Chapter 8 UbD and Chapters 8, 11, 12 MI

Chapter 8 of UbD discusses the upsides and downsides of the grading and reporting system used in schools today and how to use them with backwards design and differentiated instruction.  I thought it was interesting that the chapter pointed out the need to grade on content rather than the extraneous “fog” often considered in a student’s grade.  I remember many of my papers would get marked down if I forgot my name or other methods of communicating my work rather than just simply the content I covered in the assignment.  I hope in my future classroom to design assignments that encourage the successful communication (and the writing of names) of the material while only grading or evaluating the content.  The rest of the chapter seemed to focus on how evaluating students can be more effective with more assignments and less dependency on the average of scores.  The average does not provide a great means of evaluating a student.  The book suggests putting more stock in the final assignments after students have built up a mastery rather than initial assignment grades due to the student still gaining mastery.

Chapter 8 of MI discusses various methods for classroom management and how to incorporate the MI’s into management explanation.  I think the most critical part of the chapter for me was the discussion on how to match the strategy for each student.  To express and idea to a student does not necessarily need to focus on his or her strongest intelligence.  Sometimes a student will learn or understand material better if it comes from their weaker intelligence and will benefit while developing the intelligence.

Chapter 11 on MI discusses the use of MI with learning disabilities and how disabilities are viewed in the society today.  The critical point to take from this chapter is to focus on the positive strengths that those with learning disabilities have and expand from there.  Too often do we as teachers and as humans focus on the negative and try to improve it.  The MI says that a far more effective and moralizing method is to use the strengths and positives each of us possess and use them in class.  The MI method of teaching would be a huge benefit because it would cause teachers to find alternative methods of assignment and assessment to evaluate and teach those with learning disabilities.

In chapter 12 in MI, the discussion revolves around the use of MI in memory.  Teachers should teach different methods of memorization based on a student’s strength in a particular intelligence.  I think this can be critical for the early stages of learning in a classroom.  Memorizing information rapidly can be useful but it needs to be reinforced with application.  The chapter encourages this idea with the merging of MI theory with Bloom’s Taxonomy.  Memorization is only the first stage in the process (knowledge).  Later stages take the information memorized and apply them to class activities and projects.