MULTIPLE INTELLIGENCES: PROCEDURES

This handout is intended for students to exhibit their abilities and their weaknesses and strengths. This information is valuable for the teacher since it will provide him/her with students’ capacities as far as multiple intelligences is concerned.
But what is this for? The knowledge of students’ capacities on the part of the teacher will eradicate lots of prejudices from the teaching activity in the classroom. This will give the teacher the opportunity to examine to what extent the group is a mixed – ability class and to value the need of every child to learn through his/her preferred learning style. Thus, the teacher will be obliged to cater for a great deal of diversity based on different ways of learning. This is going to affect the planning and implementing of didactic units and activities.
This does not mean that everyone will be happy all the time. Of course, not. On the contrary, it suggests that some lessons will be more useful for some students than for others.
This handout is aimed at students of 2nd year of Bachillerato. Students of this year are supposed to have reached an intermediate level which will enable them to understand and follow instructions properly and to answer and carry out the activities posed. However, there might be students who are not competent enough to sort out the problems thoroughly. These students are allowed to elaborate questions 1, 4, 6, 11, 12, 13, 14 using their mother tongue since the goal of this test is to analyse the students’ abilities rather than their level of English. As for exercise 10, students will have the opportunity to have a similar one in their mother tongue.
As for the procedures, the test is divided into two parts.
In the first part, students have to deal with a list of thirty – five questions they consciously have to answer about their abilities. These questions sum up some of the strengths of each learning style. The questions are rated from 1 to 5. This test is going to be done in one period class. They do it individually and they are not timed.
In the second part, students have to show their capacities and strengths through the accomplishment of different tasks. This will clearly indicate the degree of achievement for each style. Questions 1, 4, 6, 7, 9, 11, 12, 13 and 14 will be marked according to the following parameters: 1- no achievement, 2 – poor achievement, 3 – good achievement, 4 – very good achievement, 5 – excellent achievement. The rest of the questions will be marked taking into account the concrete replies for each one.
This second part of the test will take two periods of 50 minutes.
Students will take this test at the beginning of the school year.