Learning Activities That Connect With MI
1. Verbal-Linguistic Intelligence (Word Smart)
Description: Verbal-linguistic students love words and use them as a primary way of thinking and solving problems. They are good writers, speakers, or both. They use words to persuade, argue, entertain, and/or teach.
· Learning Activities and Project Ideas:
o Completing crossword puzzles with vocabulary words, word sorts
o Playing games like Scrabble Junior, or Boggle Junior with vocabulary words.
o Writing classroom/school community stories for a classroom/school newsletter.
o Writing curriculum reports for the school newspaper.
o Writing a letter to the editor in response to articles.
o Writing to MLA about local issues.
o Using digital resources such as electronic libraries, desktop publishing, word games, and word processing.
o Creating poems for a class poetry book. (Ex. about community).
o Listening to a storyteller. (Ex. community member)
o Listening to a guest speaker (Ex. farmer, CNIB/dog guide)
o Telling a story to the class (Ex. their community experience).
o Participating in debates (re: local environmental issue problem solving)
o Read thematic book sets during DEAR (leveled).
o Play matching game, matching landmark picture to its label and description.
o Audio/video record presentation of values/responsibilities, use to compare within groups
o Author visits
o Tongue twisters, jokes
2. Logical-Mathematical Intelligence (Math Smart)
Description: Logical-mathematical students enjoy working with numbers. They can easily interpret data and analyze abstract patterns. They have a well-developed ability to reason and are good at chess and computer programming. They think in terms of cause and effect.
· Learning Activities and Project Ideas:
o Playing math games like mancala, dominoes, chess, checkers, and Monopoly.
o Searching for patterns in the classroom, school, outdoors, and home.
o Conducting experiments to demonstrate science concepts.
o Using math and science software such as Math Blaster, which reinforces math skills, or King's Rule, a logic game.
o Using science tool kits for science programs.
o Designing alphabetic and numeric codes.
o Making up analogies.
o Create inquiry questions and perform tasks to seek answers (maintaining the needs of a plant life)
o Looking for seasonal patterns (plants, animals, environment)
o Create timelines of class activities, or student lives
o Decision making, problem solving as part of group process
o Senses mystery pots/bags to solve
o What Am I? riddles
o TPET in-school activities
o Sort historical and contemporary photos
o Organize data in Venn diagrams, Fishbone, logic puzzles
o Role of detective, solving mysteries
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3. Spatial Intelligence (Picture Smart)
Description: Students strong in spatial intelligence think and process information in pictures and images. They have excellent visual receptive skills and excellent fine motor skills. Students with this intelligence use their eyes and hands to make artistic or creatively designed projects. They can build with Legos, read maps, and put together 1,000-piece jigsaw puzzles.
· Learning Activities and Project Ideas:
o Taking photographs for assignments and classroom newsletters.
o Taking photographs for the school yearbook, school newsletter, or science assignments.
o Using clay or play dough to make objects or represent concepts from content-area lessons (animal features).
o Using pictorial models such as flow charts, visual maps, Venn diagrams, and timelines to connect new material to known information.
o Taking notes using concept mapping, mind mapping, and clustering.
o Using puppets to act out and reinforce concepts learned in class (problem solving).
o Using maps to study geographical locations discussed in class.
o Illustrating poems for the class poetry book by drawing or using computer software.
o Using virtual-reality system software.
o Treasure hunt using maps
o Video project
o Create a model of the classroom
o Map using your senses
o Discovery Education video
o Life sized animals (penguin)
o Conduct class surveys and create graphs
o View models of sense organs
o Create posters reflecting on learning
o Illustrating content specific poetry
o Colour, draw, paint, sculpt, photograph, illustrate
o Story board
o Geo board
o Create, build puzzles
o Create, view overheads, videos
4. Musical Intelligence (Music Smart)
Description: Musical students think, feel, and process information primarily through sound. They have a superior ability to perceive, compose, and/or perform music. Musically smart people constantly hear musical notes in their head.
