Multiple Intelligences: Tips for Teachers and Parents

Kids have different learning styles. Teachers can use multiple intelligence theory to help identify their students' strengths and better help them learn.

• Parents and teachers should "pay attention to the differences among kids and try to use that knowledge to personalize instruction and assessment."
• Avoid labeling kids as "spatial, but not linguistic" or, for that matter, "linguistic, but not spatial."
• The intelligences are categories that help us to discover differences in forms of mental representation; they are not good characterizations of what people are (or are not) like.
• Pay attention to the differences among kids and try to use that knowledge to personalize instruction and assessment.
• As long as materials are taught and assessed in only one way, we will only reach a certain kind of child. But everything can be taught in several ways.

(Source: Interview with Howard Gardner, The Building Tool Room)

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