UbD 8, MI 8, 11, 12

Chapter 8 of UbD discussed grading and reporting achievement through the lense of backward design and differentiated instruction. This chapter presented this with six basic principles, which included: grades should be based on specified learning goals, evidence used for grading should be valid, grading should not be based on norms, not everything should be graded, avoid using mean as an overall grade, and report some factors separately. I really like the idea of the reporting and grading system that supports standards and differentiation. I think it is incredibly important to grade students on what is important, and not based on if they remembered to put their name at the top of the paper. Most importantly it is important to grade them on the progress they have made because that is truly what the learning process is about.

Chapter 8 of MI covered several ways that a teacher can use MI Theory for classroom management. The point to this is that if you communicate with your students using their multiple intelligence they will be more likely to receive it better. I feel that many of these strategies are meant for a younger age group, but I would still use some of them. I would definitely use the different ways to gain students’ attention. I feel that gaining students’ attention is something that all teacher struggle with, and I think that these strategies will be very helpful to me in my future classroom.

Chapter 11 focused on MI and its potential application in special education. I agreed with the generalization made in this chapter which suggests that we think about students with special needs in terms of deficit, disorder, and disease. However, what this chapter suggests is that using MI Theory we can focus less on these students’ weaknesses, and begin to build up their strengths. This concept almost seems like a “no duh” thing to me because if a student is dyslexic and struggles with reading, putting that him/her in a series of reading workshops is mostly likely not going to help them. This is definitely something that I would use in my classroom to help a student with special needs. It just makes sense that if I am already doing this for my other students that I would also use MI Theory and differentiation for every student.

Chapter 12 talks about using MI Theory to help students’ thought process. Essentially, if you get students to work with information using different multiple intelligences they will have an easier time recalling it later. The same goes to problem solving, if you get students to using different multiple intelligences to solve a problem it may come easier to them. I really liked the idea of the “Christopherian encounters” as well. As teachers we don’t just want our students to memorize the information, we want them to dig deep, apply it, and most of all go beyond it. As a teacher I know that I will be encouraging my students to dig deeper.