· Learning Activities and Project Ideas:
o Writing their own songs and music about content-area topics.
o Putting original poems to music, and then performing them for the class.
o Setting a poem to music, and then performing it for the class.
o Incorporating a poem they have written with a melody they already know.
o Listening to music from different historical periods.
o Tape recording a poem over "appropriate" background music (i.e., soft music if describing a kitten, loud music if they are mad about pollution).
o Using rhythm and clapping to memorize math facts and other content-area information.
o Listening to CDs that teach concepts like the alphabet, parts of speech, and provinces and capitals
o Participate in musical theatre performance
o Seasonal songs and instruments
o Animal walk with rhyme
o Musical theme songs for content areas
o Set needed vocabulary to rhyme or rap or poetry form
o Caroling at seniors’ lodge
o Choreographing body movements with concepts
o Patterning, using instruments, echo clapping, humming, choral reading
5. Bodily-Kinesthetic (Body Smart)
Description: Bodily-kinesthetic students are highly aware of the world through touch and movement. There is a special harmony between their bodies and their minds. They can control their bodies with grace, expertise, and athleticism.
· Learning Activities and Project Ideas:
o Creating costumes for role-playing, skits, or simulations.
o Performing skits or acting out scenes from books or key historical events.
o Designing props for plays and skits.
o Playing games like Twister and Simon Says, with content specific component.
o Using charades to act out characters in a book, vocabulary words, animals, or other content-area topics.
o Participating in scavenger hunts, searching for items related to a theme or unit.
o Acting out concepts. For example: for behaving as a particular animal during seasonal transition or students line up appropriately to demonstrate events in a history timeline.
o Participating in movement breaks during the day.
o Building objects using blocks, cubes, or Legos to represent concepts from content-area lessons.
o Using electronic motion-simulation games and hands-on construction kits that interface with computers.
o Creating a recycled object community
o Building landmarks
o Role play variety of community members’ roles
o Community Helper Dance- YouTube video
o Go on a community walk
o Use puppets to perform concepts
o Make a terrarium
o Dance of the Animals (mimic to music)
o Create a living map with students as landmarks and features
o Creation station activities (building object following written or oral directions)
6. Interpersonal (People Smart)
Description: Students strong in interpersonal intelligence have a natural ability to interact with, relate to, and get along with others effectively. They are good leaders. They use their insights about others to negotiate, persuade, and obtain information. They like to interact with others and usually have lots of friends.
· Learning Activities and Project Ideas:
o Working in cooperative groups to design and complete projects.
o Working in pairs to learn content.
o Interviewing people with knowledge about content-area topics (such as a senior).
o Using puppets to put on a puppet show.
o Blind Walk partner activity
o Pen pal activity (could be through email, postcards)
o Video conferences (Royal Alberta Museum)
o Peer teaching
o Performance task mapping
o Community service project
o Take a poll, survey
o Role play, drama, acting
7. Intrapersonal Intelligence (Self Smart)
Description: People with a strong intrapersonal intelligence have a deep awareness of their feelings, ideas, and goals. Students with this intelligence usually need time alone to process and create.
· Learning Activities and Project Ideas:
o Writing reflective papers on content-area topics
o Puppet show from the others’ perspective.
o Writing a literary autobiography, reflecting on their reading life.
o Writing goals for the future and planning ways to achieve them.
o Using software that allows them to work alone, such as Decisions, Decisions (a personal choice software), or the Perfect Career (a career choice software).
o Keeping journals or logs throughout the year (tree journal, logbook of relevant landmarks and significant features of a community).
o Making a scrapbook for their poems, papers, and reflections.
o Use glogster (digital posters)
o Create photo diary of past (personal history)
o Take home backpack activities
o Growing and caring for own plant, recording observations and changes
o Guided visualization
o Poetry
o Goal setting
o Audio/videotapes
8. Naturalistic Intelligence (Nature Smart)
Description: This intelligence refers to a person's natural interest in the environment. These people enjoy being in nature and want to protect it from pollution. Students with strong naturalistic intelligence easily recognize and categorize plants, animals, and rocks.
· Learning Activities and Project Ideas:
o Caring for classroom plants.
o Caring for classroom pets.
o Sorting and classifying natural objects, such as leaves and rocks.
o Researching animal habitats.
o Observing natural surroundings.
o Organizing or participating in park/playground cleanups, recycling drives, and beautification projects.
o Outdoor senses walk
o Adopt a Tree (Ex. photograph each season)
o Rake/jump in leaves
o Calendar activities to observe seasonal changes
o Seasonal scavenger hunt
o Orienteering type activities
o Authentic tours (Ex. Mapping bus tour to photograph landmarks, Home Depot to build birdhouses)
o Assign weekly Weather Person to report the weather
o Safari hunt
o Visit farms, botanical gardens, zoo
o Classifying animals (attributes), recognizing items