Chapter Seven: MI and the Classroom Environment

Chapter seven of Multiple Intelligences in the Classroom describes the critical need for incorporating the multiple intelligences into the classroom ecology. If children enter a classroom environment where a teacher is not accomodating to the needs of the different learners, then the overall learning experience will be shot. Students' motivation to learn will diminish. This chapter gave effective and ineffective ways of teaching. For example, the one that caught my attention was the musical intelligence question: "How does the teacher use her voice? Does it vary in intensity, inflection, and emphasis, or does it have a dull monotone quality that puts students to sleep? (Armstrong, 68)" I remember when I had teachers who completely turned me off to learning in their classrooms because of this exact problem. They never seemed interested in what they were teaching themselves, so I consistently would think to myself, "Why should I be interested if my teacher isn't?" These examples were very valuable to me because when I am a teacher, I want to consistently evaluate the progress I am making in incorporating all of the intelligences in my classroom. I also found the multiple learning centers to be useful and beneficial knowledge for me to use in my classroom. I specifically liked the permanent and temporary topic-specific centers because as a teacher, I would like all of my students to start out in their area of strength, but then rotate to other intelligences. This way, my students are experiencing all aspects and intelligences of learning that enable the children to create and construct their own meaning and knowledge.