a very useful website called surfaquarium.com which outlines all of the intelligences and gives some advice to helping students who are not high in your area of intelligence, and also students who have high intelligences in areas that you yourself are weak in. I think that's fabulous because I know so many students who struggle when the teacher's learning style is different from their own. For example, I have an extremely high interpersonal and verbal score on my MI and I know that I absolutely love lecture courses. Of course the instructor has to have a little personality, but I could just sit and talk for hours at a time, so I learn really well by just being told things. Most people I know don't, and I will have to conciously try not to be too lecture based when I have my own classroom.